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Skyhawk's Small Form Factor Ambitions
By ,
1. Introduction

Skyhawk's Light Aluminum Case

Life is rough for must of us, especially so if you are a vendor in the small form factor (SFF) PC sector. In a market in which Shuttle dominates, Skyhawk obviously thought long and hard about the design of its first SFF PC in a barebone package, which represents a reasonably complete and robust system. Indeed, the SFF PC's list of specs, including its Skyhawk Media PC EchoQ package, is the longest and most detailed we've seen.

Alas, this SFF PC's time to market with its i865G chipset and its P4 socket 478 poses some problems, such as how compatible socket 478 processors have only been available in small quantities. There is probably some remaining stock available here and there, but it's just a matter of time before these CPUs disappear altogether.

Newer chipsets based on socket 775 accommodate state of the art CPUs and would have been a good fit for the IMC-6375. Even its graphics interface - an AGP 8x - is no longer au courant. The market screams for PCI Express and DDR2 nowadays, not for AGP, PCI and DDR1.

But if you can accept this SFF PC's shortcomings as-is there is a solid foundation on which to build a more-than-adequate SFF PC. In fact, the IMC-6375 can do more than just muddle its way through boring office tasks by offering some unexpected and interesting capabilities.

In this vein, full-featured DVD, audio and MP3 player software awaits users, ready and complete for your multimedia playback delight. Also, you do not have to load drivers from a CD or from the vendor's Website to get the multimedia playback functions up and running as all the necessary software comes integrated with the BIOS.

During the boot process, you can decide if you want a normal PC startup, or if you would prefer to start up the multimedia player instead. The media player user interface is friendly and inviting, even though it lacks mouse support. Everything's accessible through the keyboard, where the Tab key plays a particularly important role in making selections. This is a pretty bold strategy: it simply skips value-added DVD functions, and starts movies without running users through initial set-up and option screens. The fast remote, alas, didn't work with our DVD player, but a BIOS update is coming soon, and promises to clean out such bugs.

The 3.5" media bay can handle either a floppy drive or an optional memory card reader.

Connectors on the front of the PC are tucked behind a plastic cover.

Lots of ports, but there is no direct connect for television sets.
2. Control Setting Options

The big front display lights up as soon as you turn on this Mini-PC. The left-hand side function buttons serve to configure this display, or to change the selection of individual outputs or gauges. The six equalizer bars help to monitor and manage sound quality. The middle set of gauges displays system status data, regardless of which operating mode is active. You'll also find temperature readings from all four of the unit's temperature sensors on display here as well.

The temperature display can be switched to either Celsius or Fahrenheit.

It takes only the push of a button to read the system clock time.

The fan speed readings are measured by RPMs.

The alarm setting is for those who might fall asleep in front of their PCs.

The audio equalizer only appears in response to audio or MP3 outputs.
3. Inside View

The light aluminum cover of this SFF PC is secured with numerous thumbscrews that you have to first unscrew to open the IMC-6375's case. The first impression is chaotic, because individual power and data cables are stuffed willy-nilly into the unit. This impression alters once you've installed additional hardware.

Installation is astoundingly easy; except that the power cables for the hard and optical drives were far too short. In fact, we had to lengthen them ourselves to connect everything. Also, as we installed our passively cooled MSI AGP graphics card, cables to the USB and FireWire connectors on the case front got in the way. Both cables also have excessively large ballasts that make the cable ends far too bulky. If you want to install full-length AGP cards, you'll have to remove the protective cover on the ballast to get those cables underneath the graphics card.

All the internal parts are made of aluminum, too.

A rat's nest of cables.

The "big thing" on the end of the cable obstructs installation of the AGP card.

The bulky cable end gets in the way, and takes up too much space.

Had the graphics card been any longer, it wouldn't have fit inside the case.

If the ballast hadn't barely squeezed into play, it would have had to go!

All four temperature sensors may be read from the front display.

