interesting but flawed ...
Written: Apr 27 '02
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Pros: Tidy package, decent price, decent performance for this form kind of form factor.
Cons: No real support, quirky OS set up, quirky cabling scheme, SEE REVIEW
The Bottom Line: I had a hell of a time getting this kit up and running; once I did, it was nothing to write home about ... for most, pass on it ...
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| rawstock's Full Review: ASUS BBNS Desktop A7VC 52X-FD 120W SA No Modem Ter... |
I picked up one of these kits online and built it for use in my old man's office ... I added a Duron 900, 128 MB of PC100 RAM, a 20 GIG HD, ATAPI ZIP, PCI modem, and installed Windows 98 SE2; after four installations and two hard-drives, I've finally got it running smoothly. Total cash cost (with shipping): $375. If you're looking to build one of these kits, keep reading! I'll tell you what I had to do to get it set up!
I first saw this kit bumming around a Fry's in Sacramento. I'd been looking at the spacewalker/shuttle cube systems and other small form-factor machines (flex-atx and smaller) for various purposes. I've wanted to build a system for capturing video, serving mp3's, file-serving/print serving the network - fun stuff. I decided to put together this Asus kit to get a feel for the kind of machine I'll build for home - this one's going to an office for modest tasks. In the end, it was cheaper than an eMachine.
So, here are the keys to the kingdom:
1. The cover is like a 'hood' that detaches completely; the internal frame opens up from a loose hinge running top to bottom on the front-right side of the case ... (www.newegg.com has some decent photos) ... the cabling (power and drives) have to fit pretty tight near the CPU fan ... I put a fan grill on the CPU fan to keep the power cables from shifting over and rubbing out the fan ... speaking of cabling in general:
2. if you're adding IDE devices, other than a hard drive in the 3.5 bay, scrap the included cables and round (or tri-fold) your own ... this helps keep the cabling from blocking the CPU fan and gives you more flexibility dealing with the power cables ... also, the included cd-rom was set to cable select ... don't know about you, but I generally don't use it; don't assume that it's master or slave ... but back to routing the power cables:
3. the power lead that has the floppy power includes the third drive power connector - and it won't reach any of the drives when the floppy is plugged in! Okay, there might be some voodoo configuration with particular drives - but in no configuration I had would it stretch far enough ... I had to use a spare splitter I had laying around ...
4. there are two CPU freq. jumpers you have to set ... I had a Duron, so I had to reset them to 100 mHz ... the bios
doesn't do it for you ... (the real geeks can stop rolling their eyes now ... even you have to agree that most of the world is in jumper free mode) ... speaking of not booting ...
5. don't count on any help from ASUS, and unless you buy this kit off the shelf, you're going to eat shipping and re-stock to get any money back out of it ... you won't get anyone at ASUS if you wait on hold at their support center (which isn't a toll-free call); you're better off leaving a voice mail and a number - they say they'll call you back within 24 hours, but it's more like 3-4 days ...
6. DON'T LOSE THE CD-ROM ... as of this writing, there are no downloadable drivers! ... there may be referrence drivers somewhere, but you'd better be ready to dig ... speaking of the CD-ROM:
7. THE FIRST TIME YOU SET UP THE DRIVERS, DON'T RESTART! Install all of the drivers before restarting and leave the ASUS disk in the drive once their all installed ... nevermind the applications (install them or don't), but get the VIA 4-in-1 Drivers, the VGA drivers, the Audio Drivers, and the LAN drivers (which you have to install manually) installed before you reboot! When I restarted after the 4-in-1 install, then attempted to install the VGA drivers, it screwed up the registry - I don't know why, but it happened that way 3 times ... RTFM, once again, it tells you in the manual to install them without restarting ...
8. If, by chance, you're putting in a ZIP ... it works best using the jumper, setting as a slave, and, if you're running windows 98, using the system drivers - you don't need to disable the channel it's on in the bios (as with some systems) or even assign drive type in the bios ... mine is an oem zip 100 ... just in case that helps ...
Well, that's it ... I've got it playing Divx Movies, print-serving, surfing the web ... blah-blah-blah; I'll probably look more seriously at the new shuttle cubes for my own system - the P4 and XP versions with 2 PCI's ... this kit, while priced okay, didn't do much for me in the end; it's not as small as the shuttle kits (but offers another drive bay and is cheaper) ... if I were ASUS, I'd develop something in this form-factor with an AGP slot, or doing an nForce version -- with real graphics capabilities, this would make an awesome LAN box; as it is, it's a tweener: general public features with hobbyist-level setup and configuration, and I haven't seen any retailers offering these kits pre-built ...
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 180
Operating System: Windows
Processor: AMD Athlon (K7)
Processor speed: 801-900
RAM: 128
Internal Storage: CD-ROM
Hard Drive (GB): 13-20
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Epinions.com ID:
rawstock
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Member: Ted Ross Stock
Location: Sacramento, CA
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 3 members
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