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Shuttle's SS50 reviewed
EconolineCrush writes "What's 200x181x280mm, decked out in brushed aluminum, and supports a Pentium 4 processor with DDR SDRAM? Shuttle's SS50 bare bones system The Tech Report has a review up of the latest aluminum cube from Shuttle, and it's an impressive little beast. Small form factor PCs are becoming more popular, and this is the first platform I've seen with Pentium 4 support, DDR, and decent on board video via SiS' 650 chipset."
was created by Dell, IBM, HP, Compaq, etc.. it would be laughed off of slashdot.
The form factor is nice, but it is heavily lacking in aesthetics.
I am sure there has been a mention of the shuttle S550 before on /.
Theres a athlon version of the shuttle as well.
... but what i want to see is low power consumption... i know that people will just talk about a laptop but thats kinda what im thinking.. just a laptop without the moniter... maybe you could put on in your car or someting...
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Shuttle also has plans for a SS40 model, which is very similar to the SS50, except for supporting AMD processors instead of the Pentium 4. It also uses the SiS chipset (745), which is very similar to the 645 Pentium-4 chipset (same GF2MX-level integrated graphics), and is even better than the surprising 735 chipset.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
This thing is nice and small, but here are some things to consider:
- It's less expandable than a normal board.
- It costs more than a normal board + case.
- Since the case is so small, the internal temperature is much higher, which may create heat problems.
Yeah, it's cute, but who really cares?? It's not like you are going to carry it with you wherever you go. If you have an office so tiny that you don't eat breakfast so you can fit in the door then buy one of these. Otherwise it's just a useless novelty IMO.
Note to moderators: please mod me up, I'm trying to get back to positive karma. I think this post deserves to be at +1, don't you??
I'd rather wait for the P4 version of this:
/ su bfamily.html
http://www.compaq.com/products/desktops/d500usd
Looks a lot nicer. Video card is not as important to me, since I would not by a small form factor as a game machine (not enough expansion)
The main problem here would be heat buildup: from the article it says a noisy fan is required just for normal operation; with a DVD drive it would just be worse due to poor case ventilation. Not to mention the extra heat from a TV-out capable video card. When I'm watching a DVD I want absolute silence in the quiet scenes...
What a cute little box. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I could cook bacon and eggs on it, though. Does it come with a miniature frying pan, too?
I know a lot of people would like it if you could just say, store your comp inside of your desk drawer and forget about it. Couple that with a flatscreen monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse, and you have a pretty elite setup. Bonus points if you could mount your CD-ROM and floppy drives on top of your desk, so that they were the only part of the computer you could really see.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I've got an SV24 (with a celeron 1000) that does an excellent job of sitting on a shelf in my closet (dorm room) serving files and running the occasional quake/half-life/etc game. Nice sexy little box, and GREAT for portability.
If it wasn't quite so loud (get a Centaur CPU, no fan! also, some people have modded the power supply fan) it would make a great little computer for acting as a portable DVD/VCD player.
One thing it could REALLY use is a handle on the top...would be perfect for carrying.
Scott
Is how useful a powerful, upgradable pc's actually are. Toss a decent video capture board in it, and some software and you got a TiVO. Toss a 802.11b wireless pci nic in and you got yourself a small little file server you can hide in your closet. Use it as a Lan Party computer. A car based mp3/gps system, etc. There is a ton of possibilites when you can shrink down the size of a normal computer into a small attractive case that you don't mind have sitting next to a tv or can stash away under something.
Shuttle's SS50 mini-barebones system
Cube power
by Scott Wasson -- April 25, 2002
SHUTTLE'S FIRST cube computer, the SV24, arrived on the scene last fall, and it created a sensation. The SV24's compact form factor, wealth of built-in features, and potential expandability left our minds reeling over the possibilities. Sold as a "mini-barebones system," the SV24 could be outfitted with a processor, storage, and a single PCI card as its owner saw fit. We could build a home DVD player, or a purpose-built PC, a web-surfing terminal, or just a nice computer for grandma. Fully decked out with a 1GHz processor, the SV24 could become a fairly powerful little system.
