AOpen XCcube EZ65-II Mini Barebone System - Page 1

AOpen is known for it's wide variety of products, including DVD/CD drives, servers, barebone systems, motherboards, graphics cards and other hardware. Following the growing demand over the last year trend for small form factor (SFF) PC, AOpen has also started a product line of mini barebone systems. The term barebone system usually refers to a system that already has pre-assembled, the basic, minimum required components. For example, it can include a case, PSU, motherboard, vga card, and other accessories that are already assembled or built in.

Now some of you may think that mini systems are just not worth the effort, considering the sacrifices you need to be make in terms of performance, expandability, stability, and last but not least, comparative prices. While that may be true, great steps have been made by manufacturers to close this gap between mini pc's and their full sized "siblings". Let's not forget that nowadays, PCs do not only serve enthusiasts or gamers. A large number of PCs today are used as office or home computers for document and spreadsheet processing, surfing the Internet, listening to music, watching videos, and so on. For this category of applications, it may be that systems offering a smaller size and good looks, while maintaining the ability to connect extra peripherals, may be more preferable than full sized PCs.

This review examines one of AOpen's products from their mini barebone systems series, namely the AOpen XCcube EZ65-II Mini Barebone System. It is a system designed around the Intel family of processors, including the latest Prescotts. As we will see in the course of this review, while small in size, it packs quite a lot of features in that small space, and with style as well.

Let's start with the specifications:

- Specifications