Externals
The idea behind the Hermes is deceptively simple. It's simply a standard desktop system with a decent level of pre-integration. Exactly what business users need.
We wager that you've seen cases like these a thousand times before, most likely in an office environment. Rather boring to look at. What the Hermes offers is Socket 478 (533FSB max) support. The chassis, motherboard and PSU are all pre-combined for easy installation. Let's slowly strip away the layers and get into the beating heart of this system. Before we do, let's see if the Hermes has any tricks up its sleeve.
Lowering the bottom-left cover reveals a number of useful ports. A rather redundant 4-pin Firewire (passive) port sits next to 4 standard USB2.0 ports powered from the ICH4 Southbridge (more on this later). A microphone and Line-in port sit just to the right of a S/PDIF (optical-out). That's decent and thoughtful connectivity from a front panel.
You can visually see the floppy drive port and the beige 5.25" optical drive cover on the right, which slides outwards and downwards when the drive's tray is opened. Depending upon which brand of optical drive you opt for, the eject button may not line up correctly with the drive's. Our test MSI CD-R/RW's lined up perfectly, as you would expect from the parent manufacturer of both devices. The only other additions to a minimalistic front design is the power button and two activity LEDs.
If the front was a little bare, the back is full of nice, usable features. A couple of touches to note first. There's a small insert on the left. It's perfect for removing the top cover without getting your fingers shredded by the sharp metal. That's attention to detail on MSI's part. Secondly, and a nod towards security, there's a metal ring that protrudes out from the case. It's designed to allow the cover to be padlocked into place.
The back contains pretty much what we'd expect. A standard 6-pin FireWire port and COM port are placed on the left. A second COM port is on the right. What's notable about the back panel ?. There's both S-Video and coaxial-out, as well as 10/100 LAN and the possibility of 6-channel sound. Flat panel (TFT) users will appreciate the DVI port, whilst regular uses will make do with a HD15 connector, all fed from the integrated graphics.
Notice how the 2 PCI slots are aligned horizontally. That's the only viable method of location. As you can no doubt see, the case is a slimline affair, yet due to the all-metal construction, it weights considerably more than you'd think.. A wealth of features are integrated on both the front and back panels. It's now time to expose the innards and see just how it all fits together. And you thought is was just a boring, beige box, didn't you ?.
The accompanying stand is perfect if you want to house it in your lounge, as shown above.
