Skyhawk's Small Form Factor Ambitions

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.