Biostar
Known mainly for motherboards, Biostar are just about to break into the 'cube' small form factor scene with their eDEQ 200 product.
Interestingly enough, the eDEQ has a slide down 'stealth’ cover that hides the CD/DVD & floppy bays. The mechanics of this allow it to slide smoothly without catching or sticking. They plan to have 4 models - two for Intel & two for AMD CPU's. These will be based on the SiS651/962L (eDEQ 200S) & Intel 865G (eDEQ 200T) chipsets for Intel CPU's & the VIA KM266 (eDEQ 200V) & NVIDIA Crush 18G+MCP2T (eDEQ 200N) for AMD CPU's.
I think that unless they can sell the SiS & VIA based solutions for a significantly lower price than the Intel & NVIDIA based, solutions, then they shouldn't bother with them.... The e-DEQ has all the features you'd expect: USB2, 1394, 6 channel sound, AGP, PCI & SPDIF. (front mounted USB, 1394, MIC & sound are also present). Each come equipped with a 200W PSU & a fan cooled CPU. At first I was concerned, but after further investigation & questioning, it was revealed that they have done some interesting engineering within the unit, which will help to make them quiet & cool. (I can't go into detail & was not allowed to photograph the internals, as they don't yet want details of what they have done to be public yet).
A couple of things I can point out about this pre-production sample I saw are that, due to some nice design, there is lots of room inside the case. This is a vast improvement of the current Shuttle XPC's which have very little room & are difficult to work on. The other point of note is that all the power, IDE & floppy cables come neatly pre-installed & routed.
The entire front panel comes off so that different colored ones can be used. Instead of the entire lid coming off, it's possible to remove the sides & top panel independently of each other. The HD bay sits across the unit and is held in by a thumb screw which allows the whole drivebay to be easily slid out.
Add to this the ability to playback CD's, MP3's & DVD's via the units built in BIOS (which is very much the 'feature' of the year in SFF cubes) and I'm sure they'll have a winner on their hands!
Although still a little 'rough and ready' in its pre-production state, I will really look forward to seeing this product 'in the flesh' as it offers some nice touches, ingenious engineering & best of all, aims to be priced below the equivalent Shuttles....
