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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.
I was a little confused by their "heat tube".. It didn't look very well designed. Is their anyway to mod the cooling on these guys for better performance? Has anyone benchmarked how they performed when refegirated? We ceartainly firdge most of the comuters at our lan parties.... Nalanthi
I can't find my
I like these small computers, but I would rather see a PC made the same size/look as a standard piece of audio equipment (cd player or receiver size) so that I could put it in with my audio equipment and not have it seem out of place.
These cubes are small, but they're a weird akward shape.
What I don't under stand is they say the MB is flexATX but the ports are not standard flexATX.
Isn't port location and Chassis compatibility part of the ATX standard????
I run a dual pIII 700 system with a gf3 ti200 ...no, I can't make the framejump with this setup)
their test system is over twice as fast and has a much newer graphics card. My guess is that they didn't change the "com_maxfps" variable from the default of 85 to something a tad higher. I tend to average around 150 fps in q3 at 1024 in 32bit with most everything turned on. In hallways I peak over 300 (i set com_maxfps to 350 =)
-- AcquaCow
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
why they put the SPDIF Out on the front and the In on the back.
I'm using a shuttle PIII/ddr mb that I couldn't afford. It has everything, it was given to me when the capicators popped off it.
Easy to fix, though..
I know perhaps the whole idea of the XPC is that you buy the bare bones and insert the rest of the components yourself, but has anyone found a distributor that sells the machines completely-prebuilt? I've been looking for someone who does that, for a university project, and many companies are very willing to sell the basic case + motherboard, but not so keen when you ask them to equip it for you..
um, whatever dude. Those exotic PC cases are friggin HUGE! Those are nothing like these little cases we are talking about.
DIGN??? LOL, that damn thing is a boat anchor!
Maybe I'm missing something, but why would anyone need two serial ports?
One would think a computer like this would be mostly legacy free. The last computer I built was (using the Abit IT-7) and I haven't missed my PS2 or serial ports one bit.
Couldn't something more useful have been put in their place instead? Like a RCA/s-video out, as this thing would be great to create some sort of media box. Even a standard printer port would be a ton more useful.
Or maybe shuttle has a product like this that I just don't know about?
Casual Games/Downloads
These machines are actually really cool, I had my doubts but I picked up a Shuttle SS51g (SiS chipset, not intel) about 2 weeks ago. Currently I've got the following in it:
:( ) and 3D mark 2001se pulls over 13k 3dmarks at 1024x768x32, with 210+ fps on the low detail benchmarks. Overall I think this is a great chassis & MB combo. Like I said, the only real issue is when you cram it full it starts to get a little warm.
P4 2.24G
512MB PC2700 ddr
Radeon 9700Pro AGP
2x Maxtor 80G 7200rpm ATA/133
1 Teac 48x burner
Under normal working conditions (99F cpu, 110F drives) the heat pipe and single fan (+power supply fan) seem pretty adequate. The only time I notice the heat start to spike up is when I'm really pounding the drives and when I'm gaming, (CPU at about 109-111F, and drives about 120-130F). I think the majority of the heat build up is because there is only about a 1/4" gap between the 2 hard drives and there is no real airflow between them, also the fan on the Radeon only has about 3/8" clearance from the outside aluminum wall of the case.
I'm going to cut a blowhole in the case over the GPU fan and I might cut a small intake slot on the front of the case to allow some airflow across the disks, although I'm hesitant because I don't want to damage the aesthetic of the case.
From a performance perspective I've been really impressed (I replaced a Dell P330 workstation with this machine). The integrated perephrial set leaves little to be desired (I'd like an spdif coaxial digial out from the integrated audio for the old reciever I'm using with it, but that's it) 6x USB ports eliminated my need for a usb hub. The integrated ATA133 controllers provide throughput approaching what I was seeing from a PERC3/dc with 2-10K rpm U3 160 disks (no raid) that were in the P330 (even with 128MB cache). Memory performance and overall system is also right on target. I primarily built this as a game box, (running WinXP
01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
One gripe - it does not have a connector for the SPDIF output of a DVD player on the motherboard. This means that SPDIF pass-through will not work, and the Dolby AC3 track must be processed by the CPU instead of just sent directly to the stereo receiver.
BTW - I also have three SS51G machines with Pentium 4 2.53GHz CPUs running as database caching servers (Linux RH7.2). They've run without any hiccups under load for several months now. Great performers, and I think the SB51G should be similar.
Kudos to Shuttle!
---- Luke "To boldly go where no one has gone before..."