Crystal A410 Barebone - the MSI way

Page 4 - Installation, test configuration

We installed on MSI Crystal A410 Windwos Vista Ultimate x32. We also tried Ubuntu 8.04 Alpha 5, which ran without problem, but we've used it very little and never did any serious testing with it. There were no problems during the installation of Windows, everything worked just fine, even without drivers - network controller, sound and video cards controllers, heck, the touchscreen was active all through the installation (though not properly calibrated). Still we installed all the provided drivers. The whole process went carefree, we calibrated the touchscreen too, just before we to get to testing.

The monitor has pretty good picture. On the front panel you can find the two standard indicator led's for stand-by and hard drive activity. The power button has a nice blue backlight to it:

Work in Windows with this configuration was smooth and pleasing, but that was expected from a computer with such parameters. The touchscreen is convenient and fun addition, but if you choose to use your fingers on it you should know that it's not all that precise. On the other hand if you use a stylus (in the clip we used one from Palm), things are much more different. Here is the clip showing the work with the touchscreen:

A few words about the audio system. Audio controller is with only two channels, which for us is a disadvantage. We can think of lot's of applications of this product hat could utilize it's audio capabilities. We sure think that a 5.1 channel sound would be quite beneficial for this product. As for the integrated speakers - there isn't much to be expected from them - small and clanging, just like mst other integrated in such systems, monitors and most laptops.

For the tests we used the following configuration:

• MSI Crystal A410
• Processor - Intel Pentium E4500
• Memory - 2 х 1GB DDR2 667 CL5
• Hard drive - 80GB Samsung, SATA, 8MB cache, 5400 rpm
• Optical drive - Lite-On SOSW-833S DVD-RW

For comparison we used the same components with another motherboard (after all the difference between a barebone and normal PC is mainly in the motherboard) in order to find out how does Crystal A410 fares against this configuration:

• Motherboard - Asus P5K-E
• Processor - Intel Pentium E4500
• Cooler - its stock Intel cooler
• Memory - 2 х 1GB DDR2 667 CL5
• Hard drive - 80GB Samsung, SATA, 8MB cache, 5400 rpm
• Optical drive - Lite-On SOSW-833S DVD-RW
• Videocard - Ati Radeon X800 XT

Due to the big disparity between the graphic controllers, we won't be making any 3D test (games) comparisons – after all that's not the main application for a barebone anyway.