Asus DigiMatrix - The Pizza Box Form Factor
by Andrew Ku on February 11, 2004 1:41 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Construction - Under the Hood (continued)
The DigiMatrix is powered by the SiS651 northbridge, which provides the system with its integrated graphics support. The SiS651 chipset is a choice from the cost perspective, and it is not intended for gaming of any sort.
Asus turned to the SiS301 video bridge in order to supply the DigiMatrix with HDTV support. The SiS301 supports HDTV modes of 480i, 480p, 720p, and 1080i.
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Gigabit ethernet support comes via the 3Com Marvell 940-MV00, while 10/100 ethernet is supported from Realtek's RTL8201BL.
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The size of the motherboard is actually similar to some of those that we have seen in desktop replacement notebooks, where everything is extremely crammed close together. It's just a bit surprising to see the bottom side of the motherboard utilized so little.
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mindless1 - Thursday, February 12, 2004 - link
LOL, it's just wastefull to design a box big enough for RAID 0+1, and MPEG2 certainly does not need (even) modern HDD performance levels.It was a nice review, but I'd have to disagree with one part- It is not desirable to decrease the size of the power supply. Make it too small and it's going to have high heat density, lower reserve capacity, and overall less quality in the design. It IS possible to use very high quality and more exotic parts to decrease size, at about 3X the cost.
I agree that it would be very nice if the remote had a touchpad on it, similar to that on a notebook.
One thing I wish Asus had done differently, is to find a way to make more of the front panel ports, or at least the DVD tray, accessible without opening that front hatch. I imagine my hatch would always stay open just so I didn't have to open/close for something as simple as loading a DVD.
Doormat - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
I've been looking at SFF/HTPC like boxes, but my biggest gripe is that they only have 1 or 2 spots for a hard drive. When I build a HTPC, I'd want more than 2 HD spaces (preferably 4 SATA connectors w/ bays). That prolly wont make it a SFF box, but a Tivo-size box could provide for that. The idea is that 4x200GB in RAID 0+1 would provide enough for recording TV in HD/SD MPEG-2 as well as ripping DVDs and storing them, plus other misc stuff. None of the products on the market can suit me and look nice...AlabamaEnigma - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
It's not a bad little box, but I prefer their new T2-P Deluxe. It has MOST of the features of the DigiMatrix, but uses the i865G chipset and has 8X AGP. It's also a lot cheaper.3Suns - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
It doesn't come with a hard drive, processor, or memory. It's a barebones system. And the 533 MHz refers to the FSB.for $400 I actually think it's kind of a bargain. Nice case with a volume knob and case buttons and an LCD, motherboard, video capture card, radio tuner, tv tuner, gigabit ethernet, wireless ethernet, DVD/CD-RW, separately powered MP3 player, 7-in-1 card reader...
I'm seriously considering putting together a sub-$1000 system and trying to get it running as a personal Linux fileserver/media station. Wish me luck!
ChemMan - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
I think by 533 Mhz they mean the fsb, not the clock speed of the processor.Jeff7181 - Wednesday, February 11, 2004 - link
Am I reading this right?It doesn't come with a hard drive? Not even a tiny little 20 or 40 GB drive to get someone started using it as a Tivo type of thing? For $400 the least they can do is stick a little 20 GB 5400 RPM hard drive in there... sheesh.
Call me crazy, but shouldn't you be able to passively cool a 533 Mhz Pentium 4? I mean... a Pentium 4 @ 533 Mhz is probably creating what... 10-15 watts of heat? I was shocked to see what looks like a heatpipe and two large fans in there... looks like a very poor cooling design to me.