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FIC Condor Small Form Factor Reviewed 79

Posted by michael from the bigger-than-a-breadbox dept.
VL writes "A gamer's best friend? That's FIC's catch phrase, and we take them to task in our latest review. 'FIC put together a nice little barebone PC, but missed on some important features that enthusiasts have come to expect. While it's no slouch in gaming, it does not stand out in the performance department which is a shame as the design itself was well thought out.'"
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FIC Condor Small Form Factor Reviewed More

FIC Condor Small Form Factor Reviewed

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  • Nightmare (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Ambient_Developer ( 825456 )
    These speciality pc's are technicians worst nightmare!

    • Re:Nightmare (Score:2, Informative)

      by Orgazmus ( 761208 )
      Its made for gamers, not techies. ;)

    • Re:Nightmare (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The_Mystic_For_Real ( 766020 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:31PM (#10744719)
      It's strange, listening to someone complain about the difficulties of dealing with the diversity among computers, when, throughout all of /., I hear about monopolies and everything being the same dull, grey box to to large corporations squeezing the littel guy with the innovative design out.

      On another topic, I think that it is rather foolish to order a specialty PC and not be able to repair it yourself, or have the money to buy totally new parts. It's similar to owning an old car from a now defunct manufacturer. Cusomers shouldn't expect the same service as if they owned an uncustomized computer from a large manufacturer.

      • On another topic, I think that it is rather foolish to order a specialty PC and not be able to repair it yourself, or have the money to buy totally new parts.

        Yeah, that and the fact that you're not really much of a technician if fixing these computers poses any more difficulty than "regular" computer.

        Except for the small size--that might suck...but I've built a couple of mini-itx systems. Really, it's not that bad.

    • Re:Nightmare (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RealProgrammer ( 723725 )
      My father-in-law gave me his old HP Pavilion 6683, since Windows 98 was hosed on it and he'd upgraded. I plugged it in, and Zzzzt, smell of ozone.

      Opening up the case, I found that just to see how much RAM was installed I had to remove the motherboard from the case!

      I installed a new power supply and installed Linux for my daughter. She's happy, but I'm not looking forward to the next time I have to open up that POS.

    • Re:Nightmare (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:35PM (#10744732) Homepage Journal
      I'm not sure what the problem is as this model and other non-standard designs are somewhat nifty from a maintainance perspective. I've found some that are quite a bit better. While I stick to Compaq Deskpro ATX systems for cheap servers, there is one non-standard form factor Deskpro I bought to try out that was surprisingly easy to disassemble to nearly an empty case without needing a screwdriver.

      While ATX is nice for maximum flexibility, it demands a pretty large box even for miniATX, and even then not many cases place an emphasis on ease of maintinance anyway.

    • Re:Nightmare (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:46PM (#10744772)
      Who cares if it's a nightmare to upgrade/repair?

      Computers are heading in the same direction all household appliances have gone: fixed-function and disposable. Ignoring all the environmental concerns and whatnot, this is inevitable. It wasn't really all that long ago when a TV owner was expected to replace tubes in their TV as casually as we replace ink cartridges in our printers. Now TVs end up in the trash when the power switch breaks.

      Using the "mom test", I've had my mom add memory and swap cards/drives in her computer, and she's recently even done it without my direction or assistance. Non-technical people can do this stuff, it's just that they don't want to. Most people just want their computer to work, and, when it doesn't they want to be able to buy a cheap replacement because their time is too valuable to bother fixing it.

      I'm not advocating this trend, but it's obviously the choice of the bulk of consumers. You are going to be fighting a losing battle if you try to stop this.
      • Sure, there is a large segment that the 'appliance' appeals to, but I question that when a marketing catch-phrase used like "A gamer's best friend." Gamers, particularly those who would buy little-known brands like this, aren't in that segment.

        SFF is cool, but to target "Gamers", a design that is small and yet not a nightmare to work on -- thus having a more well-thought-out design -- seems like it could sell far better.
        • You're assuming that all "gamers" are customizers with the highly overclocked water cooled processors, etc. That isn't the case by a long shot. While the gamers who like to tinker and customize are certainly significant, there are probably even more that just want to play and don't want to fuck with their computers along the way. Basically, many gamers are exactly in the 'appliance' segment, though they may not be aware of FIC as you point out.
    • Huh? What gamer's PC? It uses a f-king Intel processor!!! :P
    • These speciality pc's are technicians worst nightmare!

      In my experience, this is blatently wrong. The easiest computer I have EVER built (well, assembled) was my current Shuttle Barebones I bought a while back. Especially when compared to anything prefab, but even to other mid and full towers I have built in my day.

