Biostar iDEQ 200T: Great Performance & Brilliant Design
by Wesley Fink on September 29, 2003 10:24 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Content Creation and General Usage Performance
The Biostar is our second Small Form Factor system that proves you give up little or nothing by choosing an SFF computer system. Our benchmarks here compare the iDEQ 200T to the fastest 865 and 875 motherboards that we have tested. Despite that and despite the fact that all the other systems use PAT, the elegant little Biostar is completely competitive with the best 865/875 motherboards we have tested.
In virtually every benchmark, the Biostar performs even better than the Shuttle we recently tested. From the new high scores for Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 and Mpeg-4 Encoding to the excellent across-the-board gaming performance, the Biostar keeps up with or surpasses the best we have tested. This is quite an accomplishment for a system about the size of a toaster.
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Anonymous User - Monday, October 6, 2003 - link
http://www.sfftech.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=442Even nicer!
Anonymous User - Sunday, October 5, 2003 - link
Be warned. They still need to work on the power supply for these systems. I own a Shuttle, and basically had to rip out the crappy 200W PSU and use an external 350W PSU (probably 300W may have been enough). With the stock PSU, the system would basically hang after any kind of intensive activity (try a stress test on the system for an hour or so).These systems overdrive the PSU, and while you will hear stories of people running 17 harddrives and their latest ATI Bongo 945600 on an overclocked box -- those are very much the exceptions. You either have to hook up a better PSU externally -- basically invalidating the whole purpose behind a SFF in the first place, or you have to play roulette with reordering 200W PSUs until you get a particular item which may work overdriven (but for how long?)
I see SHuttle has 220W PSU's in their newer versions, which should help.. but considering that people run the same hardware with 350W PSU's in bigger boxes, I still remain *very* suspicious of their claims.
Wesley Fink - Saturday, October 4, 2003 - link
#11 - The Shuttle and Biostar are the same size. A review will be posted shortly on the Soltek SFF which is a bit taller and has 2-5.25" bays and a 250W PS. I've included a picture of the Soltek and Biostar side-by-side in that review.#20 - As you can see on the Shuttle and Biostar Forums on some boards, users have been modifying these machines. You are correct that the internal USB headers have no matching punch-out for an external header, but most USB connectors are on slot brackets and you could certainly get a 4-port slot bracket for one of the two slots in the rear. Also you could use a hard-drive where the floppy goes - just be very careful of heat build-up. It should work fine.
Anonymous User - Friday, October 3, 2003 - link
Can someone explain to me what "internal" USB ports are for? I note the sb65g2 has a total of 6 ports (4 rear, 2 front) while the 200t has 4 (2 rear, 2 front). But the article says the 200t has 4 more "internal" USB ports, and the sb65g2 has 2 more internally. There's no breakout (that I noticed) for adding more external ports using a header (like the parallel port header allows), so what good are internal ports?Also, is there any reason why one could not put a second hard drive where the floppy goes, like one can do in the sb65g2?
(I'm really torn between the two machines!!! Grrr.)
Anonymous User - Thursday, October 2, 2003 - link
I would like to upgrade from my present SFF (ASUS Terminator) but want to install dual HDs. Your review mentioned an optional dual HD cage. Any info available on where this might be found. Typically I've found that optional items on SFF machines are not available (except maybe in Taiwan).hirschma - Wednesday, October 1, 2003 - link
Post #10 - perhaps you _should_ test the SPDIF input. That was the problem when I bought the Biostar 200N - Biostar said that it had input, every reviewer said the same... turns out that it was on Biostar's spec page, and every reviewer just took their word for it.Would your review be so glowing if it turned out that a major feature for some wasn't really there?
Don't reviewers have some responsibility to ensure that all advertised features actually are present?
It ain't that hard to test - hook up your PS2 or similar, and see if it passes audio, no?
rhacquer - Tuesday, September 30, 2003 - link
Oh, I got the jones for a SFF rig now... soon as we put on a new roof, pay for baby's private school, replace my 12 yr old car, etc. :-(Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 30, 2003 - link
post # 14 - SIZEAnonymous User - Tuesday, September 30, 2003 - link
50 Dba is twice as loud as 40Dba, not 10x as much.Anonymous User - Tuesday, September 30, 2003 - link
fill me in on the power supply .. why are the sff's 200 watts versus pc at 450 or so? why so much less power?