Verdict: A good performer and an interesting addition to the small form factor market
EPoX's newest small form factor PC is the eX5-300S Mini Me, and in an attempt to make the Mini Me the ultimate weapon of doom to sink Shuttle's dominance of the small form factor market, EPoX has packed it with features. As Dr. Evil asks in Austin Powers, 'Are those frickin' sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their frickin' heads?' Well, no, there's no sharks or laser beams here, but EPoX's version of Mini Me does boast much more than a lewd grin and a good line in midget jokes. In addition to the expected 10/100 LAN, six USB 2 and two FireWire ports, the Mini Me features a large integrated and customisable LCD screen and the ability to play music without going into Windows.
The Mini Me is a Pentium 4-based bare bones machine based around Intel's 865G chipset, which comes complete with Extreme Graphics 2 on-board. The Mini Me also has the usual compliment of features that are becoming standard on small form factor PCs, although it lacks a TV-output. There's clear cable routeing and room for two 3.5in drives and one optical drive. The optical drive sits behind a CD blanking plate to cunningly stealth beige drives. However, to use it properly you have to prise the existing bezel off the front of your drive. Additional features include two DIMM slots, one AGP 8x and one PCI slot and six-channel audio with optical and coaxial digital outs.
In a neat move, EPoX has positioned the AGP slot closer to the centre of the motherboard, so that you can use a double-width AGP card. However, while it's good to see some innovation to internal organisation, rather than the inferior copies of Shuttle's designs seen in some bare bones systems, this approach causes as many problems as it solves. Placing the power supply at the back of the chassis means the Mini Me is great to work in when you're assembling it, but mounting the hard drive laterally across the front means that it pushes up against AGP cards with heatsinks on their backs. Also, once you've put in an optical and a hard drive, there are no free molex connectors to provide the extra power these top-end AGP cards require.
The CPU cooling system is also quite unusual. Rather than using traditional air cooling, or a heatpipe system, EPoX has added its own system, which has the faintly dastardly name of '3G-Tek'. It comprises a large heatsink block and two fans, and sits over both the CPU and the Northbridge. One fan sucks air through the block, and one expels it through a plastic exhaust connected to the rear of the machine.
However, for all the internal reorganisation, the Mini Me's most innovative feature is the large LCD screen on the front panel. While the big screen makes it look a little like a 1970s vision of the future, the Mini Me isn't the ugliest machine in the world. It's backlit in blue, with silver audio control buttons that are activated by the bundled audio utility. The LCD also sources information from the BIOS, like time, screen resolution, total amount of RAM and hard-drive size. Using the bundled Windows utility, you can get the screen to display the internal temperature and the amount of free hard disk space. The concept is better than reality, though, and we would have liked EPoX to include a utility that allows the display to be more programmable.
The final Mini Me feature is Music On Now, which lets you play MP3s or audio CDs without loading Windows. It might seem like a good idea, but like Dr. Evil's plans, it's sadly flawed. Music On Now still needs to initialise the CPU, RAM and hard drives, so the only time you save is Windows' boot time - and given that XP gets going within seconds, it's hardly a massive saving. The utility that you're presented with when Music On Now starts is extremely rudimentary compared to WinAMP or Media Player, as it requires pre-set playlists and has very few functions. However, it can read from audio CDs and USB drives, and the LCD does feature an animation of some entertaining dancing ducks.
PERFORMANCE
We've benchmarked several Pentium 4-based bare bones systems, and the Mini Me competes with the best of them. At stock speeds, the Mini Me was fractionally slower than Abit's 865G-based Digi Dice, and though it was outpaced by Shuttle's 875P powered SB75G2, the Mini Me was faster than the ATi-based Shuttle ST61G4.
Still, no amount of trickery can rescue a machine from the moribund performance of the 865G's on-board graphics. Intel's Extreme Graphics 2 chip is fine for standard Windows work, but it's diabolical (and not in the fun, super-villain way) when it comes to games. The Mini Me just couldn't complete our Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory test. We then added our Hercules Radeon 9800, flashed the BIOS, and saw the Wolfenstein test return a credible result of 39.9fps. Adding a good graphics card definitely turns the Mini Me into a more potent weapon.
But only running at stock speeds is boring, and since EPoX motherboards are renowned as good overclockers, we were eager to see how far we could push the Mini Me. The EP-4PGF+ motherboard features lockable AGP/PCI bus speeds, but while you can ramp the FSB right up to 350MHz (effectively 1,400MHz), you can't up any of the voltages. Our initial overclock took us from a 200MHz FSB to 230MHz, giving a CPU speed of 2.9GHz. We managed to push the FSB up to 250MHz, but the benchmark results at this speed were slower than at 230MHz. This is probably because Pentium 4 chips feature thermal throttling technology (they basically slow down if they get too hot) so it looks like the cooling system couldn't stand the overcharged pace.
CONCLUSION
Scott Evil: Why don't you just kill him?
Dr. Evil: I have an even better idea. I'm going to place him in an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death.
It seems unlikely that EPoX drew its inspiration directly from Austin Powers' Dr. Evil and his midget henchman, but, like the nefarious super-villain, the Mini Me's ambitions are flawed.
The LCD screen is an excellent idea, but its execution is too limited and inflexible. EPoX has made some interesting design decisions for the internal layout, but these cause as many problems as they solve.
However, despite these faults, the Mini Me is a good performer, and makes an interesting addition to the small form factor market.
