So I haven't written a review of anything in a while, but I've decided to write a review of the latest PC I've purchased. For the past year, I've been looking into small PC's and VIA's offering of a motherboard and CPU in their EPIA line intrigued me, but the problem was the VIA C3 CPU wasn't very powerful and was $150 for the micro-motherboard/cpu alone. Last week, I was looking through the weekly Fry's ad and I noticed a small integrated computer for $200. It was the IWILL XP4 Small Form Factor PC. The main thing that attracted me to this computer is that it is tiny, very tiny for a desktop computer. It's dimensions are: 6.3"Wx7.5"Hx10.64"D. Now it doesn't have the bells and whistles of Shuttle's XPCs, but it costs a lot less compared to those type of systems anyways. I won't go in-depth into the performance of this computer, for that you can read the other reviews list at the bottom, but rather I'll go into my experience with this PC.
The IWILL XP4 comes with support for Socket478 P4's or P4 based Celerons. It sports 6 USB2.0 ports (2 in the front, 2 in the back and 2 internally), PS/2 keyboard/mouse connectors, 1 serial and 1 parallel port, 1 Ethernet NIC port and 6 channel audio. For drives, it has a 3.5" half height internal drive bay and 1 bay for a 5.25" CD-ROM/DVD drive. It also features 1 PCI slot for expansion, but there is no AGP slot. So if you are planning to make a gaming machine out of this computer, I would look else where. For video, it uses shared memory with the system memory, but with a different twist. It uses something from Intel called Intel Extreme Graphics. The difference between this and traditional shared video memory is that it dynamically allocates memory depending on what you are doing. Unlike the older systems that I've used in the past where you can set the video memory size in the BIOS, on this XP4 system, you set a video buffer size, either 1 or 8 megs and the Intel 82845 video chipset does the rest. This provides pretty decent graphics support for 2D applications and Intel claims decent 3D performance:
For all the parts I bought everything at Fry's. Here's a listing of what was purchased and at what price:
IWILL XP4 PC with Celeron 2.2GHz Retail Boxed ($199)
512MB PC2700 Generic DDR SDRAM ($50)
80GB Maxtor 7200RPM Ultra w/ 8MB cache and fluid dynamic bearing motor ($50)
iceberg-DDR Copper Memory Heatspreader ($8)
Arctic Alumina Thermal Compound ($3)
=====
Total: $310 + Tax
I also used stuff that I had purchased before:
40x-12x-48x CD-RW Burner ($30)
D-Link DWL-520+ 802.11b Wireless PCI Adapter ($30)
So for a total of $370 I built a complete system that's pretty small, easy to assemble and performed pretty well stock, but I read that people were able to overclock the 2.0 and 2.2GHz Celerons easily and I wasn't too sure if I could on this system. The original version of the XP4 came with a BIOS made by WizPro, which I heard wasn't very overclock friendly . Fortunately, IWILL changed their BIOS code to AWARD and shipped the newest versions with this BIOS pre-installed. The default FSB for a Celeron CPUs is 100MHz, and in in the BIOS there's 1MHz frequency adjustments up to 132MHz. Unfortunately, there are no CPU voltage modifications settings in the BIOS. Now the Celeron 2.2GHz ran fine at 2904Mhz (132Mhz FSB x 22.0 Multiplier) at default voltage, but I thought I could do better. So I applied the Vmod using a small wire strand to jumper two pins to increase the default voltage to 1.68v and then performed the BSEL0 mod to default the CPU to a FSB of 133MHz, which opens larger FSB settings. The BSEL0 mod was partially difficult. I had the option of breaking off the CPU pin, but I wasn't ready to do that. I tried to paint the pin with nail polish and white out and that's pretty much impossible. Everytime I tried the pin was not blocked from getting a signal. My final solution was to tear apart an old floppy cable and use the insulator from one of the wires on the pin I wanted to modify. This worked perfectly. Then the last thing I did was to get rid of the the thermal pad that came on the stock Intel cooler and used some of the Arctic Alumina Thermal Compound on the CPU. So how far did I get trying to overclock? I could get it to POST at 3.3GHz (150MHz FSBx22), but not boot. So I tried decreasing the FSB speed from that point and ended up at an 145MHz FSB, making the system run at 3193MHz (3.19GHz). At that point, I was able to successfully install WindowsXP and run Prime95 without any computational errors with a CPU temp of 53 degrees celcius at load.
Final Thoughs: A computer that runs at 3.19GHz is not bad for $370 and if you are looking for a tiny computer that won't break the bank, definitely check out the XP4 system. I think it was well worth my money spent on it.
