Biostar iDEQ 200T Review by Article Admin
When we mention the name Biostar, many people wouldn?t recognize the name right away. Regardless, the company has been around a long time and traditionally has made motherboards for the lower-cost/OEM market, but has recently made its way into the SFF market and has been making a name for itself there. The company is growing and is definitely worth keeping your eye on. The first SFF we reviewed from them ? the 200N, received excellent marks and was well met by the community. Today we will be looking at the iDEQ 200T. The 200T is very much like the 200N though it is for the Pentium 4 side of things. So let?s take a look at the specifications and get inside the iDEQ.
Specifications:
- Biostar P4TBA Motherboard
- Intel 865G Northbridge/ICH5
- 400/533/800MHz FSB Support
- 2 DIMM Slots ? Up to 2GB DDR
- 1 AGP Slot
- 1 PCI Slot
- Onboard Realtek LAN
- 2 USB 2.0 Rear/2 USB 2.0 Front
- 1 Firewire Front/1 Firewire Rear
- SPDIF Input on Front/SPDIF Output on Rear
- Front Mic/Headphone Jacks
- 1 Serial
- 1 VGA
- Internal Serial/Parallel/Gameport headers
- 2x ATA/100 Ports
- 2 Serial ATA Ports (RAID 0/1)
- CMedia 9739A 6-Channel AC’97 Audio
- 200W Power Supply
Biostar iDEQ 200T
The specifications of the 200T are pretty much what we would expect from a modern SFF. Just about everything you could want. I can imagine some wanting a parallel port on the back, but there is a slot where one can be installed and a connector for one on the board. In the picture above you can see that the external drive bays are covered. The top portion of the panel slides down to access drives. The only problem is that when down, it covers the power and reset buttons. It isn?t really an issue, but I can be a bit lazy and not want to move the cover up and down. It would be cool if they could design a button on the cover that could push either one when in the down position, but it isn?t too big of a deal. Besides, the cover gives the iDEQ a very clean, finished look and I would rather have that than some off-white CD-ROM showing.
Accessories:
Accessories
The accessories might seem to be missing something, but we?ll get to that. You can see the installation guide/manual, driver CD, power cord, SATA data and power cable, a pack of screws, some thermal grease, and bay covers for each of the external bays. While it looks like we are missing IDE cables and a floppy cable, Biostar has already installed these inside the case for you, routing them just where they need to go. Including the SATA power cable is a nice touch since even motherboards with onboard SATA usually don?t have them.
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