  • what is it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by zxflash ( 773348 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:14PM (#10744663) Homepage
    looks to me like a humidifier
    • how can an opinion on it's appearance be ot???
      • Thank you for posting a recipie for karma ;)
        Not that a funny-mod is the way to get karma, but it should work with insightful, and maybe even interesting too?

    • Re:what is it? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, it looks like a toaster. And since it has a Pentium 4 in it, it could probably toast bread.

      Thank you, thank you, thank you...I'll be here all week. Tip your server.

  • Not impressed. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:14PM (#10744667) Journal
    200W powersupply, average looks and average expansion slots.

    Now I guess ok for a living room PC, but for small form facter lan party box, I'd pass. Been looking at the Frag box, now thats a nice looking PC.

    • Re:Not impressed. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Orgazmus ( 761208 )
      For the lazy:
      http://www.falcon-nw.com/fragbox.asp [falcon-nw.com]

      This really looks like a nice box

    • Re:Not impressed. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bill_Royle ( 639563 )
      Man - I haven't used a 200W power supply in years! With every PC I've built, I get nothing less than 400W - and I'm not even a gamer! I can only imagine what "true" gamers need for power...

      A gamer's best friend? Hell, if I had this one I'd possibly agree with the term "friend of a friend"...
      • Man - I haven't used a 200W power supply in years! With every PC I've built, I get nothing less than 400W - and I'm not even a gamer! I can only imagine what "true" gamers need for power...

        The only reason I have not used a 200W power supply in years is the fact that anything I owned 200W or so was from an IBM AT case. Nice suckers that were required to power those 5.25 inch full height MFM drives. My last motherboard that took AT power was given away last year.

        While I'm willing to believe that due to h
    • I don't know about this on, but with the Shuttle SFF PC's you can get beefier power supplies if your setup requires it.

  • Skip to page 6 for conclusions ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:16PM (#10744670) Homepage
    Looks like you gotta wade through each page (rather than be able to jump to the end) ... so for those interested in just seeing the conclusions, click here to go directly to page 6 [viperlair.com] where they write:

    Pros: Good performance, easy to assemble a system, better than average expansion options. Quiet.

    Cons: No BIOS tweaks possible. Mere 200W PSU. Poor onboard audio.

  • thats gonna be one HOT box (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Foktip ( 736679 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:31PM (#10744721)
    ive had a tiny computer like that for a while, and its a heating nightmare... ive had it overheat so much i had to pull out the ol' dremmel and saw a hole in the side, to add a fan. but now its all noisy, and still is quite hot.

    my question is, with one of those new 3.6 pentiums (the heat kings), and a new radeon or geforce, can this thing sustain long gaming parties without melting down? especially when it has so little fans and such a cramped case?
    • Just a tip. Try adding one of these [ncix.com] to your setup. It will help with the heating, without giving you a noise related headache :)
    • Maybe you should read the article a bit better: with the built-in 200W powersupply this thing can neither sustain a P3 3.6GHz nor a GF6800. You are lucky if it powers a P4 3.0 Prescott and a GF6600 in the same case.

      That said: if the manufacturer put openings with fans at suitable places in the case to exhaust all the produced heat quickly, and uses a beefy power supply, nothing prevents it from running a Presshot with a GF6800. It might be a tad loud though since the fans certainly will be on the very fast

  • Condor (Score:3, Interesting)

    by paul248 ( 536459 ) on Saturday November 06, 2004 @11:33PM (#10744729) Homepage
    Doesn't it seem odd that a small form factor PC is named after a very large bird [narcomafie.it]?

    • Re:Condor (Score:3, Funny)

      by Bluetrust25 ( 647829 )
      Doesn't it seem odd that a small form factor PC is named after a very large bird?

      A very large, endangered species of bird, no less.

  • toaster (Score:2, Interesting)

    by HoneyBunchesOfGoats ( 619017 )
    It looks like some sort of modernist toaster to me.

    • Mod Parent Up (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ewhac ( 5844 )

      The parent post is currently modded as "Troll". I must respectfully differ, owning to the fact that the Condor, indeed, looks like a toaster.

      I first saw one of these things sitting on an end-cap in Fry's. The very first thought that ran through my head was, "It looks like a toaster." While I was poking at it to see what features it had, a person from behind me remarked, "What is that, a toaster?"

      So, just for my own personal amusement, I stood there for a few minutes watching passers-by react to the C

  • what's with the doors? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by poptones ( 653660 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @12:15AM (#10744867) Journal
    I have a mini system I put together from parts. It's a nice enough case (an off-brand minitower I got from computer geeks) but it - like just about every single mini system I've seen - has these damn doors over the ports on the front. The cdr door isn't too bad (except that it also means you have to remove the front of the drawer on the drive thus leaving the noiseproofing gasket out of the picture, which means going back four years to listening to jet engine takeoffs every time you use a DVD or CD) but the doors on the connectors mean your stuck with two choices:

    1) never use the front panel jacks

    2) use the front panel jacks and risk damage to the cheap plastic doors thus ensuring your nice looking system eventually looks like ass.

