Verdict: There's no denying the wealth of features the MSI Mega 180 offers
It might be challenge but we're confident we can start this review without a reference to a Shuttle small form factor PC. Oh ... damn. Well, never mind. The fact is that Shuttle started this whole mini PC lark, and continues to lead the pack.
Fortunately the MSI Mega 180 is far more than a 'me too' product. The Mega 180 is the second iteration of MSI's Mega bare bones system, the first being the 651. In another example of a fantastic Taiwanese acronym, Mega stands for MSI Entertainment Gaming Appliance. Did you see what MSI did there? What the company's getting at is that the Mega 180 offers more than the standard bare bones system by integrating features that enable it to act as a hi-fi and a home theatre PC.
In fact, you can use the Mega 180 as soon as it's plugged in without installing any components. Insert a CD into the optical drive and you can access audio or MP3 CDs without having to boot into Windows. There's also an analog FM radio tuner integrated into the motherboard so you can pick up AM and FM stations. Although modern PCs boot quickly, this is still an impressive party trick. The large knob on the fascia controls the speaker volume but there's also a remote control, as you'd expect for this type of system.
In Windows you can make use of MSI Deluxe Media Centre. This has a strangely familiar look to it, especially if you've ever used Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition. However, that's not a bad thing, as the large fonts make it easy to navigate through if you're not sitting right in front of your monitor and want to access functions such as the DVD player and picture browser.
However, use of the software is limited, as the Mega 180 doesn't include a TV tuner or any video inputs. This is its one major omission, although there's a PCI slot available to rectify this.
As befits its hi-fi leanings, MSI has put some thought into the styling. The two-tone black and blue finish is smart but the key feature is the large LCD screen on the front of the display. When in action this lights up like a Christmas tree and displays what function the PC is currently performing, such as which radio station you're listening to. While the Mega 180 has a sleek, consumer-appliance feel to it, the light show is reminiscent of a horrific 1980s midi-system. Lucky for MSI that 1980s styling is just so 'in' right now.
We like the flap at the base of the fascia, which opens with the press of a button to reveal the discreetly hidden I/O ports. These include two USB 2 ports, FireWire (both powered and unpowered) and an S/PDIF input. Sensibly, the S/PDIF out is located on the back rather than the front, as it is on some Shuttle XPCs. Also at the rear are dual D-SUB outputs and an S-Video output. Bizarrely, there's also a parallel port, which seems something of a waste of space on a modern PC. More welcome inclusions are the two memory card slots on the front. With these you can plug almost any type of memory card straight into the system. In addition to this impressive connectivity, the Mega 180 also has an 802.11b wireless card. As this is installed in a mini-PCI slot you should be able to upgrade this to a faster 802.11g variant in the future. However, you'd have to take the entire box apart to actually get to the slot.
The Mega 180 supports Athlon XP CPUs using the tried and tested Nvidia nForce2 chipset. MSI also has plans to release a Pentium 4-compatible version based on the Intel 865 chipset in the near future. We were disappointed that MSI hadn't been more adventurous and offered an nForce3-based motherboard to support Athlon 64, but you can't have everything. Because of the on-board graphics, the chipset is the original nForce2 IGP and not the more advanced nForce2 Ultra 400. This means that it can only support 333MHz FSB processors. Therefore, our first port of call was the BIOS to check out the overclocking options. We found that there were options to increase the FSB up to 200MHz, but no voltage adjustments.
The integrated graphics processor in the Mega 180 is based on the ageing Nvidia GeForce 4 MX, but there's an AGP 8x slot, too, so you can fit a powerful card if you want to play more recent games. In a smart move the spare PCI slot is at the edge of the board rather than right next to the AGP slot. This means that you can fit a two-slot graphics card, such as a GeForce FX 5950 Ultra, although you'll lose access to the PCI slot in the process.
When it came to putting the PC together, we were a little thrown by a note on the box that said only MSI optical drives were recommended. The reason for this became clear when we removed the lid of the case. Even by SFF standards, the internals are pretty cramped. As per usual, we fitted our test Samsung SM-348 DVD/CD-RW drive, which was slightly too long, so the flap covering the drive bay wasn't totally flush. It's best to seek out a short optical drive for this system.
To cool the system MSI has opted for a conventional fan blower system rather than a heatpipe. The HSF included in the box has a fan on the left drawing air in and one on the right expelling it. We thought this would be an overly noisy arrangement but, though audible, it proved to be acceptable. It also generates a fair amount of heat to the right and at the rear, so you shouldn't place the system in too enclosed a space.
The storage bay is held in place by three screws and has to be removed to install the hard disk. As space is tight, MSI has taken pains to ensure that the cables are exactly the right length. The power cable also sports a S-ATA power connector but this means that when installing an AGP card there aren't enough Molex connectors, so make sure you have a splitter cable to hand. We also had to fight to get the AGP card in place as the power cables were preventing us from installing the card. At least the memory is easy to install, with the slots located at the side of the motherboard.
PERFORMANCE
In terms of performance, the Mega 180 isn't that exciting. Its scores at default specs were perfectly respectable using an Athlon XP 2500+ CPU and slightly faster than our reference PC. However, we were disappointed to find that the machine wouldn't POST anywhere near the 200MHz FSB setting in the BIOS. The maximum we were able to achieve was 180MHz, and the minor increases in the scores reflect this relatively tame overclock.
With the integrated GeForce 4 MX graphics enabled, the Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory test was painful to watch. Not so much for the blood flying over the screen but because it took so long to complete. The hardware is so old that its maximum option for anisotropic filtering is 2x. Even at this setting it could only score 17.2fps. Clearly, it's not powerful enough to play modern games with decent quality settings. When we added a Hercules Radeon 9800 AGP card, the score jumped to a healthy 37.6fps.
CONCLUSION
Compared to most SFF PCs, the £240 asking price is expensive and if you're looking for cutting-edge performance in a small package you'll have to look elsewhere. However, there's no denying the wealth of features the MSI Mega 180 offers, so even with its dubious LCD light show it's a top choice as a living room PC.