Other reviews:
Sharky Extreme: IWILL XP4 Mini-PC Review
SFF TECH: IWILL's XP4: The Budget Business SFF Solution
ClubOC: Iwill XP4 Cube Review
Hardware Analysis: Iwill's XP4 Mini-PC, cutting size but not performance
WhiningDog.NET: Review of the IWILL XP4 ? The Cute Cubed P4 System
The IWILL XP4 comes with support for Socket478 P4's or P4 based Celerons. It sports 6 USB2.0 ports (2 in the front, 2 in the back and 2 internally), PS/2 keyboard/mouse connectors, 1 serial and 1 parallel port, 1 Ethernet NIC port and 6 channel audio. For drives, it has a 3.5" half height internal drive bay and 1 bay for a 5.25" CD-ROM/DVD drive. It also features 1 PCI slot for expansion, but there is no AGP slot. So if you are planning to make a gaming machine out of this computer, I would look else where. For video, it uses shared memory with the system memory, but with a different twist. It uses something from Intel called Intel Extreme Graphics. The difference between this and traditional shared video memory is that it dynamically allocates memory depending on what you are doing. Unlike the older systems that I've used in the past where you can set the video memory size in the BIOS, on this XP4 system, you set a video buffer size, either 1 or 8 megs and the Intel 82845 video chipset does the rest. This provides pretty decent graphics support for 2D applications and Intel claims decent 3D performance:
For all the parts I bought everything at Fry's. Here's a listing of what was purchased and at what price:
IWILL XP4 PC with Celeron 2.2GHz Retail Boxed ($199)
512MB PC2700 Generic DDR SDRAM ($50)
80GB Maxtor 7200RPM Ultra w/ 8MB cache and fluid dynamic bearing motor ($50)
iceberg-DDR Copper Memory Heatspreader ($8)
Arctic Alumina Thermal Compound ($3)
=====
Total: $310 + Tax
I also used stuff that I had purchased before:
40x-12x-48x CD-RW Burner ($30)
D-Link DWL-520+ 802.11b Wireless PCI Adapter ($30)
So for a total of $370 I built a complete system that's pretty small, easy to assemble and performed pretty well stock, but I read that people were able to overclock the 2.0 and 2.2GHz Celerons easily and I wasn't too sure if I could on this system. The original version of the XP4 came with a BIOS made by WizPro, which I heard wasn't very overclock friendly . Fortunately, IWILL changed their BIOS code to AWARD and shipped the newest versions with this BIOS pre-installed. The default FSB for a Celeron CPUs is 100MHz, and in in the BIOS there's 1MHz frequency adjustments up to 132MHz. Unfortunately, there are no CPU voltage modifications settings in the BIOS. Now the Celeron 2.2GHz ran fine at 2904Mhz (132Mhz FSB x 22.0 Multiplier) at default voltage, but I thought I could do better. So I applied the Vmod using a small wire strand to jumper two pins to increase the default voltage to 1.68v and then performed the BSEL0 mod to default the CPU to a FSB of 133MHz, which opens larger FSB settings. The BSEL0 mod was partially difficult. I had the option of breaking off the CPU pin, but I wasn't ready to do that. I tried to paint the pin with nail polish and white out and that's pretty much impossible. Everytime I tried the pin was not blocked from getting a signal. My final solution was to tear apart an old floppy cable and use the insulator from one of the wires on the pin I wanted to modify. This worked perfectly. Then the last thing I did was to get rid of the the thermal pad that came on the stock Intel cooler and used some of the Arctic Alumina Thermal Compound on the CPU. So how far did I get trying to overclock? I could get it to POST at 3.3GHz (150MHz FSBx22), but not boot. So I tried decreasing the FSB speed from that point and ended up at an 145MHz FSB, making the system run at 3193MHz (3.19GHz). At that point, I was able to successfully install WindowsXP and run Prime95 without any computational errors with a CPU temp of 53 degrees celcius at load.
Final Thoughs: A computer that runs at 3.19GHz is not bad for $370 and if you are looking for a tiny computer that won't break the bank, definitely check out the XP4 system. I think it was well worth my money spent on it.
Other reviews:
Sharky Extreme: IWILL XP4 Mini-PC Review
SFF TECH: IWILL's XP4: The Budget Business SFF Solution
ClubOC: Iwill XP4 Cube Review
Hardware Analysis: Iwill's XP4 Mini-PC, cutting size but not performance
WhiningDog.NET: Review of the IWILL XP4 ? The Cute Cubed P4 System
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