To bring the series about PC designs right up to the present day, here is a modern low profile desktop PC. This is a generic chassis, the Foxconn DH153, which like many chassis has been adapted to “Prescott” specification when Intel decided that a vent directly above the huge CPU cooler was needed. (From comparison with the other photos one can get an idea easily of how massive the heatsink and fan assembly are on these series of Celeron CPUs)
This board (Intel D101GGC) has two PCI slots, PCI Express x1 and x16. The chipset is ATI Radeon Xpress 200, which provides Radeon X300 onboard graphics. This is a better choice than Intel’s own video chips because it can run Windows Vista Aero out of the box.
The DH153 is a low profile chassis and this illustrates the cleverness of the low profile backplane which enables the same motherboard to be used in either a full height or low profile case. All that has to be changed is the PCI cards (in some cases just the bracket on each card). There is no need for a separate motherboard design to fit into a low profile chassis as NLX required. Although there will probably never be a generic chassis as clever as the Compaqs seen earlier there are some good elements in this case. The drives are mounted in a removable sub-assembly; just disconnect all the cables and lift it out to add or remove devices. On the other hand, the power supply can’t be taken out of this chassis without removing the motherboard, and the lid is almost certainly not strong enough to support