Sound Tests - Subjective Listening
The 8-channel Realtek ALC880 CODEC is on par with our previous experiences with the same chip. While it will pale in comparison to the high end Audigy cards, we found the CODEC acceptable for DVD and gameplay. Compared to non-HD enabled Realtek chips, we did find the overall sound quality a bit stronger.
Sound Tests - Performance in Gaming
We fired up UT2003 and ran through the Inferno demo and collected numbers at 640x480 (Min detail) and 1280x1024 (Max detail).
At the lowest resolution, we see the CPU take the hardest hit, losing over 23 frames per second with the onboard sound enabled. A loss of just over 1 frame occurs at 1280x1024, which isn't too bad at all and in line with our experiences with the Realtek CODEC.
Overclocking, Noise and Heat
Like we covered in the BIOS section of the review, you won't find any results here.
The mPC 945 is surprisingly quiet considering the closed quarters and 3.6GHz CPU. When the fan spins up, it does get loud, but compared to the Soltek QBic, it's much quieter since it does not have the side fan as the QBic. The temperatures are also lower than the QBic, which at times cracked 70°C. the mPC 945 kept under 60°C most of the time, and the only time it hit 62°C was when it maintained 100% CPU usage for more than 3 minutes sustained.
Final Words
The MSI mPC 915 was a solid SFF and a nice return into the market by MSI. The mPC 945 doesn't change the formula too much, but you do get a more modern chipset and some nice features that really are required by the majority of enthusiasts, though at the same time, there are a few items missing.
First the good. The mPC 945 adds support for 8xx series of Intel Dual Core CPUs. Newer chips are on the market now of course, but if you were an early adopter and want to hold on to these CPUs, the mPC 945 would make a nice home and will not be out of place either on your desk, between your TV and XBOX 360 or even as a LAN gaming PC.
HD Audio, and Gigabit LAN are welcome additions and "modernizes" the mPC family. The WiFi connection is an option and was offered as such with their previous mPC, but needless to say, this does give the user more options about the PC's placement should there be no hard wired Ethernet connection near by. The mPC 945 is not terribly noisy and much quieter than the majority of full desktop PCs. Temperatures are kept in check, and most of the time, stays under 60°C. Stability was never in question, and performance was quite good at stock speed, slightly faster than MSI's previous mPC 915. It still has to do a bit of catch up to the Soltek, but we'll get into that shortly.
The main gripe some people will have with the mPC is the fact that there are no overclocking options. Naturally, for performance enthusiasts, this will be a show stopper, but on the plus side, this keeps the system stable. Still, even with the newer chipset, in most cases, the mPC 945 still lagged behind the QBic by a small margin. We don't think this difference is enough to really make an impact on real-world performance in non-benchmarking scenarios, but it does take some of the fun out of tweaking a computer. Another obvious downside that affects all SFFs is the upgrade options will be slightly limited. We could not get a 7950GX2 to work, likely because of the 260W PSU. Intel's latest C2D chips are also out of the question.
That said, we do think that anyone looking for a classy computer that doesn't eat up a lot of desk space will be very happy with the MSI mPC 945. Despite the lack of enthusiast performance options, the box is still very fast, and looks pretty sharp as well. For LAN gamers, it's easy to carry and armed with Gigabit networking, lag should not be an issue with it. There are some obvious limitations in the upgrade path, but the mPC 945 is modern enough to handle most mainstream needs.
If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.
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