Biostar rolls out home hub

BIOSTAR HAD ALL THE USUAL TOYS at Computex last week - a full lineup of barebones, and motherboards galore. The motherboards were just that, motherboards in just about every configuration you could possibly want. The barebones came in 2 series, the older 200 line, and the newer 300s.

The motherboards were pretty standard fare, nothing jumped out at me. There were mostly P4 mobos, and the usual slew of i915 and i925s in every configuration you could care about. The top of the heap was the P4TAW Extreme, a socket 775 925X + ICH6RW board. Nothing special, PCI-E 16x and 2 1x slots, with 3 PCI hanging off the side, 4 SATA, IDE and IDE RAID. Like most others at the show, it was still DDR, not DDR2, but otherwise, it was right up to date.

The barebones was a little more interesting, and Biostar, like MSI has drunk the A/V kool-aid for SFF iDeq machines. The older 200s were know for their wide array of chipsets, NVidia, VIA, Intel, ATI and SiS, but were otherwise pretty standard. Occasionally you had one with TV out features, but that is hardly shocking nowadays.

The 300 line is about to change that, the 300M, a socket 478 Northwood model, and the 300G, a Prescott based 775 with PCI-E will jump in to the multimedia fray with both feet. They both have the usual ports, and S/PDIF out, a card reader, and power it with a 250W PFC power supply. Here is the 300M.

The multimedia side has an FM radio tuner, audio CD/DVD player, and a big, colorful front panel display. You can get an optional TV-out feature and a remote control if you so chose. Some variants have a large tuner knob on the front, others have CD/DVD style controllers. Can you guess where they are trying to get you to place this model? If you said anywhere near your TV or stereo, pat yourself on the head.

The part that I found coolest, and easily wins the 'unexpected addition to a barebones chassis' award is the home networking hub and router. The 300 series has the usual PCI and AGP slot, 16x and 1x in the G variant, but it also has a slot on the right hand side. This secondary slot has a home networking 4 port router built in. Very cool, and I expect this to become a must have feature in the very near future.

Another very nice touch is the way the computers open. Most of the way back, just about where the CD drive ends, the internal structure hinges open. This allows you to easily put drives in or access the main components without having to pull half the components out of the chassis. It does not flop open quite as comprehensively as the FIC (link), but it is a good thing none the less.

Biostar has some solid products coming up. If they are as solid as the first generation iDeq I put in a few months ago, I would have no problem buying any of them. If you are looking at the home entertainment side of the SFF market, give Biostar a look. µ