AOpen Case A Good White-Box Starter

Concentric Systems, Alpharetta, Ga., which builds about 3,000 white boxes per month, sources about 85 percent of the parts it uses from AOpen, said Chris Cartrett, vice president of sales and marketing.

"Concentric uses AOpen components mostly because the people at AOpen are very concerned about any problems systems builders might have, and they work quickly to solve them," he said.

The CRN Test Center recently looked at AOpen's new QF50A and found it to be a good start to a quality white-box system with plenty of room for expansion and no internal sharp edges.

The ATX-compliant case has four 5.25-inch external drive bays, two external 3.5-inch bays and one internal 3.5-inch bay. It features seven expansion slots and includes a 300-watt ATX power supply.

The case has a small door on the front panel for USB ports, but the front USB assembly itself is an option. The QF50A case has slide-off side panels for easy access. All necessary mounting hardware,even an AOpen badge for the front panel,is included.

Engineers reviewed the case using AOpen's AX45-V Pentium 4 motherboard and ran into a slight snag with the placement of CD-ROM drives. The DIMM slots and a capacitor on the AX45-V motherboard prevent drives from sliding fully into the case in the lower two 5.25-inch bays. The top two bays are free of the problem. Engineers also needed a slightly longer IDE cable to reach the two optical drives.