Much as we liked the SV24, it wasn't without its faults. The form factor was, if anything, actually a little too small. The inevitable wave of SV24 copycats and competitors, like the Pandora S, offered more room for expansion and a much-improved vertical PCI slot configuration. And small as it was, the SV24 still sounded like a much bigger computer. The din of the SV24's exhaust fan was enough to lull an overworked tech writer to sleep at the keyboard.
The SV24's biggest drawback, however, was its outdated Socket 370 platform. See, truth be told, we like the cube-PC-as-second-computer thing, but some of us prefer the option of replacing our massive tower cases altogether. Maxed out, the SV24 could accommodate a 1.13GHz Pentium III processor with a 133MHz front-side bus and PC133 SDRAM. That's a recipe for a brand-new Apple or an outdated PC; we considered it a little pokey. An updated version of the FV24 motherboard added support for faster PIII "Tualatin" processors. Yawn.
We said when the SV24 arrived that Shuttle ought to "sell a bundle of these things." And perhaps they did, because Shuttle is already launching a pair of powerful successors to the SV24. These new cubes address most of our complaints about Shuttle's original cube systems. The system we're reviewing today will support Pentium 4 processors as fast as 2.4GHz, and an Athlon version is reportedly on the way. Depending on your needs, this cube might just--maybe, possibly--be able to replace your desktop system altogether. To that end, we've benchmarked this thing to see what happens. Can a cube fulfill a PC freak's desire for both high style and high performance? We'll find out.
The new cube
Shuttle's SS50 is significantly more advanced than the SV24 in a number of ways, but before we get into that, I'm sure you'll want to get a look at the SS50. As you can see below, the new cube is just a little bit larger than its predecessor.
The Shuttle SV24 is just a shade smaller than the SS50
Obviously, Shuttle hasn't strayed from the original mini-barebones system concept. The SS50 is larger than the SV24, but you'd only notice the extra size when comparing the two systems side by side. The most obvious changes are the number and orientation of the PCI slots: the SS50 packs two vertical PCI slots that rise directly off the motherboard, eliminating the need for a PCI riser card. Shuttle has also equipped the SS50 with an additional IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port up front and a third mini-DIN audio port for six-channel surround sound.The SV24 has only one horizontal PCI slot while the SS50 has two vertical ones
No, I'm not kidding about the surround sound. It's for real. But I'm just getting started on the specs.
More here.
I have an SV24 (the previous model, actually smaller and uses a P3 Coppermine CPU)
The thing is quite nice looking and incredibly well laid-out. Everything inside it is so tight you have to carefully fold your ribbon cables, but man does it look cool all stuffed in there. No overheating problems BTW, though it is a touch too noisy for an always-on media server. I used the extra PCI slot to throw in another NIC and now it is my very-capable home firewall/DNS/Web server running Gentoo Linux.
Jeremy
someday slashdot.org will have to stop posting reviews of every new computer like this - i mean, as the article said, small form factor machines ARE becomming more popular!
If the plastic is too hard, or if that's not good enough, put a resistor in the LED circuits. (However, I don't know crap about electronics and could probably get something as trivial as that wrong, so if I am wrong, please correct me.)
The point of these boxes is to be small, and unobtrusive as possible, correct? (See Apple G4 Cube) P4 + DDR SDRAM? I guess all of us could use a few more degrees in our computer room saunas. The preceeding comment was brought to you by Captain Morgan. Yes, you and the Captain CAN make it happen!
The problem with computers is that they do what you TELL them to do, not what you WANT them to do.
the price would've been much, much steeper if any of those 4 would've built this.
This is reatailing at $350 bareboned
pretty cheap
"200x181x280mm" ... "the latest aluminum cube from Shuttle"
As the object is a cube,
200 = 181 = 280
Therefore,
200 = 181
19 = 0
and
280 = 181
99 = 0
Therefore,
99 = 19
80 = 0
Cool... I like these new cubes. Next lesson: Using the circumference of a Pepsi can to disprove the theory of relativity.
- Jester
Come one Shuttle! What do we have to do to get an AGP port in one of these things!?
with pics too ..
ViaHardware
2. Buy new shoes, make mental note to run faster for bathroom next time.
Dude! you're getting a SS50!
http://www.american-media.com/ the gBox P4 comes with an AGP port.. then I can really use it as my lan party box
Slashdot :So unless you pay mr Neal the amount we agreed upon bad things may happen.
