Cyberpower LAN Mini-H2O Small Form Factor Desktop PC

Sep 24 2010 - Want a compact desktop system that is fully capable of playing modern PC games? That is precisely what Cyberpower achieved with their LAN Mini-H2O system that offers a very compact design by using a standard Core i3 processor, liquid cooling and a dedicated graphics card with a reasonable $799 price tag. The downside is that the storage is based around laptop parts so it dose suffer from a performance hit and the power supply can't handle any faster graphic cards than what is already installed in it.

Sep 24 2010 - Small form factor systems designed for gaming aren't that uncommon. Shuttle has been producing barebones PC kits for this purpose for years. What makes the Cyberpower LAN Mini-H2O so different is its extremely small size combined with an internal liquid cooling solution. It is able to achieve this by using a mini-ITX based motherboard and some serious component spacing.

Even though the LAN Mini-H2O is very compact, it still uses a standard Intel Core i3-540 dual core desktop processor. This provides it with more than enough performance to handle today's PC games and most any task. Cyberpower does offer desktop processor upgrades all the way up to the quad core i7-875K with its unlocked multiplier for overclocking. For a small fee, Cyberpower will even overclock the system up to 30% above base speeds. Much of this is possible because of the liquid cooling system.

In order to conserve on space, the LAN Mini-H2O uses laptop sized storage devices. This includes a half-height laptop based DVD burner allowing it to fully playback and record CDs and DVDs albeit slower than a traditional desktop drive. Hard drive sizes start at a standard 500GB 5400rpm laptop drive that offers some good space at lesser performance compared to a desktop class drive. Upgrades are available for higher performance, capacity or even solid state drives.

The big surprise on the LAN Mini-H2O though is the graphics card. Even with its compact size, the internal case can fit an AMD Radeon HD 5670 graphics card with 1GB of memory. While this is a more modest graphics card it can still handle PC gaming up to the common 1680x1050 resolution and even up to the 1920x1080 for some games. Unfortunately, the space and smaller 300W power supply pretty much restricts any higher level of card from being installed.

While Intel may have elected not to integrated USB 3.0 into their chipsets, some third party companies have decided to include them on their motherboards. The LAN Mini-H2O uses a Gigabyte motherboard that includes two of these new ultra high-speed interfaces that makes for excellent external storage interfaces. Of course, if you happen to have an external SATA device, there is also a port to support it as well.

The compact size of the case also has the downside of one of the cooling fans residing on the exterior of the front panel. This can get in the way when trying to access the DVD drive and the front USB ports. It is obviously covered by a wire mesh to prevent objects from getting into the fan blades but this also means that there is little to absorb the fan noise compared to if it where inside the case.