Skyhawk's Small Form Factor Ambitions

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.