Techsite : What ya gonna do tony. You can't do business like this.
Slashdot Tony: Lets just say your site will pay oh yes they will pay.
Techsite : You will never get the money from us.
Mr Neal : Tony unleash the hounds upon the site. Make a example of them.
Hounds : oo tech review lets check out the website.
Techsite webserver : AAAAAHHHH!!!!!!*puff of smoke*
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
here's something i've always wanted to ask in Slashdot : Why do you have so many links in posted stories? When you have a link to the tech report story, why is the site's home page linked too? Is it that we don't know enough to go to the site's home from the story itself? Or perhaps you want to show off your l33t html coding skills by putting in one more of those ooh..so geeky.. < a href >'s ?
That's a goatse.cx troll! DO NOT CLICK!!!
You could have MAME and other emulators running on it, and just connect up some Playstation controllers via a USB adaptor. Then it could double as a DVD/video/music system via an infrared remote control, cordless keyboard and/or mouse. It wouldn't be that expensive either as looking at the specs it looks most above are already taken care of. The only concern would be the noise generated but I don't know enough on that to comment. Maybe you could downclock the machine and use a smaller fan.
Anyone know the availability of these in Australia? I couldn't find anywhere via google that sold them locally.
aus.music.scrapbook
One person measured the SS50 at 56dba:
:P
Viahardware Small Form Factor & Quiet PCs Forum
And a number of ppl on that forum have complained about the noise--the SV24 was loud, but the SS50 is even louder
Apparently the excessive noise is die in large part to the crappy PSU fan, but
And incidentally, for the crowd that thinks undervolting the fan or using a low rpm fan is the solution, note that at 26'c ambient, the CPU already measures >50'c (more figures on page three of the above link).
-Your Ex
anything with a SiS chipset again after the bloody time I had getting my last one to play nice with Linux :-(
...the site has been Slashdotted, and it's four o'clock in the fucking morning. Don't you people ever sleep?
Oh, don't give me that crap about Ukians on the other side of the world. We all know the earth is flat and that Ukians are a shameful Liberal myth.
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
These make great little routers... We are rolling them out to approx. 10 stores at the company I work for... yes, they're WAY more than we need for a router, but the "IT" person in corporate that I had to fight tooth and nail with to go with a Linux solution was only won over by way of the "that's neato" factor than by factual and financial information (I was competing against the vomit-inducingly overpriced watchguard fireboxes... nice product and all, but pay a per-user fee and negate the possibility of running other services or protocols, ever? fuck that.)
-DrMPF
<Leslie Neilsen mode=on >
Sit on my lap Timmy! Oh, it's ok, I'm not a priest!
</leslie Neilsen>
would it be legal? sounds like an unauthorised copy to me where the banner owner don't get any hits. I imagine that caching pages would cause more problems than it solves
dave
off that box. It crashed and burned under the mighty slashdot.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
I bought one of the Shuttle SV24s this winter after reading several reviews of the machine. I've never had a machine that was so unstable running Linux. Played with win98 on it just for kicks and it ran fine. Tried several different flavors of Linux on it and each one had problems with X randomly crashing, sound was hit and miss and the overall performance was disappointing. It may make a good little file server but it was lousey as a desktop. Unless they've done something radically different with these newer boards I wouldn't touch it with Linux.
Calling the fans loud would be a gross understatement. Replace them all with some ADDA fans and at least that problem goes away.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Half my kingdom for a mini PC (available in .au) which takes a AMD processor, has built int ethernet, a PCI slot and an AGP slot.
No, the problem most geeks have with Compaq/HP/etc. machines isn't just price-based, it's standards based. If you build a machine yourself or buy this barebones Shuttle system or something similar, you're getting a more standard, interchangeable design, often with more expandability.
See, most 1st-tier mass-market PC companies have their motherboards manufactured according to proprietary designs by companies no one's ever heard of. They seldom live up to ATX or MicroATX or any similar spec, instead using strange form factors that often necessitate weird 2-piece motherboards with segments connected by ribbon cables. This was the case with 2 PCs I opened up recently, a fairly recent Compaq and an IBM. The PCI slots were on a PCB placed at a 90-degree angle to the main PCB.
