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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."
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."
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
More here.
"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
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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).
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?
I've got the latest Skipjack beta running on my SS50 just fine. Only problem initially was with the video, but I found a helpful person on the XFree86 mailing lists that makes drivers for the SiS chipsets and now for the most part, everything works great. (If I had more time to test the drivers, it would probably work even better, but I hardly get the chance to install his daily releases of them as it is). If you have one of these and want to know where to get the video drivers for X, send me an e-mail. I don't dare post a link to his website for fear of killing it.
The fans on the SS50 are not very loud at all. Even when they speed up they are fairly quiet, not much worse than my other PC. I suppose if it wasn't sitting next to my monitor and under my desk, I'd probably hear it even less =]
What?