Final Words
Build Quality
We were fairly pleased with the construction and tweaking Polywell did for us. While there was no out of the box overclocking, the tweaks we're talking about are the little things like cleaning out the Startup menu and disabling System Restore, though those of you paranoid about losing data will certainly want to keep it on.
All the wires were neatly tied and routed well. This will of course improve airflow over a messy interior, but the one complaint we have about tying up cables like this is there will not be much slack if you need to move things around. Furthermore, the lack of give was the root cause of one heart stopping moment 20 minutes from removing the contents.
We already mentioned the "floating boxes" inside the main box at the start of the review and we're pretty sure the lack of cushioning didn't do the system any favours. Luckily for us, it was nothing more than a SATA power cable coming loose and easily repaired once we reattached it.
Support
Polywell offers both Level 1 and Level 2 support. Toll-free numbers are provided and they are available for chat 8 out of the 10 times we looked for them on their site. Level 1 is their basic support and the 6 times we called, the longest we were in queue was 24 minutes with two calls picked up in less than 5, and two over 20. In Polywell's defense, those two 20 minute plus calls were during the Christmas and New Year's period, and the remaining 4 calls were all under 15 minutes. Polywell does state in their T&C's that 20 minutes is their acceptable SLA.
The CSRs taking our calls at Level 1 were correct 4/6 times in diagnosing various issues we invented. Therefore, two calls were escalated to Level 2 who did handle the issues correctly. The two issues in question was an infinite reboot at Windows loading (unplugging a heatsink will do that) and the hard drive issue mentioned above.
Overclocking
Overclocking was rather uneventful, literally. We did test the system "as is", so that meant no special cooler for this initial OC test. The best CPU overclock we were able to manage was 208FSB, which isn't all that impressive. Disabling the onboard video and sneaking in a Koolance EXOS, we were able to reach as high as 213FSB, not too impressive at all.
Performance
Overall, our results shouldn't have been too surprising since the majority of parts used in the Polywell MiniBox 939NP are off-the-shelf parts. Many of the parts in the MiniBox we had here as leftovers from previous reviews, so it was pretty easy to match the setup.
Casual gamers can make do with the onboard 6150 GPU, but otherwise we strongly suggest pairing the system with a discreet video card if you prefer playing above 800x600. That said, gaming enthusiasts will most definitely overlook this system since SLI is AWOL and overall expansion is restricted.
Application performance was quite good, close to the performance of the nForce 4 motherboards. As you may have noticed, the performance using the 6150 GPU was slightly lower when compared to the performance with discreet graphics. Since the GPU does use some of the system ram, depending on how much you allocate, the performance will vary.
Image quality
TV capture quality was fairly weak in our opinion, which doesn't bode well since it's a HTPC solution. We think that Polywell should reconsider the tuner card with either a Hauppage or ATI offering.
The 6150 GPU is a strong performer in 2D and 3D quality. The only problem we had with it was in gaming performance, but only at higher resolutions.
Pros: Good build quality, nicely tuned Windows install, decent performance and good tech support.
Cons: Difficult to navigate website, poor shipping packaging, middling TV tuner performance. Case chosen would not be our choice.
Bottom Line: While we're not about to tell all our DIY readers that pre-built is the way to go, Polywell did a good job putting together a HTPC system. While we're not sold on their case and tuner choices, the build quality is pretty good and the system ran very well overall.
If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.
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