Aopen, which has shifted from a barebone supplier to building and selling complete systems, is making the small form factor even smaller.

The popularity of small form factor (SFF) PCs have grown steadily over the past couple of years, especially among those that want smart, sleek machines, and they certainly shook full-size case makers out of their slumber. Shuttle dominates the sector, but it and most of its rivals still supply mainly as barebone systems that the customer then has to build. But that is shifting, and Aopen leaped to complete build.

Now it is trying to add its own stamp on the market with two new machines, the XC Cube M2855-11 and Pandora. The XC Cube is half the size of standard SFF cases, and comes in two designs, as a single optical drive PC and with a two optical-drive extension unit.

The main PC is based around Intel's 855GME chipset with a Celeron CPU, 1GB of DDR400 Ram, and 80GB hard drive and comes with a 17" TFT.

The PC and extension box can be hooked together via USB to work as a single system. The extention unit can be hooked to any PC, Aopen said. Both come out in July and are aimed at being used in the study or living room. The unit shown here is the main PC.

Pandora makes the XC Cube look huge, and comes in at 1.3l in size, smaller than a Mac Mini. Despite its good looks though, it is not quite as stylish as the Apple machine. It's a prototype, so may change before it finally comes out in September. The system on display was running Pentium M, so is quiet but with decent performance using the 915GM chipset, and comes with a slot loading optical drive, inbuilt wireless, two USB ports and firewire.