Hush Technologies Mini-ITX PC Review

Possibly the area of greatest interest in the Computing world at present is the Small Form Factor (SFF) PC. They are perfect for a multitude of uses from a replacement for you main pc , to a Home Theater PC (HTPC) . They have great flexibility due to their size, allowing many new designs to be considered. New to this market are Hush Technologies they have approached the SFF with one thing in mind Silence. They have created a completely passively cooled MiniITX based pc which does away with most of the sources of noise in a normal system and encloses it in a beautifully looking aluminium case. Lets have a look how good it is in practice.

What are the specifications of this PC?

• Via Epia-M 9000: Featuring a 933Mhz VIA C3 CPU
• 256MB of Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
• 80Gb Seagate Barracuda Hard Disc
• TEAC DVD/CDRW Combo drive
• Morex 55w Power Supply (PSU)
• Dimensions: 37 x36 x 6cm (w,d,h)
• Case material: Aluminium
• Form Factor: MiniITX

The specification of the system are interesting the inclusion of a Combo drive is great and the large hard disc allows plenty of storage. I'd prefer 256MB of RAM but 256MB is more than fine. The hard disc itself is renown for its low noise. Its not totally silent but a lot better than any other hard disc out there. It sacrifices some performance for this but is no slouch. Hush provides plenty of options so you can specify the right system for your needs.

What is Mini ITX Form Factor?

I think I should start this review by explain just what MiniITX form factor motherboards are. The form factor was originally proposed by Via to be an ultra small form factor smaller than the FlexATX and MicroATX form factors that were the smallest at the time. The orginal MiniITX boards were highly feature boards with a CPU soldered onto the board this was cheap to produce as there was no packaging cost on the processors and motherboards which can be complex and expensive to implement. The specifications of the MiniITX form factor are that the board may not be bigger than 170mm x 170mm as you can see this is tiny when compared to the normal ATX standard. Via also aimed to have a very low heat output from the MiniITX so the huge coolers fitted on nearly all modern systems were redundant. Some of the Via Epia series are passively cooled but unfortunately these are the less powerful models. The higher powered boards require a small heatsink with a 80mm fan. These fans can be quite noisy often louder than a good 80mm fan. Hush Technologies set out to combine the faster Epia models with a passive cooling system.

First Impressions

First impressions count for a lot and with the Hush I wasn't disappointed, the system came in a well packaged and protect box. Opening up the box for the first time I was very surprised when I took the hush out , it was a very solid piece of metal the cooling fins on the sides Are sturdy chunks of aluminium. I've seen some of the nicest and well built cases in my time but this was something else. This PC would would look perfect next to a video or DVD player. The colour of this particular example wasn't something to write home about, but it was bearable and seeing as you get a choice of colour's its not really an issue. Overall I was very impressed by the system and had good hopes for the performance of it.

The Case

People who know me know I'm a case person I'm a sucker for a nice looking aluminium case and with the Hush I'm blown away. The pictures of the case really don't do it justice its the highest quality case I've yet come across and that includes all the Coolermasters The fans at the side are very solid, (The make a very entertaining noise when you run your hands across them that can get addictive). At the front its very clean looking nothing destroys the clean lines that isn't required. In terms of switch gear and LED's there is only the bare minimum, the power switch is a Bulgin vandal resistant number with blue lighting, those of you in the Modding community will know that these are some of the best looking switches out there. The button action requires a firm push and the switch feedback isn't the greatest but the blue glow the switch makes up for it in spades. The switch means that no power LED is required as the blue glow shows instantly that its on (This is quite important as the case is so silent, you cant tell its on by listening). Above the switch is a tiny hole this is for the Hard disc LED, this is red in colour, I'd have preferred at blue led but that's just me being fussy.

From the pictures you can see that the optical drive at the front is not your normal 5.25 drive this drive is a laptop style one, this means it takes up a lot less room , thus allowing the case to be lower in profile. The drive is painted to make the drive fit in perfectly with the case, which is very good to see that Hush have thought of these little details, many manufacturers would just throw a beige or black drive in without thinking.

