Just received my ARM StealthPC: First Impressions

[ChrisM]

First, let my start out by thanking everyone that shared their thoughts and opinions on their own ARM Systems. All of your input was very helpful to me in making my decision.

That having been said, I received my StealthPC last night, a Level 4 Quiet Athlon64 3200+ box.

My overall opinion of the box is that it's very nice - very high quality fit and finish, and it arrived in great condition.

However, a few quibbles with how things were configured internally that it may be worth noting for anyone ordering in the future:

I already had a copy of Windows XP and a GeForce 6800 GT, so I ordered the system without video card and operating system. When I opened up the box to install the video card, the hard drive had been installed in the bay exactly opposite the AGP slot - meaning any reasonably long video card was in no way going to fit, which necessitated moving the hard disk to a different drive bay. Also, all the remaining power connectors had been tightly bundled and tied off, usually a good thing, but this left none free to plug into my video card (or the Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro card I was also installing). This wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but snipping off one or two tie-offs wasn't sufficient. I had to clip them all in order to untangle two that would be long enough to attach to both cards. Thankfully I had spare tie-offs so I was able to tidy the cabling back up.

The only other frustration I had experienced was two-fold: First, I did not realize that the SATA cable was not connected to the motherboard when I first powered up the machine. Either it had come loose during shipping or was never plugged in to begin with because the drive shipped unformatted. My mistake was assuming the loose end I saw was a split-end connector when I closed everything back up and not the end that should be plugged into the motherboard!

That problem solved, I still couldn't get the WinXP install to recognize the SATA drive. Little did I know that WinXP doesn't come appropriate SATA drivers. Thankfully I could jump on my wife's computer, download the drivers off the ASUS site, and manually install them from floppy during the WinXP install.

A few minor glitches, but it forced me to dig into the system, which in retrospect is a good thing. I would recommend detailing exactly what you may be planning on installing yourself when you go over your order with ARM to ensure that things are configured to accomodate you. Other than that minor issue, the experience was great, the machine is rock solid, quiet, and runs pretty cool, even without a modified video cooling solution like you would get if you bought a hot card pre-installed. The only reason I can hear anything from the box at all at this point is from the 6800 GT!

Highly recommended.