    Of course, 1) isn't foolproof either, since it's incredibly easy to break on of these things off at the hinges just by laying it in the car seat wrong.

    I can't stand those cubes with the jacks sticking out the front like some afterthought, either - but would it really be so hard to stick all those jacks in a nice even row at the bottom of the case behind a black rubber or felt gasket? Maybe use those black nylon fibers like at the end of vacuum cleaner dust attachments. It would look nice, be unbreakable, and only slightly more cumbersome to connect (Where's the hole? I know it's here somewhere...")

    Anything other than flimsy plastic doors would be an improvement... especially at 650 fucking dollars! Yeesh!
    • >I can't stand those cubes with the jacks sticking
      >out the front like some afterthought, either - but
      >would it really be so hard to stick all those jacks
      >in a nice even row at the bottom of the case behind
      >a black rubber or felt gasket?

      Why have the jacks along the bottom of the case? You'll only step on them (or put your elbow on them if you keep the box on your desk), breaking them. It would be better to keep the connectors along the top or even in the middle of the case.

  • Gamer's best friend? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nerd256 ( 794968 )
    Im tired of these mfg. pandering to the "gamer" crowd. (obviously there is lotsa money in this market). However, I tend to prefer the big power-hogging flashy-lights boxen. I think the sleek metal toasters would more appeal to the office, asthetics people. And if you're really looking for power for the money you'd build it yourself. This is the most impressive to me- ones determination to create a unique machine. If you're into gaming, you're also likely to be sitting on your butt, thus undercutting the s
    • Uh, many social gamers now go to things like LAN parties, where it's useful to not have a bigass machine to lug around. This is why SFF has gotten so big as of late. Throw a miniatx board, a couple PCI slots and an AGP slot in for audio/video, and go to town. No need to bring your 5 hard drive server into a party where you're just going to be playing a limited number of games.

  • why is this front-page news? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @12:39AM (#10744933)

    I hate to be cynical, but all these review sites "like"/"don't like" products based on:

    • how soon they get the review unit compared to other competing sites
    • whether or not they can keep the review unit
    • whether their sponsors (online stores) sell the item in question
    • whether a product their sponsors sell would be threatened by the item in question
    • whether a manufacturer they really really like (say, a hot system is rumored to be just around the corner, everyone's abuzz about it) would be threatened by the item in question

    ...and a zillion other things unrelated to actual product quality or suitability. Meanwhile, of course, they're all getting played by the companies, who reward good reviews by bumping those sites up on the list of who gets Hot Product A in what order.

    Which is why this has no business being on the front page. Put it in games.slashdot.org and make it a non-frontpage for slashdot.org....or something...

    You can damn well bet that if they wanted to 'like' the unit, the PSU figures would not have been mentioned, the onboard audio problems dismissed as moot because "we all install soundblaster audigy boards anyway", so on etc. You get the idea. The review remains technically accurate, but the bias clearly swings.

  • who misread Condor as Condom at first glance?

    Condom small form factor??? WTF??? Where'd I put my penis enlarger and viagra!?!?!

  • Once you get an SFF Machine, you'll never go back. (Score:5, Informative)

    by wernst ( 536414 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @01:23AM (#10745060) Homepage
    I've been building my own machines since my first 486-33, and they've always been tall beige towers. I travel to a few gaming conventions a year, plus occasionally lug it to a client's facility for troubleshooting.

    When the first SFF (small form factor) machines came out, I was interested, but they were very limited with low-rent technology. That's not the case anymore. You want a PCI Express, or the latest Athlon-64, or maybe you want a steady-as-a-rock Intel 865 chipset and matching P4? There are well built SFF machines that fit the bill, and all you give up are PCI slots.

    My latest gaming machine is a Soltek 3401 (review at http://www.sfftech.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=464 [sfftech.com]) with what was at the time the highest-end stuff, a P4 at 3 Ghz, a Radeon 9800XT, and to get a real gameport, a SB Audigy in the only PCI slot, along with two optical drives. The resulting machine is rock-steady, even overclocked and running 24/7 and playing all the latest games. Plus, it is a snap to travel to conventions with - it came with its own backback and I can check it in as a carry on. Bringing it to clients' is no problem either.

    This computer is the quietest I've ever had (save for the fanless, hard driveless Apple //e) and extremely reliable. When at conventions, it stays just as fast and delivers gameplay just as good as any of those modded, neon-lit monsters other folks bring, but at 1/3 the size.

    Though this FIC board doesn't seem to be very overclockable, most Shuttles and Solteks are. And don't worry about SFF power supplies - they are designed to be efficient and work well despite their low wattage ratings. Just try some high-end cards and be prepared to see them work fine.