In terms of case access on this system things are different to nearly all cases, the top panel is held in by 6 bolts these aren't normal bolts but have two small holes on the head. They require a special tool to loosen them, that said its very easy to loosen them with a pair of needle nose pliers. I hope that hush provides the correct tool with retail versions of the system for those needing/wanting to tinker or just look at the insides of the Hush.

On the bottom of the case there are four very sturdy looking feet with small circular rubber pads one the base. This means you can put the case anywhere with out fear of marking the surface. Or even if you have multiple Hush PC's you could even stack them on top of each other.

The Back of the Case

Turning the case round to look at the back you can see the ports are located in a nice ATX blanking plate, there is also a PCI slot (Note there is an option to have two) also there is an extra 2 USB Ports and an extra 2 firewire ports. At the right of these is the input port for the Power Supply. Again as with the rest of the case its very neatly laid out and well built. You can see that this is also Hush Serial Number S001 its always nice to see you have the first of something.

Power Supply

Again as with other parts of this system the Power supply isn't your normal type. In keeping with the passive cooling ethos Hush have used a Morex 55 watt power supply. This consist of an internal circuit board with no cooling and an external laptop style brick which connects to the case via a small connector and then to the plug socket. This means all the heat is external to the case and that lots of space is free 'd up inside. The external brick has a small green power LED so you know that it has power. You maybe wondering just how a 55 watt power supply can possibly create enough power for today's PC. In short it can't, the Epia based system on the other hand is very different. Via set out to create something with very low power requirements. 55 watts is more than enough to supply the power to the Epia, the hard disc and the Laptop optical drive. Any more than that and you would notice issues.

The picture below shows the voltages on the power lines in real time. As you can see there is very little fluctuation on any of the measurements.

Inside the Case

Inside the case reveals the heart of the Hush system, the first surprise is that one of the IDE cables is a rounded type, this means that it will take up less room. This connects to the Laptop DVD/CDRW combo drive via a converter. The second IDE cable is the normal more common type this connects to the hard disc. The hard disc itself is encased in an aluminium case which is connected to the inside of the case so that any heat created by the hard disc is quickly transferred out of the case. Also you get to see the heatpipe solution for cooling the CPU (More on that later). You can see that the PCI slot is not in the normal place of 90° to the motherboard. A adapter is in the PCI slot meaning that any PCI card will be parallel to the motherboard and along side it you can see the extra USB and firewire ports. All the cabling is fairly tidy , and its well laid out.

Cooling

The cooling system of the hush is really where it excels over other SFF PC's, Hush have gone for completely passive system. This means no fans or active cooling of any sort. This eliminates the need for any noisy fans of any description. There are several parts of a Computer that require cooling, most importantly is the CPU, then there is the Northbridge on the motherboard, then the hard disc. Now normally on the Via Epia 9000 the CPU is cooled by a small heatsink with an 80mm fan. Hush have taken this off and thrown it away as its far too noisy To replace the original cooling the heatsink has been replaced by a solid aluminium heatsink with a heatpipe that is then attached to the side of the case. This means any heat is transferred to the case and is then cooled by the use of the fins on the outside of the case.

The system appears effective the cooling fins hardly get warm to the touch and the temperatures at load can be seen from this picture below.
Load temperature: 48 degrees Centigrade
Idle temperature: 24 degrees Centigrade
(Note load temperature taken after running a loop demo of 3DMark 2001)

The hard disc is also cooled as this can create a fair amount of heat, so its enclosed in an aluminium case which is connected to the inside of the case in a similar way to the CPU cooler but not with a heatpipe but a section of aluminium. So with the northbridge not requiring cooling there is no fans to create any noise. This means silence, a joy to behold after sitting next to a delta fan or other such noisy system.

