Review Small form-factor PCs have always been an attractive proposition. The combined advantages of svelte external dimensions, portability, whisper-quiet operation and sheer sexiness usually outweigh the limited internal expandability. Out-of-the-box performance is often as good as a tower system, and that's why MV, better known as a purveyor of high-quality laptops, has decided to launch a gamer-orientated SFF PC. The MV Cubik GamePro, using Shuttle's SN95G5 barebones chassis, arrives loaded with a capacious 250GB hard drive, GeForce 6800 GT, 1GB RAM and Athlon 64 CPU. A gamer's delight or a £1127 shoebox? Let's find out.

For starters, that's a lot of money for a system that doesn't include a monitor or speakers. Around £240 of that cost goes directly towards the Shuttle chassis. Still, given MV's desire of creating a fast mini-PC that caters for the gamer, the SN95G5's support for AMD's socket-939 gaming goliath CPUs is a sensible one.

The SN95G5's gorgeous, minimalist exterior is always worth a look. The brushed aluminium and stealthed drives make it one of the most aesthetically pleasing cubes around, and certainly one of prettiest in Shuttle's 22-model range. The uppermost section hides a black Sony DW-D22A multi-format, dual-layer DVD rewriter. The drive's tray is accessed by pushing the silver button on the upper left-hand side, which, in turn, pushes down the stealthing flap in front.

Just below, MV has opted to install a matching multi-card reader instead of a floppy or second hard drive. Again, it's a sensible inclusion. The 6-in-1 reader supports Compact Flash, MMC, SD, Memory Stick and SmartMedia cards.

Front-mounted ports include a couple of high-speed USB 2.0, 4-pin FireWire, microphone and headphone. These four are the norm for any self-respecting cube today, and MV's looks that much classier with the ports initially hidden via the lower latch.

Shuttle's SN95G5 can be turned into a wireless wonder by incorporating an optional wireless module into the chassis. Gamers are as likely as any group to require wireless connectivity, so it's a shame that an SFF PC priced at over £1100 doesn't have it as standard.

MV uses an Inno3D GeForce 6800 GT 256MB AGP model that's clocked in at 350MHz core and 1GHz memory. It's a solid, high-end card that consistently produces decent performance in a wide range of current games. The SN95G5's single PCI slot is left unoccupied, with sound running from the nForce3 250 Ultra chipset's basic AC'97 integrated audio through Realtek's six-channel codec. But a discrete hardware card would have been nice given the price, especially as the chipset is so lacking when compared to its nForce2 APU predecessor.

1GB of Corsair XMS3200C2PT TWINX RAM, rated 2-3-2-6 at DDR400 and run in dual-channel mode, further boosts the Cubik's performance credentials. However, with the SN95G5 boasting locks for both AGP and PCI buses, synchronous frontside bus overclocking may well be limited by the RAM. I mention overclocking because of the GamePro's AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 90nm CPU. Rated at a nominal 2.2GHz with 512KB of L2 cache, retail examples of this lower-wattage CPU have scaled to 2.5-2.6GHz without the need for esoteric cooling. That makes it an excellent choice for a gamer-orientated cube. Having the ability to raise speeds to near FX-55 levels, albeit with less on-chip cache, makes it an eminently sensible choice. We'll see just how well the system overclocks later on.

Shuttle's ICE cooler uses a heatpipe. The 240W PSU also has a single fan that blows over the CPU area, so cooling has been well thought out.

The associated software bundle is more functional than extravagant. Windows XP Home is slightly cheaper than Pro, and Ability Office 2002 is less expensive than Office XP, although the latter would rarely be specified in an £1100 machine. Panda Titanium AntiVirus 2005 includes a full 12-month update, and disk-burning software comes in the form of Roxio's Easy Media Creator 7 Basic VCD edition, which is a reasonably comprehensive all-in-one solution.

Build quality, both from Shuttle and MV, is excellent. MV offers a three-year limited warranty - the first year includes on-site parts and labour, with years two and three offering return-to-base fixes with parts and labour included. That's on a par with most other system integrators.

Is the package worth the price? One method of ascertaining value for money is to add up all the constituent parts, assuming a self-build, and see how competitive MV's price is. With purchases made from competitive online retailers, the DIY approach, including software but excluding warranty support and costs incurred in building, would come in at £950-1000. So the £1127 asking price is reasonable, and it would make sense for all but experienced builders to contemplate a pre-built approach.