The 5.25" bay for the optical drive includes three rubber-footed vibration dampers.
4. Technical Specs
Vendor and Model Skyhawk Media PC EchoQ IMC-6375
Internet Website www.skyhawkusa.com
Measurements 12.2 x 7.9 x 7.2"
301 x 201 x 219 mm
Price $250
Connectors and Inputs
Front side
Audio 1x Microphone and 1x Headphone
USB 2x USB 2.0 Type A
Firewire IEEE 1394a 1x 6-pin connector
Switches/Buttons/Controls Power On, Eject, Mode, Up/Down, Volume control
Drive bays 1 x 5.25 slot and 1x 3.5 slot
Display Multi-function and Equalizer
Back side
PS/2 2x for Mouse and keyboard
Display output VGA
USB 2x USB 2.0 Type A
Firewire IEEE 1394 1x 6-ping connector
Serial/Parallel Ports 1x/ none
Sound 3x (usable for 5.1 systems)
LAN 1x (10/100 wired Ethernet)
Fans
CPU 1x 3.15" (80 mm)
Power supply 1x 3.15" (80 mm)
System/case ventilation 2x 2.36" (60 mm)
Motherboard
CPU Support Intel's P4 and Celeron
Socket FCPGA 478
FSB-Clocking 400/533/800 MHz
Northbridge Intel i865g
Southbridge Intel ICH4
Memory
Memory type SDRAM DDR
Memory Compatibility: DDR333 and DDR400
Memory access mode Dual-Channel
Memory Slots Available Two
Max Memory Capacity 2 GB
Onboard Graphics Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Engine
Internal I/O-Components
Mass Storage Controller ICH4
Storage Ports IDE 2x UltraATA/100
Storage Ports Serial ATA 2x S-ATA 150
Floppy Controller yes
Network Interface Realtek RTL8100BL
LAN Support 10/100
Additional card slots
AGP 8x 1x
PCI 32bit 1x
On-Board Audio
Type C-Media CMI9761A
Surround Support 5.1 Channel
Power supply 250 Watt
Ancillary Materials
Manuals English
Cables SATA, IDE, Floppy
Software Drivers
CPU-cooler Copper block with a 3.15"(80 mm)fan
5. Accessories

Along with two manuals you'll also find all necessary drive cables included with the Skyhawk ICM-6375. You'll even find a CPU cooler and system fans, as well as a driver CD to help get the SFF PC up and running. The ET-BIOS software, which handles DVDs plus Audio and MP3 output, is built into the BIOS installed on the motherboard. Separate installation is therefore unnecessary.

The manuals are written in both English and Mandarin Chinese.

Drive cables are round and modular, to improve case ventilation.

Under heavy CPU loads, the fan runs at nearly 4,800 RPM

The CPU heatsink is massive, and made entirely of copper
6. How We Tested The Skyhawk

To turn the Skyhawk IMC-6375 into a working computer, we had to install numerous additional hardware components. That is because a barebone SFF PC includes only the case, the motherboard and a power supply (but, as with most other offerings of this type, the unit also included a compatible CPU fan/cooler unit as well).

Completing the assembly requires:

  • Memory modules
  • Hard disk
  • CD/DVD drive
  • CPU chip
  • (optional) graphics card

Both of these fast Twinmos 512 MB memory modules clock at 2-2-5.

The guard disk and optical CD/DVD drives we used.

A socket 478 CPU is required.

The graphic card should be fast and quiet if you decide to add one to the Skyhawk.
7. Conclusion

Skyhawk's light aluminum SFF PC made a good showing, while the machine is definitely not devoid of drawbacks. First, the fans are definitely too loud. Ambient noise jumps to 45 dB(a) immediately after boot up, before there is any substantive load on the CPU. Also missing are S-Video or composite video outputs, but these may be unnecessary since it's unlikely that a noisy box like the Skyhawk SFF PC would be welcome in your living room.

The DVD- and Audio-player functions of the EchoQ IMC-6375 may not be so new any more (see AOpen XC Cube , but they do start up quickly. After powering up, the DVD player is ready to roll in a mere five seconds. It's sad that the Skyhawk SFF PC was built around the i865G chipset, however. Finding a CPU to fit this socket means a long search before a compatible processor may be found.

All in all, this PC represents a sincere effort, the fruits of which are unfortunately 12 months too late. Last year the ICM-6375's features and functions could have made it a big sales hit. Right now, however, it's a real challenge just to find compatible hardware just to get the machine to boot up and work.

Skyhawk's first SFF barebone represents a solid first-time effort that unfortunately comes too late to market.