Small Form Factor Pentium 4 PC Roundup - March 2003

Remember that speech about not judging a book by its cover? Although the Qbic is quite attractive from the outside, open up the case and the cabling is a nightmare. Let's have a closer look:

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Getting an AGP card in there is virtually impossible without first unplugging at least the black Firewire cables towards the left of the picture. One of Soltek's major faults here is that they did not employ a single connector for all of the front panel LEDs and switches, which ends up adding to the clutter.

The other side of the Qbic is relatively clutter free, and is quite reminiscent of Shuttle's own solutions.

Unlike Shuttle, Soltek makes use of a regular parallel port header on the motherboard itself, instead of the low profile header found on the Shuttle motherboards. The benefit of this header is that you can use a standard AT parallel port if you happen to have one laying around.

Other than the cluttered cabling issue, Soltek comes very close to having a Shuttle XPC competitor with their Qbic, but let's find out how it performs before making too bold of a claim.