Internal II
The new ICH4 Southbridge is Intel's most feature-packed offering yet. Offering 6 USB 2.0 ports, we see 4 being used on the SB51G. (2 on the front, 2 on the rear panel). A header is provided for the remaining 2 but no cable is bundled to take advantage of those.
Partly obscured by the CPU retention bracket are two of the value-adding ICs. The VIA VT6306 provides Firewire support for the 3 ports on offer on the SB51G. The RTL8100B Realtek Ethernet controller (right) provides 10/100 LAN support.
The left-hand-side of the motherboard contains one of my favourite on-board sound CODECS in the form of the Realtek ALC650. The ALC650 is an 18-bit, full duplex AC'97 2.2 compatible stereo audio CODEC. It natively supports full surround sound 5.1 configuration with a maximum of 6 separate or discrete channels (Left, Right, Center, SL, SR and Sub). S/PDIF support is also provided by an on-board header connected to the front panel via an appropriate cable.
Obviously, the need for an efficient cooler is paramount when space is confined. There's not a chance that a larger aftermarket cooler can be implemented. Shuttle, with this in mind, have come up with their ICE cooling system.
The copper-clad cooler is secured on to the processor via a stiff clip. Using the same heatpipe technology employed on certain Coolermaster coolers in particular, it does a reasonable job in cooling the CPU. Rather unconventionally, the actual cooling doesn't take place on the part of the heatsink that is in contacted with the CPU. Rather, a 3750rpm Sunon fan is mounted on the upper fins.
With everything reassembled, we get something like this:
What you're looking is a deceptively powerful system. A Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU, coupled with 256MB of Corsair XMS3200, 120GB Western Digital 120JB hard drive, ATi Radeon 9700 Pro, and a Pioneer 104 DVD-RW (unconnected) give you some idea of its basic specification. Who said that going small was a compromise ?.
