With the sleek, minimalist design the Duet would look right at home in most any entertainment center. As mentioned previously, despite the small dimensions the Duet accepts full size components such as a standard ATX motherboard, power supply and video card up to 8" in length. Although this should allow the use of many graphics card chipsets (excluding the GeForce 8800 series) the video card slot is in direct contention with power supply depth, so pay attention to your hardware dimensions carefully. More on this later.



Tearing into the box, we find the Duet protected by a layer of plastic with Styrofoam end caps. From my experience, Styrofoam is inferior to the softer, closed cell type foam used by some manufacturers in their packaging. As I've seen in other cases, the high gloss finish of the Duet is slightly marred by light scuffing near the ends caused by rubbing against the Styrofoam during shipping. Although only visible under close examination, picky buyers could most likely buff these marks out using a light automotive polish. Otherwise the paint quality on the Duet is top notch, with a highly reflective, deep gloss black surface contrasted by a brushed aluminum accented front panel.