MV hasn't tinkered at all with the SN95G5's BIOS - every parameter is left to default. That's not to say that you can't change each setting for increased performance. CPU FSB speeds range from 200-280MHz, and inputting explicit AGP speeds effectively function as a bus-locking measure.

Again, settings in the DRAM configuration screen are left to default. Oddly, the default parameters, according to CPU-Z, are 3-3-3-8 at DDR400. That's not making the most out of the 2-3-2-6 rated Corsair RAM, and it seems more of a Shuttle SPD-detection problem than anything else.

Here's where MV and Shuttle score well: fan speeds. You have a range to choose from. Smart Fan is usually the best in most cases. You can set a CPU temperature tag of anywhere between 30-60°C, and the fan speed rises, gradually, above the 900rpm default when the set temperature is exceeded. I found that a CPU temperature tag of 40°C was sufficient to keep the fan spinning at the slowest speed, even when the system was under load. That's evidence of both how well the cooler works and just how cool 90nm Athlon 64s are. System temperature consistenly hovered 20°C above the CPU's, suggesting that the latter is probably being under-read. In Windows, Nvidia's temperature-reporting tab showed the GeForce 6800 GT idling at between 50-55°C and rising to 65-75°C when under strenuous 3D load, which is well below the card's operating tolerance and core-shutdown threshold.

There are no problems to report during a weekend of usage. MV has taken a proven platform and assembled a PC that's as stable as any other system I've tested. As a performance comparison, and perhaps somewhat unfair, is a top-of-the-line Dell Dimension XPS Gen-4 that features a Pentium 4 560 CPU, ATI's excellent X850 XT PE PCI-Express video card, and 1GB of PC4300 DDR2. It's a full-blown tower that weighs in at around 18kg, so it's on the opposite end of the physical scale to the 7kg MV Cubik GamePro. The £1799 asking price, albeit with 19in CRT and Creative speakers, puts it a notch or two above the Cubik's immediate competition, too.

It's called the Cubik GamePro, and having a GeForce 6800 GT 256MB AGP card guarantees decent performance. Nearly 4800 3DMark 05 points is proof enough of the GamePro's 3D credentials. Think of it as a full-size system with a 6800 GT. That's exactly how it performs. Sheer sub-system grunt puts the Athlon 64 3500+ powered GamePro well ahead of a 3.6GHz Pentium 4 system.

Overclocking

I had high hopes that the combination of Athlon 64 3500+ and nForce3 Ultra would yield an impressive FSB-overclocking result. CPU voltage was raised to 1.55V, DDR was dropped to maximum memory limit of 166MHz, HyperTransport frequency reduced to 3x, and AGP locked in at 66MHz. Furthermore, the fan speed was increased to the maximum setting. Imagine the surprise, or shock, of tinkering with the system for 30 minutes and only achieving a maximum, stable overclock of 221MHz, equating to around 2430MHz. Performance for free, sure, but lower than the 2500MHz or more I'd expected - reports of 2500MHz-plus are commonplaced.

Verdict

The £1127 inc. VAT asking price sounds astronomical for a base unit that's barely larger than a toaster. However, adding up the internal parts and taking software costs into account, MV's charging around £150 for the assembling, installation, and 3-year warranty support that you wouldn't receive with a self-build approach. Is it worth it, then? For an experience builder who likes to go their own way, probably not. For everyone else who wants a sexy, svelte, quiet, small form-factor PC that's ideally geared up towards gaming, and who was £1100 burning a hole in their wallet, the answer has to be yes.

Being picky, I'd like a dedicated sound card to be included in the asking price, would prefer MV to ship the GamePro with 54g wireless installed, and would pray for a sample that overclocked better than the review model. Being a gaming unit, the inclusion of a decent, new gaming title wouldn't hurt the meagre bundle. That aside, MV's component choice and reasonable asking price makes the GamePro an attractive proposition for the consumer that wants both substance and style in one beautiful package. Just add in a TFT and a set of speakers and off you go. £1,100+ is a hell of a lot of money for a base unit, but the MV Cubik GamePro is hell of a looker and performer, too.

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