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Foxconn Sandy Bridge Build

A

athlon1.2

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 10, 2001
Messages
5,489
I picked up some machines for my office, and they reminded me of the "highly rated" HP SFF systems, so I thought i would share them with you.

This Foxconn SFF R50-H1 barebones is a little tight, but for the price ($139) I can't complain. The 775 ones were around $89 and at either price point I feel you get more than what you pay for. I've got some of the older ones running in another office for about 8 months, and my main complaint is poor cooling, as the case is passively cooled. They've improved over the previous generation models, mainly by adding a chassis cooling fan.

Someone threw some parts in a box, and shipped them to me:



CPU & Hard Drive installed:


Somehow it all fits back together:


Rear View


Size comparison with Dell Vostro


Total NewEgg price w/ monitor comes to just over $500:

Foxconn SFF R50-H1
Intel G620 Sandy Bridge 2.6GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM
Geforce 8400GS
500GB Hard Drive
DVD-RW
24" Viewsonic
 
My previous machine was a Foxconn Core 2 Duo. I went though about 10 sticks of ram on it. The G.Skill ram I got for it first died within a month. The Crucial I bought every time after that would last about 8 months before it blue screened. Knowing Foxconn more now than I did then, I'm not suprised, and I wouldn't by anything from them again.

That being said, I hope you have a better experience than I did, and for all I know it could have been a fluke and that all their products are solid.
 
I don't want to make any claims as to long-term reliability, but I have 6 of the older barebones (R10-G3) running for about 8 months with no issues. I also have for the same time period 3 servers running 24/7 with Foxconn G41-AP motherboards ( think the criteria to choose these was: 775, DDR3, cheapest), again no issues.
 
Can you post a pic of the PSU label? Also, how noisy is it? I bought one of the Foxconn barebones with a dual core Atom, and found it rather noisy for my tastes.
 
It's not silent but it's not terribly loud either. The server room is 20ft away and I can sort of hear the whine of 1U servers. With both in the same room I absolutely can't hear the Dell Vostro, but I can hear the Foxconn.

I think using the stock Intel HSF would be quieter, but you still have the fan in the PSU and the case fan to deal with. I used the Foxconn HSF because it seemed a little beefier than the Intel.

One of the hard drives was DOA, what a surprise.

 
Any long-term updates? Thinking about using a few of these for some free web terminals...
 
The two Foxconn R50-H1 are still running great since 8/2011, absolutely no issues and they stay on 24/7.

The six Foxconn R10-G3 (775) from 2/2011 have all been running great. Just happened to notice the PSU fan died on one (no noticeable issues like shutting down) getting Foxconn to issue an RMA isn't the best, took over a week as they only take RMA over the phone, and don't seem to answer the phone much: but one they issued the RMA they shipped the replacement within a day or two of getting the defective unit. A few weeks later Newegg did issue their own RMA and sent me a return label. All this didn't bother me that much since I had bought a spare and kept it stored away.
 
Thanks for the update. We ended up purchasing one anyways because the Atom D525 pc wasn't cutting it for flash under linux (No HW acceleration from Adobe apparently in their current linux builds).

Figured I'd toss my opinion in here, in case someone ends up reading your review anyways...


Purchased the R50-H1, a celeron 530, and 2GB Kingston RAM for use as a PXE boot webconverger box. Boots up fine off the image on our OpenWRT netgear router, and while not completely silent, it has about the same sound profile as a quiet switch/router fan. The system is exceptionally cool, generating hardly any heat, and handles un-accelerated 720P flash videos fine in Linux. 1080p will play, but stutters alot. I'd imagine tossing in a mid-spec i3 processor would probably meet that requirement, but for most users, 720p is fine anyways.
The BIOS is a little sparse, with no options for undervolting that I can tell, but overall setup is fine. The heatsink that is included can only be installed in one orientation, and in my opinion is incorrect. It has parallel rows of fins like old style heatsinks, but instead of directing heat towards the only exhaust fan, it directs it towards the RAM/back of the case, which has no fan... Not sure if using the retail boxed fan would be better, but I figured we'd just keep them as spares for the time being.

We've ordered another 9, and I'll post back with long term results in the future.
 
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