Aspire X-QPack: A Lanparty Dream
by Joshua Buss on July 2, 2005 1:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
External Design
From a styling perspective, the X-QPack manages to find a nice compromise between 'extreme' and 'professional' through the use of classy, straightforward lines on the front of the case and a triple-window removable piece.
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Aspire ships the case with plenty of protection for all this plexiglas - there's covering on the inside and outside of all three windows and also a small piece covering the LCD display on the front.
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Looking at the front in more detail we can clearly see the carrying handle as well as the LCD readout display, USB 2.0 / Firewire / audio ports, power LED, HDD activity LED, reset and power buttons. Our only complaint with the layout here is that the Firewire port might be difficult to use if you have a larger usb device plugged in at the time, but this is a rather common problem when it comes to front port-clusters.
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Another quick glance confirms the unit's claim to being able to fully support two external 5.25" drives and one external 3.5" drive. Only a very few other cases this compact have the ability to hold two 5.25" drives, and this is one of the first areas where the X-QPack begins to strut its stuff. Speaking of size, the chassis is definitely in a class all its own. It's larger than pretty much any shuttle XPC in both width and height, but not by much - certainly not enough to be looked over in situations where an XPC might be considered. It is primarily this unique size of the X-QPack that allows it to get so many things right.
Here is an angled shot of the third window, the one on top of the case. Here we can start to get a better idea of how the case's internals are laid out.
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It's not too easy to tell from the pictures, but the front of the case is a rather normal plastic whereas the sides are a textured metal that resists fingerprints quite nicely. In spite of all the glory that super-gloss, car-paint style jobs get, there sure is something to be said for a case that does not need to be kept immaculate to look good.
Here we can see the right side of the case again as well as the back of the unit.
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The HD cage as well as the beam that supports it is visible through the window, and looking at the back we can see the nice large 120mm exhaust fan as well as the motherboard tray. Here's another shot of just the back, with the three thumbscrews that hold the top/side panel cover all removed.
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Now we can clearly see just how carefully the layout of the back of the unit has been planned. The 120mm fan fits with just enough room underneath to make the removable tray a possibility, and while the included power supply does not have the same depth as a standard ATX one, it does have the same height and width. We can also see one of the main benefits of choosing a full-fledged micro-ATX board over smaller alternatives: four PCI slots.
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Looking at the bottom of the case we find that the X-QPack uses four dark gray rubber feet to keep the unit from sliding on any surface. Let's pop the hood and take a look at what's underneath.
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KristopherKubicki - Monday, July 4, 2005 - link
Zepper: The fragbox is Falcon NW, not Alienware. It's based on a design from FIC as far as I know.Kristopher
Zepper - Monday, July 4, 2005 - link
The Aspire X-QPack is a variant of the Chenming 118 which I like better than the QPack as you can get it w/o any windows or with just one. It also has an interesting PSU in the Enermax 270W SFX mode - only 300W but 20A available on the +12V rail in a pinch. It's between that and the Enermax Venus series for my mATX builds. The supplied PSU should work well in most systems - but perhaps not in the freakazoid ones that many AT denizens seem to favor ;-) .A bit more FYI: Sony=LiteOn they are "technology partners" on optical drives as are NEC-Pioneer-Asus, Plextor-Sanyo, Hitachi-LGE (Goldstar), Toshiba-Samsung, Ricoh-AOpen and Philips-BenQ.
#21 - Well then, it must be great that this case is micro ATX - the wave of the future... [rolling eyes]
#28 - Micro-BTX - yes another doomed Intel "innovation". Putting the slots on the right and the PSU on the left - BFD. Anyhoo, newegg carries a couple of micro-BTX cases perhaps mobos too.
#38 - The Silverstone sg01 is supposed to be based on the Alienware Fragbox which SST designed for Alienware. And it's just as overpriced ~$200 sans PSU. Sorry Charlie...
#41 - It's not a PS/3 it's just a bit shorter than a normal ATX (the PS/3 is A LOT shorter than standard) - I believe the form factor is called "mini-ATX"
#42 - It can hold a standard size ATX PSU but you should probably use a short chassis optical drive (as mentioned above) if you do go that route. In fact, the short chassis drives fit best in most mATX cases. There are other short chassis drives besides the LiteOn based ones.
.bh.
Tamale - Monday, July 4, 2005 - link
in response to #40..my test unit was extremely sturdy.. I didn't find the back to be flimsy at all
as far as all the harsh comments against the 420 watt power supply, I'd just like to remind you all that lots and lots of people are still using generic power supplies rated for much less than 420 watts... if people are getting by fine with power supplies like that, I'm pretty certain a 420 watt from aspire would serve you fine for just about everything you could cram in a computer this small
I'll be taking a closer examination of all these power supplies as soon as I can...
yacoub - Monday, July 4, 2005 - link
Irrelevant. If it can't fit a real PSU made by a reputable name (Antec, Seasonic, or maybe Enermax), forget it.sprockkets - Sunday, July 3, 2005 - link
That power supply appears to be a ps3 form factor. Like others said, if this is true, it's a full size atx power supply with low depth. They exisit, but are not popular. FSP makes a 250w model for $30. 420w is stretching it a bit as to what that thing can put out, but whatever.mindless1 - Sunday, July 3, 2005 - link
I disagree about it being sturdy, the back in particular is necessarily flismy.Aspire is not a name to trust in power supplies either, this looks like another liability.
I like the front bezel though and the general concept. If this were made in thicker aluminum and without power supply (or a Delta), I'd buy it.
yacoub - Sunday, July 3, 2005 - link
Well, let's see:*Be able to fit a full-size ATX PSU.
*Get rid of the stupid lights/lighting.
*Enough room to fit at least an XP-90 HSF setup
Then I'd probably buy one.
R3MF - Sunday, July 3, 2005 - link
if you want a pretty mATX case then what you really want is this:http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-sg01.htm
it would be a tempting prospect for me had i not just bought a shuttle.
there are some okay nForce4 s939 boards available in mATX, but a manufacturer needs to make a high-end nForce4 Ultra/SLI mATX board.
come on MSI...............
sprockkets - Saturday, August 6, 2005 - link
$188 for the case at newegg.com, that's like shuttle xpc expensive.Questioner - Sunday, July 3, 2005 - link
For people who want to know what AMD mATX boards that are avaiable go to Newegg and choose socket 939 then mATX and it will show about 5 boards 1 being the Foxconn NF4 and the rest is Radeon Express boards, 1 from MSI, 1 from ECS, 2 from Jetway the only difference being that one has video memory on the motherboard, but the Jetways are from what I heard are very overclockable. The MSI and ECS board are the same except for different bios tweaks and the ECS is more overclock able than the MSI. For 754 boards there are 15 of them but they are only VIA and SIS chipset boards.