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Review of the New Shuttle XPC Chassis
DigiKid writes "Mini PCs are all the rage these days it seems, especially for the LAN Gamers
in our midst. Shuttle
Computer has been releasing new additions to their line of XPCs, that have
the latest features, like USB 2.0, Firewire, and even support for Intel's
Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading.
This review takes you on a tour of the newest XPC from Shuttle, based on the
i845GE chipset. The benchmarks don't lie and this tiny little cube PC
holds its own versus a full sized rig." Last week I put together a 51g from them and was very impressed at how well it works and how quiet it is.
Checking out the specs, it seems a box in this case would have little over a laptop, other than 1 (count them, "one") pci slot. Which isn't so cool considering it has NO pcmcia slots, and laptops ususally have 2. Oh, and no screen or battery power. OK, we've established it isn't much of a laptop, so what does it have over a 2+ Ghz laptop with Geforce 4 graphics?
Short answer: Price!
Long answer: Ask anyone who goes to lan parties.
You don't need Geeksintraining if you're on Slashdot.
These mini boxes are cheaper, field upgradeable, use standard parts, can have up to 2 Gig of memory, 4X AGP, up to 2 hard drives......and whatta you know it takes up very little space.
Laptops have non-standard parts, most of which are not field replaceable. Laptop parts and repair costs are very expensive. Laptops also have very limited upgrade posibilities and the keyboards are itty bitty. And let's face it, laptops are plugged into an outlet most of the time.
Think of the mini box as space saving computer that's easy on the wallet as it is on the eyes.
"You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- 1976." --George W. Bush, to Queen Elizabeth, Wash
It's not the fact it's based on the Athlon that's the lure, though I imagine that's the case for some. It's more the fact it's based on the nForce2 chipset. Built-in dual monitor and Dolby 5.1 support, plus ATA-150 (I think - might be ATA-133).
Cheers,
Ian
Space is a concern in many places. For example, since getting a new daughter my old study has become a nursery. All the kit had to be moved into the spare bedroom, and I really don't want that to have a ton of ugly looking kit with fans that scream like a jet.
I'm not a gamer (well, consoles but not PC) - I've been easily lasting on my dual Celeron 533s with a TNT2-based graphics card for the last few years. By the time I upgrade, all the CPU socket and memory standards have changed anyway so I effectivly replace everything except the DVD and possibly the hard drive. For my usage pattern, one of these does very nicely.
I'm waiting for the release of the nForce2-based version but barring a terrible review of that, I'm a Shuttle customer in waiting.
Cheers,
Ian
Believe it or not there are actually hard core, fully dedicated gamers who's lives revolve around. . .an older game or two.
For me it's RB3D and especially Grand Prix Legends, a game now over four years old.
The mini ITX looks just the LAN party ticket for these games, in fact, I'm intending to use one of these boards built into a custom pedal set to make a "PCless" PC. Everything will just plug in to the pedal set base.
It's small enough and some "super" joysticks are now big enough that you could do something very similar with a joystick base. 7"x7" Joystick base, very stable, lets you rest your hands on it for extra stability AND. . . contains the entire PC!
It's a brand new world out there folks.
KFG
Where are the Athlon Processor models?
I agree two isn't enough. The nicest models of Logitech mice came only with 9-pin serial connectors. My modem, for when my DSL line goes down, requires a serial port. My VT100 terminal in my bedroom requires a serial port. The initial set-up of my cisco DSL router required a serial port. Ditto my cisco 2924 switch. My out of band management for my Linux machine (hooked-up to a modem on AA) requires a serial port. Of course I couldn't sync-up my PalmPilot without a serial port. You're right, two isn't nearly enough! That's why I have a Comtrol 16-port PCI serial card.
Doubtless you just amble into the mall and buy whatever happy-shiney peripherals are on the endcap.
For people like us who do a portion of our hardware ourselves, it's just a pain in the ass to not have serial ports available to connect them. 'Solutions' like USB are made to keep the entry cost of developing external hardware up in the 4-6 figures.
Fuck you, Bill Gates, and fuck your 'ban legacy ports from machines that want the Win-logo.'
Why was the parent moderated upward? He called for the removal of support for most of the equipment that you would connect to a computer. Think about it, there's only a few different things that connect to a printer, USB, or firewire ports, but many, many more devices made over the past 20 years have RS232 ports. So, we should just throw them all away?
I got sucked into this subtle advertising scheme last time, without checking Linux compatibility and got burned.
If this is the right machine for you then great, but be sure to look into the details first.
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