Internals I
Whipping off the top is no more difficult that unscrewing a couple of screws and pulling the cover off via the handle.
The internal chassis is well designed from a strength point of view.
The PSU's manufacturer may send a shiver down your spine. This 200w affair is whisper-quiet in operation, though. Some may comment on its relative lack of power. Let's not forget that Shuttle bundle 200w PSUs with their XPC range of systems. These are capable of driving a devilishly powerful PC without complaint. It's pleasing to see at least 10A on the 12v rail. The Hermes has been designed for Socket 478 processors, which take all their power from this rail. There's enough juice to go around.
The internal brace that you can see is the upper part of the PCI riser card. The riser's job is simple. Convert a single PCI slot into two usable ones. That's why the rear PCI plates are rotated. You could attempt to enhance the Hermes' gaming appeal by specifying a reasonable PCI-based card.
Removal of brace is but an unscrewing away. Those eagle-eyed readers will immediately notice that there's no discrete AGP slot here. It's all integrated, I'm afraid. The ICH4, pictured centre, is a reasonably featured Southbridge, although MSI do require the use of discrete controllers to fulfill all of their features' requirements. The Hermes uses, amongst others, an Intel 82562 PHY for its 10/100 LAN duties; an NEC 3-port FireWire controller; Realtek's excellent ALC650 sound CODEC for 6-channel sound and S/PDIF output, and Chrontel's 7009A encoder for all things relating to video output.
The front comes away easily enough, too. That's how we get full motherboard exposure. With cramped space and little airflow, keeping the entire unit cool is a task in itself. MSI use a novel side cooling system on the front portion.
A side-on shot shows two fans pushing some sort of airflow over the floppy and optical drive. The fans also help in cooling the MOSFETs and capacitors that line the CPU socket.
