Digital Trends

FIC Condor

August 5th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Components and Configuration

The Condor packs a motherboard, power supply and room for two 3.5-inch hard drives and one 5.25-inch optical drive. Based on Intel's i865G Springdale chipset, the Condor supports Pentium 4 and Celeron processors from the Northwood and Prescott families. It does not support the older Willamette core. The chipset also supports up to 2GB of PC3200 DDR SDRAM, a 4/8X AGP video card, two ATA 100 devices, and two SATA devices. For expansion the system comes with two available PCI slots and a full sized AGP slot, which is typical of most SFF systems. There is no IEEE1394/FireWire support on this system but it does have a total of six USB 2.0 ports. The motherboard also features an integrated Intel graphics processor. For complete specifications please click on the specifications tab located above this review.

Design and Features

Many great design concepts either skew towards the radical to the minimalist. On the radical side, companies like Alienware, Falcon Northwest and VoodoPC have come up with very innovative and new designs. And on the minimalist side products from companies like Sony and Apple are more function than form, with style coming from subtle lines and soft colors. The FIC Condor tends to lean towards the radical end of the spectrum.

Unlike other SFF systems, the FIC Condor is more rectangular than square in design with a height taller than its competitors. And also unlike some others, it does not have a handle on the top for easy carrying. We were told that the FIC Condor was developed jointly between Intel and FIC and was primarily intended for the Japanese market. But as gamers here in the U.S. have already known, a portable system usually makes a better gaming system, so FIC decided to bring the Condor Stateside.

From an aesthetic perspective the FIC Condor seems to take design cues from Robocop. A dull, flat silver color is highlighted by black on the bottom and a few shiny mirror-like plastic panels on the front and the top. The front face is very clean looking with the DVD/CD drive and the floppy drives hidden behind vertical plastic doors that open once their button is activated. This is highly unusual for an SFF system as well — all of the drives are positioned vertically. The power button is located in the middle of the front of the case while the audio and USB ports are located behind a black lower door which flips open when you press on the face plate.

On the back of the system there are four USB ports, PS2 keyboard and mouse ports, and audio inputs and outputs. The only digital audio output is located on the front of the system which doesn't make much sense. Most gamers use headphones when taking their system with them and would the analog audio output — making it more useful on the rear. Conversely, home theater enthusiasts typically would use the digital audio port, but it would make more sense for that to be located on the rear of the system.

One cool feature about the FIC Condor is how you access the inside of the system. By sliding a button forward on the top of the system, the FIC Condor opens like a suitcase revealing the components on the inside. This feature is reminiscent of the old Apple G4 tower systems and how they would open. This makes it easy to build a system based on the Condor and easy to upgrade, but a side-effect of this (or perhaps the reason) is the vertically mounted optical drive.

Opening the bottom reveals front USB and audio ports

One major concern we have with this system is the power supply. Rated at only 200 Watts, gamers will have to carefully choose which video card they want to use with this system. The new NVIDIA 6800 video card for example recommends that you use a 350 Watt power supply while the 6800 Ultra recommends a 480 Watt power supply. ATI's video cards are not as power hungry, but we have to question whether a 200 Watt power supply is sufficient enough. Falcon Northwest's Fragbox II was just announced at the time of this review and features a 520 Watt power supply in a small form-factor design.