by Abbas Jaffar Ali on June 15, 2003
Into + Specs
There is no denying that Shuttle is currently king when it comes to small form factor PCs. During the last couple of years, ever-since Shuttle started making the XPC, they have been putting most of their resources in improving this little box which puts them at a big advantage. Sure, there are other good small factor form PCs like the one by Soltek, however, they’re more of an XPC clone than anything else.
To beat Shuttle, something more than what an XPC is capable of has to be designed- something more functional, maybe more expandable and possibly better looking. And MSI is planning on doing just that. Today, we have their MegaPC with us that stands for MSI Entertainment and Gaming Appliance. As the name suggests, they don’t just want their MegaPC to be a PC- instead, they want it to be the center of your living room. Lets find out how well MSI's efforts measure up.
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CPU: |
Socket 478 Intel® Pentium® 4 FSB 533/400MHz |
| Chipset: | Chipest SiS® 651 + SiS® 962 |
| Memory: | Two 184-pin DIMM sockets supporting DDR333/266/200 Max 2.0 GB |
| Audio: | Built-in AC97 Digital Audio(Realtek ALC650) 6-channel output supporting SPDIF |
| IDE/SCSI: | Supports Dual Ultra ATA/133 ATA/100,Ultra ATA/66,Ultra ATA/33 channels supporting 4 devices |
| I/O Connectors: | 2 x PS/2, 1 x Serial, 1 x Parallel, 1 x Media, 4 x USB, 2 x Firewire, 1 x RJ-45, 1 x Modem. 1 x VGA |
| Expansion Slots: | 1 x AGP, 1 x PCI |
| Additional Features: | On-board IEEE1394 On-board VGA Integrated VGA Engine in NB chipset On-board RealTek RTL8101L Fast Ethernet Controller Card Reader Function 6-in-1 Flash Card Reader TV Tuner Function MS-8606 TV Tuner Card (Optional) Power off Function Playback for MP3, Audio CD, AM/FM Radio Tuner (Remote Controller) |
| Form Factor: | Chassis 202(W) x 320(D) x 151(H) mm Packing Dimension 279(W) x 435(D) x 360(H) mm |
Packaging and Looks
MSI bundles the MegaPC in an attractive packaging, however, the box is a little less stiff than an XPC box and you see that in the pictures below- it sure took a good beating travelling around the world. The good thing is that the unit itself didnt take any damage at all meaning that MSI has done a good job protecting the MegaPC which, like the XPC, is fitted nicely.
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Inside the package, you find a while box that houses all the extras that come with the XPC. The unit we recieved had a memory card reader which can be replaced with a floppy drive or just an emtpy bay and MSI provides covers for the front panel for either of these. You also get a remote control with batteries and an external FM antenna. The main manual is on the CD along with the drives, however, you do get a full color installation guide in quite a few languages as well as quick setup instructions.
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Looks wise, we feel that MSI has indeed managed to design a product that beats the XPC. The MegaPC is deeper in size than the XPC which gives MSI a little more room to play around with, but the width of the MegaPC is almost identical to the XPC and the height is lower so it ends up looking a bit smaller than the XPC.
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Basically, the MegaPC is split into four levels. The top level houses your optical drive and we would certainly recommend a DVD or a combo DVD/CDRW drive. With the XPC, we’ve seen a lot of optical drives take the show away by having a face plate that doesn’t match the color of the XPC. However, MSI does a smart thing by building a retractable cover so your Optical drive is completely hidden and through an eject button on the MegaPC, the drive opens up and pushes the tractable cover. We tried the eject button with a few different optical drives and it worked with ASUS, MSI and AOpen drives but didn’t work with the Plextor.
Below the Optical bay, MSI puts the display bay which works when the MegaPC is set to the “Hi-Fi” mode. This LED bay shows the time along with a graphical equalizer and other cool things like the radio station or CD track. MSI also programmed some funky welcome and goodbye messages when you turn the power on/off. Without doubt, this is what makes the MegaPC much cooler than the XPC when it comes to looks.