Performance

Now with the Via Epia 9000 being the basis of the system its not going to be great as a gaming rig, so I wasn't expecting huge power out of this system. Here at Hexus we have recently reviewed the Epia 9000 in a full and complete review so for a more specific review of the board look at it Here. The specifications of the board mean that its aimed at being a complete solution containing on-board graphics and on-board sound along with lots of other goodies.

What are the specifications of the Via Epia 9000

• Processor
• VIA C3/EDEN EBGA Processor 933Mhz
• Chipset
• VIA CLE266 North Bridge
• VT8235 South Bridge
• System Memory
• 1 DDR266 DIMM socket
• Up to 1GB memory size
• VGA
• Integrated VIA CastleRock AGP graphics with MPEG-2 decoder
• Expansion Slots
• 1 X PCI
• Onboard IDE
• 2 X UltraDMA 133/100/66 Connector
• Onboard Floppy
• 1 x FDD Connector
• Onboard LAN
• VIA VT6103 10/100 Base-T Ethernet PHY
• Onboard Audio
• VIA VT1616 6 channel AC'97 Codec
• Onboard TV Out
• VIA VT1622 TV out
• Onboard 1394
• VIA VT6307S IEEE 1394 Firewire
• Onboard I/O Connectors
• 1 USB connectors for 2 additional USB 2.0 ports
• 2 1394 connectors for 2 1394 ports
• Front-panel audio connectors (Mic and Line Out)
• CD Audio-in connector
• SIR connector
• CIR connector
• Wake-on-LAN, Wake-on-Ring

Gaming Performance

Now I thought what would happen if someone wanted to use the Hush as an occasional gaming rig how would they get on? I tried the hush out in Quake 3 Arena 1.32 which is going to be a major test for any on-board graphics. Playing at the very lowest resolution available , the game was playable but on a large monitor its going to look horrific at 640x480 it was a bit slow but only when there was lots of action on the screen. I then tried out some timedemo's to give it a big test, I used very intense demo's where lots happens and here are the results:

• Fastest (Resolution: 512x384) = 17.7 FPS
• Normal (Resolution: 640x480) = 13.6 FPS
• High Quality (Resolution: 800x600) = 13.6 FPS

So these are all well below the 30fps threshold so its not going to be anymore than an emergency gaming rig. To test it out further I fired up 3d Mark 2001 the results were far from sparkling:

Performance Conclusion

I summation the performance is not going to win any awards, anything that requires serious CPU or Graphic grunt is not possible due to the lack of processing muscle. Its going to be ok for Divx or DVD playback.

Colour's

The Colour of the case is difficult to describe its somewhere between silver and brown. Its not the nicest colour I have to say, but its bearable. That said there are many colour options open to you as you can see from this pic taken by Nigel Prescott at Cebit. To give you an idea of the colour of this specific hush its the 3rd from bottom on that picture. Personally I would go for the black or the silver which ever you prefer the most as they are certainly the most striking of the options.

Gallery

Full Gallery

Pro's

• Looks very nice, would look great in the lounge
• Very well built case
• Quite light/easy to carry
• Completely passively cooled
• Cooling is most efficient
• Well laid out internally
• Comes pre built so easy to setup
• Small so it doesn't take up much space
• Blue power button looks excellent
• Some nice colour options available
• Quietest solution around at present

Con's

• Some may find prices slightly high
• System performance not great
• Hard disc creates a some noise but not overly noticeable
• The colour of sample not that nice but others are available
• Access to the internals not as easy as it could be

Conclusion

The hush system is a high quality item with excellent build quality, the case is the best I've seen to date , if they start selling these cases separately I can see them becoming popular. The whole ethos of this product is excellent more and more people are wanting silent PC's , this sets a very good benchmark for others to try to emulate. The only niggles are the slight whine from the hard disc, which is only really noticeable if you listen very carefully in a silent room ,the performance isn't going to win any awards but as its aimed at a HTPC market its ok, also the price is quite high considering the specifications.

Thanks

Thanks go to Hush Technologies for supplying this review sample.