Voodoo PC Doll

12/12/03 - Small form factor PCs are a very big trend in the enthusiast community. Capitilizing on this trend is the new Voodoo PC Doll system. Built around a Shuttle XPC barebones small form factor case and motherboard, this system aims to offer high performance at a high price.

Powering the Voodoo Doll is the new AMD Athlon64 3200+. This is not the fastest of the AMD processor, but its is probably the best that one can fit into such as small PC. It offers excellent performance and future 64-bit software support. One of the downsides of the unit is the inclusion of only 512MB of memory. Since the unit only has two memory slots, this makes upgrading RAM more difficult.

Storage is also a bit of a disappointment. The 80GB Western Digital hard drive is a solid performer and a nice selection. The problem is with the optical drive. The standard drive is only a Lite-On 16x DVD-ROM drive. It would be very nice to see a burner included as there is only one drive slot available for an optical drive. Also included is a media card reader.

Video is a very strong choice with the new ATI Radeon 9800XT card. This is the latest graphics processor from ATI which should provide enough power for the most current and future games. The card is also a single slot design which is very useful for small form factor systems such as this. This could allow Voodoo to include a PCI based sound card, but they opted to use the integrated controller instead.