Setting Up
Access to the inside of the CF-S968 is obtained by removing the sides in much the same way as a traditional ATX style case. The top of the box is fixed and can not be removed. This means that access is only from the sides making access much more difficult than the Shuttle where the top and sides come off as one unit. The CF-S968 feels far more solid than the Shuttle, partly due to the thickness of aluminium used and the fact that it has more of a frame work for attaching the sides.In basic terms fitting anything inside the CF-S968 proved an absolute nightmare. You need very long and nimble fingers to get into the workings and attach any of the cables. The Hard drive and Floppy Drive cradle is removable, which does help, but the CD tray is fixed firmly in place. Even fitting the Heatsink and Ram was a struggle.
The CD tray goes so far back that there is very little space for attaching cables. This problem was further complicated when one of the power connector pins from the PSU popped out.
The positioning of the PSU behind the CD Tray coupled with the lack of top opening seems to be the main contributors to our installation problems. Although we expect these small form boards to be fiddly the CF-S968 is miles behind Shuttle in this area.
Once we had setup the inside of the machine our attention turned to the outside. On examination of the back panel we found most of the connections we needed.
The VGA, Sound, USB and LAN sockets were all there and clearly marked. But where were the PS/2 sockets for our mouse and keyboard? These were located on the front of the CF-S968! Now maybe I’m unusual in that I still use PS/2 for both keyboard and mouse connections, but surly the idea of these machines is to give very clean lines and a practical small solution. The front of the case should be reserved for peripherals that are connected occasionally, not all the time. The result means that if you still use PS/2 connections your case has suddenly become very ugly and cumbersome from the front.
As if to add insult to injury because the Perspex is so thick the PS/2 plugs only just fit and have to be rammed home. It seems to me that the CF-S968 is only really a solution for you if you have a USB keyboard and Mouse.
As well as using the on board graphics, we tested the CF-S968 with a proper AGP graphics card. Again with the tight space we found it very difficult to install our Radeon 9700Pro. The main problem was the rear bracket which has very little space. I should point out that this is a similar problem with the Shuttle.
Despite the problems we had getting our E-Box physically setup, the final machine did look fantastic (excluding the front PS/2 connections). A silver CD / DVD drive would add the ultimate finishing touch.
