Chassis (cont’d)

Inputs and outputs

The front panel of the case sports a blue power LED, as well as shiny power and reset buttons, which are located on opposite ends of the chassis. Just below them are outputs for your speakers as well as a line output, while microphone and digital inputs are provided as well. To the right of them are two USB 2.0 ports and a FireWire port, while FIC finishes the system off with a grille at the bottom of the chassis for additional cooling (a second grille is located on the bottom of the chassis, on the front edge of the case).

Front panel of the VL67

The rear of the chassis

Located on the back of the VL67 are two more USB ports, bringing the grand total of ports provided on the VL67 to four. Since the 865G chipset natively supports up to eight USB ports, we would have liked to see FIC support at least six ports (like the Shuttle SB61G2) as USB devices are being used in more applications (and thus, becoming more popular) everyday. We actually see a nice empty space right above the two FireWire ports located on the back of the chassis that would work perfectly. A digital output is also present as are your standard connections for audio and networking, as well as PS/2 ports for your keyboard and mouse, and finally, a VGA output and serial port is provided for legacy use.

Power and cooling

Just above the rear panel connections is a grille that is tied to the VL67’s auxiliary cooler. Fortunately the cooler itself is very quiet, as is the cooling unit used for the 220-watt power supply (which is located above it). We’ve heard complaints from ICE Cube VG61 users that the auxiliary fan can get pretty loud when it cranks up to full tilt, but to be honest, in all our testing with the VG61 and now the VL67, we’ve never experienced this, even when the system is equipped with components such as a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 and GeForce FX 5900 Ultra video card. In fact, we’ve found that FIC’s ICE Cubes operate quieter than Shuttle’s small form factor setups when both systems are operating under heavy load.

220W power supply unit

The auxiliary cooler

At 220 watts, the ICE Cube VL67 PSU is more powerful than Shuttle’s and also boasts more power on the 12V rail, 12A versus 10A on the Shuttle. As we saw in Alan’s power supply guide, this is an important distinction; especially as the processor’s clock speed increases. One aspect of the VL67’s power subsystem that we didn’t like however was the fact that it only shipped with two Molex power connectors! With the CD-ROM and hard drive both consuming one connector each, this leaves no connections for anything else. Fortunately GeForce FX and RADEON 9800 cards ship with Molex power adapters, but we still feel that FIC should either include another power connection or include an external adapter with the VL67.

Other than this omission, the rest of the ICE Cube VL67’s packaging is excellent. FIC includes two short rounded IDE and floppy cables, Serial ATA data and power cables (one each), and an optical cable. A small Ziploc bag is also included with extra screws and zip ties for tying pesky cables together.