Introduction

Slowly but surely small form-factor (SFF) PCs have evolved from niche items to one of the fastest growing segments in the PC market. While companies like Shuttle have garnered all the attention from gamers and hardware enthusiasts, the unsung hero in this evolution has been the system chipset. Just as the Chevrolet Corvette would be nothing without its 350 horsepower 5.7-liter LS-1 V8 engine, the small form-factor PC is tied to the chipset it’s based on.

Because of this, initial small form-factor setups garnered little interest among the PC hardware crowd. The chipsets they were based on were too mundane, supporting outdated technologies and with little or no expansion options, most setups didn’t even offer external AGP graphics, forcing end user’s to rely on the chipset’s integrated graphics instead. As you can imagine, this is far from ideal, especially when you can pick up an equivalent motherboard, case, and power supply for significantly less money, albeit without the portability a small form-factor system provides.

The ICE Cube VL67

Windows on each side of the case

The inside of the system

Small form-factor comes of age

Fortunately, 2003 marked the end of those days. NVIDIA’s nForce2 IGP chipset brought Dolby Digital audio, GeForce4 MX-level graphics (with external AGP expansion capability), and support of AMD’s fastest 333MHz Athlon XP processors earlier this year. FIC’s own ICE Cube VG61 was based on Intel’s 845G chipset, which was Intel’s best offering until the dual-channel chipsets like Granite Bay came along. In fact, we found the ICE Cube VG61 to be superior to Shuttle’s equivalent offering. The ICE Cube VG61 was equipped with a beefier power supply and sported spiffy case windows and a blue LED on the CPU cooler, giving it a sharp look.

With the release of Intel’s 800MHz front-side bus processors and chipsets however, the 845G chipset the ICE Cube VG61 was based on was obsolete. An answer was needed. FIC’s solution: The ICE Cube VL67.

Based on Intel’s 865G “Springdale” chipset, the VL67 supports Intel’s latest Pentium 4 processors with Hyper-Threading technology. For expansion, an additional AGP and PCI slot are provided as well as two DIMM sockets supporting up to 2GB of DDR400 memory. FIC continues to utilize a 220-watt power supply unit for feeding the system with power. Like its predecessor, the VL67 trails its counterpart from Shuttle by several months. The question is, did FIC use the extra time to build a better product? We’ll attempt to tackle this subject over the next few pages.