The exterior
On the outside, the XPC ZEN is pretty much fully loaded. On the front panel, there are two ports for connecting USB devices. You will also find ports for Mic, Line In and Line Out, so connecting devices and audio-video equipment won’t involve you groping about at the back of the Pc.
On the rear panel, you will find the regular audio ports, and ports to connect the mouse and keyboard. Also provided are two additional USB 2.0 ports, and two FireWire ports. Since this PC uses an external power supply, you will also find the DC In port on the rear panel. But the most interesting thing on the rear panel is a CMOS clear button -a delight for compulsive tweakers when things go slightly wrong. They can clear the CMOS and start afresh by just pushing this one teeny-weenie button.
The interior
Once you open up the PC, the first thing that strikes you is the absence of an AGP slot. So if you pain to upgrade to a better graphics card, it’s not going to happen. There’s one PCI slot and two DIMM slots for installing DDR memory modules. The layout of cables is clean -the IDE cables that connect the hard drive to the motherboard are a bit short and fit snugly on to the side of the frame.
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