After physically inspecting the iDEQ 200T, and building the system from the "ground up", it became abundantly clear that Biostar put a lot of thought into the design and layout of this mini-machine.  The cooling scheme, motherboard layout, connector placement and pre-installed cables made setting up and configuring the iDEQ 200T a an absolute pleasure...

Setup & Layout of the Biostar iDEQ 200T The New Case on the Block

At first glance, the Biostar iDEQ 200T's case is seems basic and unpretentious.  The entire enclosure, which is made from aluminum with a plastic bezel, is a metallic silver color with the obvious exceptions being the connectors on the rear of the system.  The front of the case has a sliding cover that descends to reveal the 3.5" and 5.25" external drive bays.  To gain access to the system's internals, the top and sides of the case can be removed in three separate pieces.

Like most other SFF systems, Biostar has equipped the iDEQ 200T with a useful array of connectors on both the front and rear.  At the bottom edge of the front fascia, you'll find a single IEEE-1394 connector, followed by an S/PDIF input, a microphone jack, a headphone jack and lastly two USB 2.0 ports.  The rear of the system is decked out with its fair share of connectors as well.  At the rear of the system we found line-in, line-out and microphone jacks, along with an S/PDIF output, PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, an Ethernet jack, a single serial port, a single IEEE-1394 connector, two USB 2.0 ports and lastly the DB15 monitor connector for the on-board Intel "Anything But" Extreme Graphics 2.  There's nothing really extraordinary here, but Biostar does equip the system well.

From the inconspicuous look of the enclosure, it's impossible to see the real genius behind the iDEQ 200T, the internal layout, cooling system and pre-routed cables (FINALLY!) (Editor's note:  Marco is completely anal-retentive when it comes to cable routing, he definitely has "issues"...).  From a layout / physical design standpoint, the iDEQ 200T is in a league of its own.  The first smart design move, was swapping the traditional SFF position of the AGP and PCI slots.  With the iDEQ 200T, the AGP and PCI slots are reversed, so installing a video card that requires two slots is not a problem.  The DIMM slots were also positioned well, running parallel to the right edge of the mobo, making it much easier to install / remove RAM.  The drive trays are easily removable, and the cooling scheme is well thought out.  The included copper heat pipe CPU cooler has a vertically mounted fan that blows air through the fins, which is then expelled from the system through another fan mounted at the rear of the case.  While we're on the subject of cooling, we should also mention that the bottom of the case is contoured to make contact with the underside of the Northbridge, Southbridge and the CPU socket, essentially turning the bottom of the system into a large heat plate, further cooling the motherboard's components.  The topside of the Northbridge is also passively cooled by large, aluminum heatsink.  We believe the cooling scheme was very effective, but unfortunately, the iDEQ's BIOS wasn't properly reporting CPU temperatures; throughout our testing the BIOS was reporting a core temperature around 17C, which seemed way to low. 

The system was also very quiet.  The variable speed fans used throughout the system never "spun up" during our testing, which kept the system running at nearly silent sound levels.  We saved the best for last, though.  The iDEQ 200T ships with pre-routed internal wiring.  Biostar installs, and neatly pre-routes all of the drive and power cables, which really cleans up the iDEQ 200T's internals and makes building the system a snap.  Being the neat freaks that we are, we really appreciated this unique design decision and hope other OEMs follow suit.  Thank you Biostar!

The Biostar iDEQ 200T's BIOS Not Bad, but Not Great

The iDEQ 200T's BIOS is a Phoenix / Award derivative, that should be very familiar to most of you by now.  The BIOS installed on this machine is similar to virtually every other motherboard on the market today.  Aside from the custom boot screen, there isn't really much to talk about.  From within the menus, users can configure each of the motherboard's integrated components, but there weren't any Biostar specific features.

Overclocking Experience:

If you take a look at the "Frequency / Voltage Control" section of the BIOS, you'll probably surmise that overclocking was not one of Biostar's top priorities when designing the iDEQ 200T.  That's not to say you won't be able to overclock your CPU, however, there are a decent set of overclocking options available.  From within the BIOS, users can raise the processor's Front Side Bus up to 255MHz, in 1MHz increments and the AGP / PCI clock speeds can be set to Auto, or locked at 66 / 33MHz.  The CPU voltage can be increased by 2.5% (1.58v), 5.5% (1.64v), or 8.1% (1.66v) and the DDR memory voltage can also be increased up to 2.8v, in .1v increments. 

                 
SANDRA CPU BENCHMARK                SANDRA CPU BENCHMARK
CPU @ 3.20GHZ                                    CPU @ 3.54GHZ

We set out to see just how high we could take our particular 3.2GHz P4 with the iDEQ 200T, so we bumped the voltage up by 5.5% and raised the FSB until the system was no longer stable.  In the end we hit a maximum top speed of 3.54GHz (16 x 221MHz).  Not bad, but we have taken this CPU a bit further with some other systems.

It's Time For Some Benchmarks!