The two 74GB, 10,000rpm Western Digital hard drives in the Polywell Poly 939N4X2 are already primed for speed, regardless of format.
There are trade-offs, however, to using FAT32. Polywell's FAT32 hard drive formatting helps the make up for any clock-speed shortcomings in the chip. If you're worried because the X2 4200+ processor is only AMD's fourth-fastest dual-core CPU, don't be. Our Polywell Poly 939N4X2 test system uses a ChainTech VNF4 motherboard based on Nvidia's Nforce-4 chipset with AMD's dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4200+, a 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTX graphics card running on the x16 PCIe bus, and 1GB of 400MHz SDRAM-a powerful, if not over-the-top combination of hardware.
At the rear of the system, you'll find four more USB 2.0 ports, jacks for the integrated eight-channel audio, and a Gigabit Ethernet port. Two USB 2.0 and two FireWire ports sit on the lower front of the case along with microphone and headphone jacks. Two x1 PCI Express (PCIe) slots are also open for future use.
With three PCI and two memory slots available, you still get plenty of upgrade potential. The front panel has room for one more 3.5-inch drive and three additional 5.25-inch drives, but both hard drive bays are occupied. The system also gives the average user plenty of flexibility for upgrading and adding peripherals.
The Poly 939N4X2 comes with a full complement of removable storage devices, including a double-layer DVD burner, a DVD-ROM drive, and a media-card reader/floppy drive combo. Worse, we found the Polywell noisy, despite its supposedly quiet 120mm exhaust fan.
Polywell's technicians tried to organize the cables inside, but their efforts fell short of the craftsmanship we've seen from companies such as Alienware and Velocity Micro. Expansion-board installation and removal also requires a screwdriver. You can remove the side panel by depressing two tabs, and the drive bays all have quick-release mechanisms, although the drives came screwed in for secure shipping. The Evercase 4292 enclosure we received is relatively tool free. Our review system came housed in a modest black-and-silver midtower case, but Polywell offers several chassis designs and color choices if you want to jazz things up.