Review: Biostar iDEQ 210V SFF Barebones Computer

The Biostar IDEQ 210V small form factor computer is a large shoebox-shaped, inexpensive silver cube that supports AMD Socket A CPU's. The system includes a motherboard with onboard sound, video, an 8x AGP slot, and a PCI slot. It is a very high-quality system with a beautifully arranged interior. It is one of the easiest bare bones systems to build on the market.

The Biostar IDEQ 210V measures 7.4" x 8.3" x 12.7". It's not quite a cube, but, compared to most systems, that's a pretty close description. It comes with everything you'll need to build a system except the CPU, DDR-333 memory, a hard drive, and an optical drive.

In keeping with the low price of the 210V, I added an AMD XP 2500 Barton chip, a Maxtor 80 GB disk, two sticks of DDR333 memory, and a Sony DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. The result was a very quiet system with all the power I need for my CPU-intensive projects.

Note that the weak point of this system, as configured, is the video. It has a built-in VIA UniChrome 2D/3D sharing main memory. A serious gamer would probably want to add a faster video card to the 8x AGP slot. Of course, since the included video adds very little to the price, it's hardly a significant drawback. Once that video card is added, this is quite a handy machine to carry to a LAN party. The case is made of aluminum and it's about as light as you could hope for.

The interior of the system is clean and easy to work on, in spite of the small size. The cables are all neatly prerouted along the frame, putting everything right where you need them. The system comes with a custom-fitted heatsink and a 200W power supply. Assembling the system took me about 30 minutes; you will not waste all afternoon building this one. The biggest problem you might encounter is forgetting to set the clock speed jumper. The default is 100 MHz and you'll probably be using a CPU that wants 133 or 166 MHz. It will still work if you forget, of course, but your games won't like it.

There is room for one optical drive, one hard drive, with an additional 3.5" externally accessible drive bay. The system supports SATA 150 as well as ATA 133 drives.

Autosensing 10/100 Mbps Ethernet is included on the back of the system. USB 2, Firewire (IEEE 1394), S/PDIF, and audio ports are available from the front of the case. There is also a small reset button just below the power button on the front.

Once up and running, the system is remarkably quiet. The only quieter system I own is a Mac Mini.

And, yes, it's very happy running Linux. I run SuSE 9 on mine.

Especially when considering the price, this fine little system provides an excellent reason to avoid those big, ugly cases in the future.