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Micro Express MicroFlex 97B

17.08.2010
The Micro Express MicroFlex 97B cruises into the category at a relatively inexpensive price of $2099 (as of August 12, 2010), but it offers impressive performance and design trappings that are in line with those of systems priced considerably higher.

Micro Express goes to the very top of Intel's consumer-CPU lineup with its inclusion of a 3.2GHz Core i7-970 processor. Combined with 6GB of DDR3 memory and an 80GB solid-state drive for system boots (alongside a 1TB drive for storage), that processor helped the 97B nail a score of 155 on our WorldBench 6 series of tests.

The , which at $2049 shaves about $50 off of the 97B's price, achieved a slightly higher score of 160. Micro Express's offering had an advantage over the HP, however, in graphics performance: Equipped with nVidia's GTX 480 graphics card, the 97B hit 126.1 frames per second on our Unreal Tournament 3 benchmark (run at a 2560-by-2100-pixel resolution and high quality). On our Dirt 2 benchmark, it produced an average of 175.5 fps. The HPE-390t, using an ATI Radeon 5770 graphics board, generated a comparatively paltry 67 fps in Unreal Tournament 3 and 59 fps in Dirt 2.

Micro Express's chassis is relatively plain, with few adornments. Aside from a wee glint of blue light emanating from a front grille as a result of the system's LED-illuminated fans, the case is jet black.

The generic look is lamentable, but the accessible, semi-screwless case makes working inside fairly hassle-free. Locking mechanisms assist you in securing 5.25-inch devices to your system, and the 97B comes with four free bays for additional upgrades; one bay is occupied by the PC's Blu-ray/DVD-burner combo drive. The same mechanisms help you install two 3.5-inch devices, as well, with one bay taken by the system's front-facing multiformat card reader. Finally, drive rails make effortless, though the interior has space for only one extra storage device.

The 97B comes with two free PCI Express x1 slots, two PCI Express x16 slots, and a single PCI slot. We weren't thrilled with the roughshod wiring job, but it's forgivable--especially when compared with how much room the system's Cooler Master V8 CPU cooler takes up. Given the sheer size of this cooling device, installing additional sticks of RAM will be tricky, to say the least. It's a shame, too, that Micro Express doesn't make better use of this monstrosity by overclocking the CPU a bit.