So, good luck ever moving it to a different case. Not that you'd want to, because while motherboards designed by retail by reputable manufacturers are designed for a large measure of expandability, motherboards designed for big OEMs aren't. I bought my motherboard nearing 2 years ago with a 600MHz Duron and can upgrade to any socketed Athlon or Duron with a 200MHz FSB; if I'd bought a Compaq, odds are it would have used the obsolete slot design, and even if it used the socketed processors it almost certainly wouldn't have the multipliers and support logic for the higher clock speeds.
See, Compaq and the other tier-1 PC OEMs don't have a vested interest in letting consumers upgrade their existing PCs. They want to sell new ones. This is in contrast to the retail motherboard market, where there's competition and smaller OEMs and DIYers are the target market. So, whereas a Compaq is likely to have a limited multiplier range, few BIOS updates, and still be using hardware jumper settings, a retail mobo will be likely to have a complete multiplier range, frequent BIOS updates to support newer features and processors, and have more settings accessible in the BIOS rather than in hardware jumpers.
In addition, a Compaq or similar will likely have integrated peripherals geared toward being as cheap as possible, which usually means fewer features and more CPU and RAM dependence. Which reminds me--memory upgrades on Compaqs can be a nightmare. On most retail mobos you'll get 3 RAM slots--at least 2, but usually 3 and on rare occasion on better-designed full ATX boards, 4. On Compaqs and the like, they can make it really weird; for example, a Compaq I recently upgraded had its manual state that the first RAM slot could accept up to a 128 MB dimm, and the second could accept up to a 64MB dimm. Huh? What? Why? A *real* motherboard manufactured for retail by one of the better Taiwan manufacturers would, at the time, have had at least 2 dimm slots, capable of accepting up to 512 MB dimms each. Not that weird bullshit about one 128 MB dimm and one 64 MB dimm. I still don't understand that one...
Anyway, it's about more than just price. It's about quality, it's about adherence to standards.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Hmmm. "Bareboned" sounds like a good title for a pr0n film that takes place in a computer store...
:-)
"Oh yes! Gimme access to that CPU slot!"
"No mister, your multiplier's too big!"
"Don't worry, baby, I'll tweak your jumper settings before I slide it in..."
"Don't forget to put on your heatsink! And use a little arctic silver to...make it go in smoother..."
Bareboned. I like that new word.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Even when every other fan is replaced, the power supply fan is so loud and annoying that it's beyond redemption.
The fan itself is tiny, and spins incredibly fast, leading to a high-requrency whine. So it's not just quantitatively loud, but qualitatively aggravating as well.
If you buy one, don't say you weren't warned. (And don't even think about using it for a "media center". You may as well put a Hoover Upright next to the TV.)
I've got one of these and it isn't very loud at all. My CPU stays a cool 40 C most of the time, so the fan is able to stay at 2400 RPMs, even when the fan has to speed up when the CPU heats up (which is customizable in the BIOS), it isn't too incredibly loud. My laptop overpowers this thing by a quite a bit. Maybe they just put a noisy hard drive in =]
What?
Does anyone know of an out-of-the box quiet alternative? I am intersted in a compact
compute server, so graphics and sound are not really a biggie.
Major copyright issues.
It might be legal for Slashdot to set up a caching proxy server, (like ISPs do), but can you really see that?
Hmm, that might just be a subscriber feature. . .
This has been addressed by the editors MANY times. They will NEVER do this. It's a copyright issue. They can only link to sites and not actually copy content or they will violate the copyright of the other site owner.
Pervert! :)
click here to jump!!11!
People are complaining hard about the noise
from the power supply fans in some of these
small form factor PCs. The problem is you are
stuck with a hard-to-replace small power supply which may be noisy, built into the case.
Here's an idea, how about remove the power supply from the PC case entirely. Just put a connector on the PC to accept 5V and maybe +/- 12V.
You don't need 110 VAC
flowing into the machine, it just needs 5V internally. The +/- 12V don't need much power, and could probably be run from a small DC/DC converter in the case. But the high current 5V supply should come from an external box. It could be a
big quiet power supply tucked under a desk or something. It seems stupid to keep buying expensive high-end quiet power supplies for a PC.
