1.Introduction

It's been awhile since I've had a chance to write up a review of a product. Hopefully the next few months can change all of that. We'll start all of this off by going over the newest additon to the American Media Systems' lineup of barebone units - the gBOX P4 CF-868. This is another barebones PC setup using a small cube like form factor. The inspiration for my own use of this PC is to create a small nice looking PC for my home entertainment system. If you are a frequenter of sites like viahardware.com, you're already well aware of this class of small form factor PCs. Some of the more well known barebones setups have come from the likes of Shuttle with their famous SV-24/25 units and their recent SS50 and SS40 PCs. If you wish to check out some reviews of these PCs, I invite you to head over to www.viahardware.com and look up their reviews on the cases. Here, I'll concentrate on this new PC from AMS and go over the steps I took to construct the case as well as some limited benchmarks. Overall,I'll spend a good deal of time going over what I did to make this PC work for my home theater setup.

2.Overview

These are the specifications as listed on the AMS (www.american-media.com) homepage. You'll also note that the actual manufacturer of this case is Chyang Fun (http://www.chyangfun.com). It appears that AMS is the US distributor of this case. You can purchase this case directly from AMS or from the likes of newegg.com and other vendors.

Features:
Blue LED for POWER LED
Orange for HDD LED
Easy to carry Acrylic Handle
Quick Specs:
VIA P4M266 chipset
Winbond W83627HF LPC controller
Supports Intel Socket 478
Pentium 4 processors: (1.4GHz ~ 2.4GHz)
Support 2x 184-pin DDR200/266 SDRAM up to 2GB
Onboard S3 ProSavage8 DDR 2D/3D graphics
4 to 32MB frame buffer using system memory
- VT1621 TV Encoder, TV-out supported, S-Video port and composite TV-out
Onboard IR port
Onboard Realtek 10/100 Fast Ethernet
- support PXE and RPL Protocol.
Onboard USB 2.0 interface (4 ports)
Onboard AC'97 v2.2 audio ports
Supports ATA/133 ATA-6 IDE interface
Dimensions:
9.5"(H) x 8.3"(W) x 12"(D)
Drive Bays:
Open 5.25", open 3.5", hidden 3.5"
Power Supply: 150W (115v ~ 240v) - Aluminum Construction
PCI Slot: 1 (PCI 2.2)
AGP Slot: 1 (4XAGP)
CPU: Socket 478 Intel Pentium 4
FSB: 400Mhz Quad-pumped

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