Verdict: A superb design with great overclocking potential

The EZ65 XC has been our Elite-listed Pentium 4 SFF for a couple of months now, yet it still manages to maintain its crown despite stiff competition. Even though it's based on the more sedate Intel 865G chipset, we found it could overclock very well for such a diminutive machine.

The EZ65 XC is well ahead in design, too. AOpen has opted to steer clear of the gimmicks other manufacturers implement in a vain attempt to grab attention. There's no knob for easy overclocking (which doesn't actually make overclocking any easier anyway) and no hippy incense burner - just sensible engineering. As a result, it's one of the easiest SFFs to build. The custom CPU heatsink attaches relatively easily to the socket via two torsion clips - no need for dangerous screwdriver antics. The heatsink is cooled by an 80mm fan, helping to keep noise levels down.

The DIMM sockets are located across the front of the chassis beneath the hard disk enclosure, which could cause problems. Fortunately, the enclosure is easily removed with one thumbscrew, making memory installation relatively painless. Our main design criticism is the placement of the AGP slot next to the chassis wall, precluding the use of dual-slot cards.

Unless you use the 3.5in external bay as well, the EZ65 XC has room for just one hard drive, although there are twin S-ATA connectors on the motherboard. The 5.25in drive bay is hidden behind a spring-loaded door. This won't be compatible with slot-loading optical drives, but it worked fine with our Samsung SM-348 DVD/CD-RW test drive. However, the fascia's eject button didn't align with that of the drive, forcing us to eject discs in Windows. There's another hinged door hiding the front 3.5in bay, too, but this isn't sprung - it just pops open and closed. The advantage of these two doors is that you can get away with drives that don't match the fascia, as they're hidden from view when not in use.

A further pop-open door hides the front connections, which comprise a particularly comprehensive array of ports, including two USB 2, both powered and unpowered FireWire, plus microphone, headphone and S/PDIF audio connections. The EZ65 XC has a well-endowed rear as well, with a D-SUB port for the misleadingly named Intel Extreme 2 on-board GPU - it's about as extreme as, well, Intel Extreme 1 on-board graphics. There's the familiar integrated LAN - of the gigabit variety, thanks to the Intel chipset. Legacy connectivity is catered for by serial and parallel ports, and there's coaxial and optical S/PDIF digital audio outputs and another FireWire. If there's a connection to be made, you'll probably find the port you need.

At its standard settings, the EZ65 XC returned average performance for a Pentium 4 SFF. The overall score of 1.24 in our Media Benchmarks matched the MSI MEGA 865, although its score of 39.3fps in Wolfenstein was the fastest of any of the Pentium 4 SFFs. However, as we mentioned earlier, the EZ65 XC overclocks admirably despite the 865G chipset. We managed to push the FSB right up to 225MHz, for a CPU speed of 2.92GHz. At this speed, the EZ65 XC's scores ramped up by an impressive 11 per cent in 2D and 4.6fps in gaming. Its 2D performance was marginally behind the overclocked Shuttle, but still leagues ahead of any other Pentium 4 SFF we've tested.

AOpen's SilenTek really earned its stripes, as well. You would need to add an AOpen-branded optical drive incorporating SilenTek to complete the picture, but we found even when our test Samsung drive was reading music tracks during the audio encoding benchmark, this was one of the quietest SFFs on test. The temperature sensor in the centre of the CPU socket keeps the fan speed down when required and there's a Windows utility included to configure custom fan settings too.

The EZ65 XC is a solid, no-nonsense SFF. It's stylish without being overstated, well laid out and readily overclockable. The EZ65 XC is also available in white - take a glance at the EZ18 XC to see how this would look. We prefer black, but there's no accounting for taste. It's a pretty black and white choice overall; if you're looking for a Pentium 4 SFF with bags of performance potential, the EZ65 XC is a modern classic.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
• Multiwinia - Games
• Zotac GeForce GTX 260² - Graphics cards
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 - Graphics cards
• Scan 3XS X58 Core i7 - Desktop PCs