AMS e-Cube EG65 Review - System Assembly (continued)
(Page 4 of 7 )
Manufacturer: | AMS |
| Product: | e-Cube EG65 |
Price: | USD$329 MSRP |
Availability: | NOW |
Reviewed By: | Jim "Justi" Miller |
Review Date: | August 2003 |
AMS e-Cube EG65 Barebones System Review
SYSTEM ASSEMBLY (Continued...):
Installing the Memory:
This is pretty much straight forward. With the drive rack out of our way the DIMM slots are easily accessable and it's as simply as popping in the memory as you would any other system..
The only thing you need to be careful of is there are some small wires ran in front of the slots and you must make certain that you don't trap any of them between the memory module and the slot. Other than that it's pretty straight forward.
Uh oh, don't look now but it appears as if we're getting close to having a system here!
Installing the Hard Drive:
You'll recall the drive rack we removed initially when we flipped open the top of the case, now is the time to fill it up. :) There are basically three drive mounting locations within the rack. At the bottom for the hard drive, right above that for the floppy, and the top for a 5.25 drive (CDRom). To mount the hard drive it's as simple as laying the drive into the bottom of the rack and lining up the holes. With the drive rack being removable this is easily done in wide open space..
Installing the CDRom:
I skipped right over installing a floppy because I didn't install one. I don't think it makes much sense to waste the space in such a small case with a device that you'll use, um, NEVER! I have a USB floppy that I use when I absolutely need a floppy for something in a system, but generally speaking I don't have floppys in any of my system. The CDRom mounting can go one of two ways. You can either install it in the rack while it is outside of the case, or reinstall the rack (remember, it's just two screws) and then slide your CDRom into place. I chose the latter because I wanted to line up the CDRom with the faceplate of the e-cube. The e-cube comes with a silver CDRom drive cover that matches the case perfectly to hide your certainly different colored CDRom.
I simply put the rack back in the case and then slid the CDRom into place. Sliding it forward as far as I could so that the button on the drive cover would properly engage my CDRom's eject button..
Alright, with all of the drives and components securely mounted relatively hassle free, it's time to cable up the system..
Cabling:
With everything now in place real estate in this case was limited to say the least. As was expected, that made cabling this thing a bit of a pain in the rear. AMS included IDE and power cables that are already downsized and cut to length for the application.
In hindsight it would have been smarter to cable the drives before they were completely installed. As it was I had to fit my fat fingers where they simply didn't fit. Please, take my advise, if you're assembling a system such as this do as much cabling as you go as possible. It makes things WAY easier in the end. :) Oh, you wonder how "tight spaced" this is?
As you can see, it's doable, but not without a few curse words escaping. :) And to show you how well thought out this design was with everything fitting just right, take a gander at the clearance above our CPU cooler.
Yeah, I'd say they knew what they were doing when they engineered this unit! Wow, now that's planning...
Alright, let's head to page five to see some assembled pics and then see what this thing can do in the benchmarking section...
Next: Assembly Complete >>
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