Well, an ss25, actually - for one of my employees who uses mostly word processing and other various office suite things. With a flat screen, a 1 Ghz CPU, and 256 megs of ram, the whole thing came out to less than a grand. Runs great, but the graphics don't quite cut it for 3D tasks.
More importantly - my employee loves it, mostly for the size. My daughter wants one, too. For most tasks, it's a pretty cool machine.
The editors claim that they can't mirror sites before they get slashdotted because of copyright issues, yet taco can post the full text of the page here? That's baloney. The bottom of the tech report states "All contents copyright © 1999-2002 by The Tech Report, LLC. All rights reserved." yet Taco has just copied the content to make money on his own site (if you think slashdot isn't around to make money then you're a bigger fool than I).
As usual, the editors treat the readers like mushrooms - keep us in the dark and feed us shit. Way to go, taco.
If you want to sell tons of these....
. whatever... Just please please make one that has an AGP slot and no onboard video....
MAKE ONE WITH AN AGP SLOT AND NO ONBOARD VIDEO.
Dammit, I want a nice tiny lan-party box... I want a Geforce3 in it. I dont care about any pci slots or the super-crappy integrated video. (integrate audio if you wish, integrate 10/100,firewire,USB,DSP,TCPIP,MSETP,GPs,DVD,MEEP.
and if you want to make one with 1 AGP and 1 Pci so I can install a real soundcard and make it double duty as a lan-party box / portable digital record/mastering system.
they could do it... I know it..... I want my AGP slot.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
She will be missed by all
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Sorry but this planet is better off with her gone..
She heppily set fire to her ex-lovers home when he didnt buy her the right kind of Nike shoes.
Oh yeah... she was real loveable...
NOT....
maybe I'm mistaken, but, didnt I buy something like this, in a much nicer form factor over a year ago from a company called Apple? I'm sure I did. In fact, yes, its sitting on the desk next to me. Innovation is only innovation if you INVENT IT. Not to mention doing something nobody has done before. Cube systems were built, marketed and sold by apple previous to this. They worked and they were well liked. However, most people out there werent ready for a cube computer. yay, this is yet another moment in history when someone built something thats allready been done yet the whole world in its short-sightedness, missed the real deal. oh well. Apple gets the credit again.
You really are a moron, aren't you?
I have no problem with Taco posting the page's contents here. Nobody seriously thinks he was trying to steal our article. I just wish our server hadn't blown up!
For the record, our server usually handles a Slashdotting pretty well, but this dead-of-night episode caught us off guard. Things when kablooey when our log analyzer cron job kicked off and chewed up all the memory. Doh! And I thought it would be safe to run it in the wee hours of the morning...
The VIA Eden Plattform has everthing on a board:
The processor core: x86 that doesn't need active cooling.
Graphic, sound, ethernet...
plug in as much RAM as you want, an additional PCI and there You go. The smallest PC I have seen for so little money.
http://www.viatech.com/en/Products/eden.jsp
I just got mine last week with a P4 and 1GB RAM. It runs great. I have the 1.80A P4 OC'd to 2.2 GHz and it's rock stable.
A couple of observations:
* With the fan guardian on, the fan is not noisy at all, and only speeds up to the point of being audible during very long compiles, even with it overclocked.
* I tried a small form factor AMD XP 1700+ (*NOT* the SS40), and it generated much more heat than this does. I am just guessing, but I imagine the SS40 is going to have much worse heat problems than the SS50.
I hightly recommend the SS50 to anyone looking for a luggable box.
Here it is:
http://www.shuttleonline.com/
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
No AGP support. Onboard video sucks, badly. When the AMD version comes out, I pray it has an AGP slot... then I will run right out and buy it. Until then, who cares... the onboard video solutions are just not very good.
If you threw in a 40 gig hdd, a video card with composite out (or use the svid if your tv supports it), 256 megs of memory, and the slowest cpu that works (as long as its over 1 ghz, it should be fine, since we want coolness instead of power), and you'd have a cheap but effective emulation gaming box set to hook up to the tv. Throw Windows 98 on it, install MAME, neoRageX, Nesticle, zSNES, Massage, no$GMB, and whatever else you want, add a few USB joysticks (AxisPad Pro works for all of the above examples, and is very similiar to the playstation controllers with analog sticks), and you have yourself the perfect retro emulation box for less then half a grand. There should be enough room left over for about 30 gigs of music or video too, which, if you sacrifice range of playable games and go with linux (which one day, might actually have the mapper support that nesticle or fwnes includes), you could make yourself a homebuilt tivo with the addition of a TV tuner.
