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One thing that could and should be improved upon is the way Biostar deals with the power distribution to the hard drives. There is a single Molex connector routed from the PSU to a location close by the hard drives, to this a splitter is connected that has two Moles connectors as well as two SATA power connectors. This makes it quite messy around the hard drives, which is a shame since all the other cables are so neat. Although, the iDEQ 330P is pre-wired for SATA you can easily replace the SATA cable with an IDE cable. However, as the two drives will be placed horizontally side by side it will be quite awkward to connect up via IDE.

The iDEQ 330P isn’t perfect but Biostar had definitely brought something new to the SFF barebone market. It’s never been easier to assemble one of these dinky machines; a great leap forward. But performance matters as always and I don’t think anyone will be disappointed by the iDEQ 330P. With an overall SYSMark 2004 score of 202 this is a very competent little machine and the PCMark 2004 score of 4908 backs this up.

Price wise Biostar beats the Shuttle SN25, not by much. Admittedly, the external design of the SN25 is much more appealing but as I have yet to test one I can’t say if it’s better or worse than the iDEQ 330P. Until I do, the iDEQ 330P is my first choice for a Socket-939 SFF system.

Verdict

The iDEQ 330P is amazingly easy to assemble, offers a rich feature set and good performance to boot. It’s just a shame that Biostar didn’t spend some of its R&D money on a design company, as good external design always seems to win over great engineering.

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