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Below the LED bay, you have an option of either putting a floppy drive or the memory card reader. The memory card reader came with our MegaPC by default and we had to remove it to put the floppy drive. Again MSI provides a front connector for the floppy drive so it matches your MegaPC and doesn’t make it stand out. We feel that MSI could put a little more work in this level and somehow try to make both the card reader and the floppy drive work together instead of one or the other- maybe by pre-installing a proprietary floppy drive. Right at the bottom, MSI provides from connections for audio, USB and Firewire- just like the XPC, however, unlike the XPC, they're hidden and the can be revealed by pressing a spot on the lowest bay- a very nice idea indeed.
Setting up the Hardware
Setting up certain things on the MegaPC is easier than setting up the XPC. To start off, you remove the thumbscrews like the XPC and open the unit up. Instead of using the heatpipe technology that Shuttle does for XPC, MSI uses a standard heatsink with a fan which is very easy to install, however, very inconvenient to remove. We mistakenly installed an 800MHz FSB CPU first which doesn’t cause any harm, but since the SiS chipset used in MegaPC doesn’t support 800MHz CPUs, we were getting 15x133MHz speed instead of 15x200. The problem in removing the CPU is because of the cover of the heatsink which extends all the way above the clip that is used to remove the heatsink making it very inconvenient.
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Installing your drives on the MegaPC is also a bit different. On an XPC, you simply remove the bracket housing the drives, install the drives and then slide it back into place. On the MegaPC, the manual states sliding bays out independently. Of course we didn’t read this and went ahead and removed the whole bracket ala XPC and setting it back in its place was again, very troublesome. We prefer the XPC’s way of fitting in your drives.
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What we like about the MegaPC was the location of the memory slots- you can easily install and remove memory modules without needing to remove the drives like you need to on the XPC. We also like the fact that MSI already attaches the IDE and floppy cables so you don’t have to reach those hard to get places. The power cables are labeled for hard drive and CDROM and you have to use the relevant ones as the CDROM can function without powering the system. If you fail to do so, the Hi-Fi component doesn’t work properly.
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Lastly, just like the XPC, MSI provides one AGP and one PCI slot for expansion, however, the AGP slot is on the inner side and the PCI slot on the outer side. We prefer Shuttle’s implementation on putting the AGP on the outer side- especially, since the thick bunch of PSU wires are located right in this region. Speaking of the PSU, MSI uses a bigger sized PSU than the XPC, however, it provides the same 200W as the XPC. We think that MSI will be able to upgrade the PSU to 250-300W in the future. Once you have the MegaPC connected, you can start using it as a Hi-Fi right away- just plugin the radio antenna if you plan on using the FM/AM and connect the sound cables.
BIOS and Benchmarks
BIOS
The BIOS featured on the MegaPC is a very standard BIOS that you find on regular motherboards. You can adjust all your usual settings like memory frequency and timings as well as CPU frequency. Overclocking isn’t exactly supported- you can either chose your FSB as 100MHz or 133MHz which is fine as this device is supposed to be an entertainment system, not an overclocked system.
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You can also enable/disable the different options onboard and since the MegaPC either operates as a hi-fi unit or a PC at one time, you can disable the audio and video options from the BIOS and install your own sound and VGA cards. The health section of the BIOS showed that the heatsink was working good temperatures didn’t exceed over 55 degrees even while testing the unit for quite a few hours. MSI places grills on both the sides of the casing for flow of air and we would recommend keeping the MegaPC in an open location.
Benchmarks
Although the MegaPC’s place is more in your living room, we thought we’d give you a general idea of how it performs as you might want to use it for gaming at times. For this purpose, we have only selected a few benchmarks- namely PC Mark 3D Mark 2001SE, Serious Sam Second Encounter and Quake3 Arena. All the benchmarks below were conducted on a P4 3.06GHz CPU with 2x256MB Corsair DDR433 memory modules and the Gigabyte Radeon 9700 PRO graphics card under Windows XP SP1 and Catalyst 3.2 drives
As you can see, the MegaPC is not the best performer, however, its not that bad either. Considering the fact that you'll most probably have the MegaPC connected to your TV, you will be playing games at a lower resolution or watching movies and for either of that purpose, the MegaPC's performance should be much more than sufficient.