I'm drooling now.
Halloo My Name is Cmdr. Tacooo and I pronounce it Ruub Muulduh. Do you belive me? Huh? Did I fool yah? Huh?
Hmm, that is interesting -- thank you for the post. I was tempted to buy the new one because my 24 is too damned loud, and the article actually says that it can be adjusted to be much quieter with a BIOS tweak...
Via EdenManufacturer's page
Good features:
Fanless operation
Eq to Pentium 533 (< 10db?)
integrated decent graphics with iDCT compensation for DVD
ATA-33/66/100 support
10/100 Mbps Ethernet
MC 97 Fax/Modem
TV-Out (S-video)
1394
USB 2.0
AC 97 codec
Compact package
Quiet HDTV home entertainment with following add-ons:
Ultra-quiet DVD drive
160G HD
HDTV Card
Decent 5.1 sound card
Roll your own software
Estimated cost $900
Connected to a 5.1 receiver w/speakers, this gives you a good sytem which plays all music formats, DVD player, acts as a DVR (for both NTSC and HDTV formats, > 40 hrs.), file server, reasonable gaming.
Gerry
my $0.02
Manufacturer's page
Review1
Review2
Review3
umm, did you look at the user number/name? that is not the real cmdrTaco, it's an imposter.
-- free as in swatantryam - not soujanyam.
When I first looked at that link, I wasn't too impressed. Then I noticed that that box has an AGP slot! Awesome! Someone further down below provides this link to what looks like the same box: http://www.american-media.com/
/. has posted the content of a site, when it was just text. The owner of the content bitched and /. had to take it down from the article. I'm too lazy to look it up but I know it happened this year. Any way as others have said it causes more trouble than it solves.
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
If it was a little quieter and had an AGP slot, I'd be all over it. Otherwise, your stuck with a GeForce 2 MX400 PCI version if you want anything like gaming video.
this
:)
Similar size, but much prettier
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
That wasn't "CommanderTaco" it was "CommanderTaco (editor)" Which is an etirely diffrent person, and in fact, the 564,483rd user to sign up
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Anyone running a nVidia nForce Micro ATX mobo yet? I'm thinking of getting an Abit NV7M... just looking for a little aluminum cube like this one that will hold that mobo - and have a big enough power supply to drive an Athlon.
/. rox0rs.
That way you'd actually have somthing you can game on... I'm currently gaming on a Dell inspiron 8000 w/ geforce 2 go.
p.s. Way to re-post this ss50 story. You already reviewed it about a week ago. Yay,
-dc
Linux works GREAT on the SV24 for me... I've got one with a Celeron 850 running Mandrake 8.2, serving as a web server, Squid proxy, etc. I also use it as my Linux desktop via VNC.
/are/ loud... even my SV24 is loud after switching the case fan and down-volting the PSU fan. The 1U CPU heatsink that comes with the SV24 is very whiny, and I need to replace it... of course if quiet is important, you can always put in a Via C3 CPU and not have a CPU fan at all!
It also has a Crystalfontz LCD and LCDProc running, so it's a lot like those web "cubes" that Cobalt used (?) to make:
http://karlo.org/archives/000247.php
Right now it's been up for 9 days, but it hasn't crashed once. Installed fine from the CDs on the first try, no weird settings or anything, no extra drivers.
There is a lot of traffic about the SV24/25 and SS50/40 on the Viahardware.com Small Form Factor Forum... so far, nobody's had problems using them with Linux.
And yes, they
Also, everyone wants AGP, bigger CPUs, etc but then complains about the noise... smaller boxes with the same heat-generating components are going to be LOUDER... if you want quiet and small, expect to use a smaller, cooler CPU and vidcard -- and think about a more efficent OS than Windows!
The gumballs at /. either need to sign up with Akamai or hack something up to cache links. The /. effect is not going to go away, it is going to get worse as more and more geeks use and abuse this source of gooberupment disinformation.