James Fee
06-02-2004, 07:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=464' target='_blank'>http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=464</a><br /><br /></div>"Purchasing a pre-built machine like the Encore 3107 saves all the building hassle and Systemax has put together a quality package at a very good price. The MEGA 180 barebone chassis comes with an nForce2 based motherboard and Systemax has fitted a 2800+ AMD Athlon XP processor and 512MB of PC3200 DDR SDRAM to the mix. This makes it a reasonable spec PC without driving up the price too much."<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/Systemax-Encore-3107.gif" /> <br /><br />We've all seen the great mini cases from <a href="http://www.shuttle.com/hq/product/product_b_intel.asp">Shuttle</a> and <a href="http://www.lian-li.com/product.php?pcid=32&secid=167">Lian-li</a>, but they all require you to build them yourself. Systemax has created a Small Form Factor PC that works out of the box. To me this looks like a quick and easy way to jump on the media PC craze with only a few small gotchas (Windows XP Home, Ability Office 2003 and some flimsy remotes). BUT, there are tons of Firewire and USB 2.0 ports all around that make this a great PC for a digital media center. If you don't need Windows XP MCE and don't want to build your own PC, this might just be the ticket for you. A <a href="http://www.systemaxpc.co.uk/SystemaxPC">SystemaxPC</a> will run you 1,173.83 GBP or about $2,100 USD.