    If the idea of an SFF machine interests you, check out the reviews and ask around at the forums of http://www.sfftech.com/ [sfftech.com]. I'm glad I did.

    • If noise is a concern and a Shuttle is being considered, I recommend seeing that model in person before buying. The Shuttles I have seen in person were louder than most desktops that I have seen, despite the heat pipe, because the fan they attached to it was loud. Of course, the simplest thing to do is find a quieter fan that delivers a similar flow rate and static pressure, I thin Shuttle really cheaped out on that.

      I'm not bothered by the limited or lack of overclocking, generally it voids the warranty
      • You could check out the reviews at sfftech [sfftech.com]. They always have a some noise measurements and comparisons in the benchmark section of their reviews. While there are terribly loud Shuttles, they have some quiet ones too. Especially the SN45 Zen is rather quiet and has an external PSU. The other nice thing is that this mainboards allows undervolting and clocking by software (8rdavcore), which makes this box even quieter if you don't need full performance. Fan regulation by software (speedfan) is possible as wel
  • For the last several months, one of these machines has been my MythTV frontend, after a bad power supply blew up my Shuttle SK41G machine. Bought it at Fry's for cheap. It's a nice little machine.. but of course I needed to add a few things to make it work as a multimedia system. Specifically, an Nvidia card was slapped in for its drivers and for the svideo capabilities. And my cheap SB Live card provides the digital sound. Using Alsa (ugg..) is always hit or miss, but fortunately it works pretty well with

  • Price? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by beaverfever ( 584714 ) on Sunday November 07, 2004 @02:19AM (#10745215) Homepage
    I got through two pages when I gave up looking. Shouldn't a review have the price of the product being reviewed? Knowing the price is central to determining whether a product is a good value or not, or at least that's what I thought. Perhaps the reviewers know better than I.

  • Kinda silly how this is 'new'.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 07, 2004 @02:24AM (#10745230)
    I've had one of these things for about 3 months, now. They've been out for well over six months. While, yeah, it's not the optimum gaming machine (200 watt psu, so really no option for a huge video card), it's great for these factors alone:
    • It's small
    • Extremely quiet (I can hear my roomate's 24" floor-standing fan over this case - and that's 10feet down the hall and behind a closed door)
    • Inexpensive (as far as the small form factors go)
    Sure it's unique cooling design means I can't stack things on top of my computer (the main exhaust is the PSU and a vent on top of the case). It may be a little bit taller than most SFFs, but it's a little bit skinnier too. The pictures on that page really don't do the little bugger justice: it's quite handsom. The audio and USB jacks on the front? Yeah, they're a little odd - and I don't use the optical audio out, because I have an older vacuum tube audio system. I do, however, absolutely love> the front headphone jack. Another nifty thing about this case is something really odd about the power supply - it has a switched power output. Yeah, like OLD cases used to have, so you could plug your monitor into it and have it come on when you turn your computer on (and off when you turn it off). Being that I never turn my computer off, it's not that big of a deal - but it's a nifty feature nonetheless. I really don't see being unable to tweak clock settings as a bad thing. I don't like overclocking my hardware anyway. As a basis for a mid-range mid-price gaming machine, it just kicks butt. The fans monitor the temperature (Yeah, I wish I could too - but I don't have to) and turn the speed up if it gets too hot. Running at their normal idle speed, they are close to silent. It's a build it and forget it machine. Yeah, you can go in and upgrade things if you like, but I don't foresee the need to upgrade for another four years (I was running a p3-800mhz / kyro (and then geforce3) system up until 3 months ago, played everything fine.. and then I wanted to play doom3). I'm running a p4 3ghz (ht) with 512mb ram and a radeon 9600. Maybe I can't play doom3 at 1600x1200, but really.. I don't care. I like my little machine :)
  • This is "news article" slashvertisement [wikipedia.org]. Don't be fooled.

  • FIC (Score:2)

    by Alioth ( 221270 )
    I've used FIC motherboards twice (I think they were a VA503 and an SD11 - can't remember which order I had them in) and both ended up being 'problem computers' (hardware wise) so I'm a bit wary of FIC now.
  • I have played with so many SFFPCs, our office now buys nothing but SFFPC. My experience is, when it comes to SFFPC, get the Shuttles. Don't even think of getting anything else.
  • The review seems to assume that to be a 'gamer' you'll naturally be going for the highest-end components, wanting to get the absolute maximum from your PC, overclocking it and tweaking it to get that extra 2.5% performance increase.

    Well, I've got news for you, folks. Some of us gamers just want to go for the mid-range, most bang-for-the-buck parts that'll run modern games at a reasonable resolution at a reasonable framerate at a reasonable graphical quality setting.

    Sure, if they'd called themselves "The P

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