Using the MegaPC
As a PC, the MegaPC works exactly as it should- like a PC. It supports almost all the hardware features found on an XPC and then some. For example, unlike the XPC, MSI puts a modem as well as a parallel port on the unit. Also, an iR receiver is built on the unit along with a remote control. For expansion, you are provided with one AGP and one PCI slot which is identical to the XPC and useful- we connected a GeForce4 card and the Creative Sound Blaster Audigy to turn this box into a lean mean fighting machine.
Although MSI doesn’t provide TV output on the Mega PC itself, we have been informed that one of the variations of the MegaPC that you will be able to buy would be fitted with a TV Output/Tuner card on the PCI slot. This would also make an excellent integration- especially coupled with Windows XP Media Center edition. However, you will be losing out on the PCI slot which can be used for a high-end sound card. Alternatively, you can install a VGA card with TV Tuner/Output options yourself.
The Hi-Fi section of the MegaPC works very well, although you need to have the PC switched off in order for the Hi-Fi to work. Since the “Suspend” mode still keeps the PC up, the best thing to do is to setup hibernation on your PC if you’re using XP as that completely shuts off the PC and allows you to use the Hi-Fi features. Of course coming back from suspended state is almost instant, but coming back from hibernation doesn’t take more that five-ten seconds either. It would have been ideal for the Hi-Fi and the PC to work simultaneously, but since the Hi-Fi takes control of your Optical drive, we feel that’s where the problem might have lied.
Once the Hi-Fi is on, you can simply slide in an MP3 or regular CD and start playing. You can navigate the CD from the main unit as well as the included remote control. In fact, almost everything can be operated from the main unit or the remote control. Some people might complain that the included remote works on iR instead of RF, but I personally prefer iR as I can learn its functions into my Universal Remote Control and thus don’t need to juggle between different remotes.
The reception on the FM is decent but not the best. MSI does bundle an external antenna, however, its not as powerful as the two feet steel pole sticking from a conventional radio. One complain we have about the FM is that the unit only allows six channels to be stored in the memory- it should’ve at least supported ten considering the number of radio stations. Also, moving between the memory channels is a little awkward- MSI should’ve used the forward/back keys of the CD player for this function- instead, you need to press the mode key and then rotate the volume knob.
Also worth mentioning is that you only get radio output if you have speakers connected to the “Line Out” jack at the back of the PC, whereas CD output also works with the optical output. It would be nice if MSI could internally make an adjustment where the radio output could also be somehow made to work with the Optical connection. The MegaPC offers four different audio modes- Normal, Pop, Jazz and Classic. Although these are nice, what would’ve been really nice is a fully configurable equalizer with storage memory or at least bass/treble settings.
Conclusion
We have used the MegaPC for about four days now and are absolutely loving it. In fact, we think that MSI has succeeded in overtaking the XPC as the best small form factor PC. Over the last few months, the XPC has mainly remained unchanged- Shuttle is putting all its focus on the performance of the XPC instead of the features so if you’re looking for a small form factor PC that focuses purely on performance, than the XPC would be a better choice.
MSI on the other hand, is targeting the MegaPC to be a part of your living room or the home entertainment system and it fits in very well. From that point of view, you wont need a top-of-line graphics card as TV restricts your resolutions and performance on the MegaPC is quite fast. The Hi-Fi features of the MegaPC work very well and the front display provides for a very good looking unit- especially with the music playing and the equalizer bars jumping.
From the review, you could see that we have quite a few suggestions for MSI on improving the MegaPC and we assure you that MSI is keeping an open ear. In fact, some of the upcoming models of the MegaPC sound very interesting and although we’re requested not to disclose any information, we do feel like shouting the name "Kate" loud! :)
t-break Score |
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91 |
The MSI MegaPC should be available pretty soon with any reputable dealer in Computer Plaza and even some superstores like Plug-ins in City Center. If you prefer to contact the local distributor, please click here or to find an online retailer, please visit www.pricewatch.com
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