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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.
No replies yet and the server is allready inaccessable. SlashCache! I'll gladly pay for this service.
Should check out the MiniITX boards from VIA. MiniITX. Smaller than this, and quite efficient. Not really a gamers system though.
Does XPC stand for something or was it chosen just to sound cool?
OLPC Australia
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
the latest features, like USB 2.0, Firewire..
Yeah, Firewire! It's the latest feature from 1999!
slashdot!=valid HTML
this from the person sitting behind their computer on a friday night?
i'm home ill.... i have an.. err.... excuse?
... and the ACHME power supply is a nice touch!
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
i prefer the Samba and Sabre from FIC. I have a Sabre in the car and a Samba acting as a tivo-like device in the house.
with the integrated pc-card slot, the only cable of significant length is for power. in the car, the pc slot is quite handy for sync'ing tunes to the car. something the shuttle doesn't have.
Here is another good review of the shuttle-sb51g. I have yet to see a bad review of this. I have a friend who just got his hands on one and the word it is screams like a banshee (But much quieter)
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.
The ATX and Mini ATXhave been out well before those cubes G4 Cubes.
Does anyone have a link to one of the hardware sites which visited Shuttle? (I can't remember if it was TomsHardware or Anandtech, but I've looked on both), they we're shown the new range of cases that are going to be released... especially the multicoloured ones.
I was hunting for this link the other day, trying to convince my brother to get one of the newer cases (whenever they surface of course).
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
My friend, who always wants to borrow money from me, just got this yesterday. He says it's the ONLY computer he was able to put together without ANY problems on the first try. All the drivers loaded without problems (Win XP), and it was up and running in less than an hour. He had/has the Cappuccino, too, and it was a nightmare. The sound was flakey and the drivers were crap.
He notes two things: One, it's REALLY QUIET, and two, the on-board video is pretty bad. But he loves it. He's using it for recording live music, to carry around with him, not play games on.
I can't help but feel like the end of the "build-it-yourself computer" era is near. Things are getting smaller and smaller. Parts are getting cheaper and cheaper (except RAM..). When I had a job last year repairing PCs, people would bring in E-machines with their cheap, hard to replace power supplies, and Gateways that didn't even have a serial or PS/2 port, and only supported "half height" PCI cards. While there will always be people that want a huge tower and everything "custom built", what happens when the typical desktop PC is a small black box that's warranty voids as soon as you (after finding the "secret screwdriver") open it?
Eh, I feel old, and I'm only 25.
And yeah, I think I'll be getting a Shuttle as my next case. LOOKS AWESOME!@!$
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...
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.
If I look at I have in my own pc, it seems that all my cards could be replaced with the onboard chipsets, except for adding a proper graphics card. :)
But how good is the sound chip Realtek ALC 650. How does it compare to fx a Soundblaster Live. I don't need a lot of fancy features, the digital output is fine since I can connect it to my external sub. and speakers.
Is it lacking any features that could degrade the performance in games like "Hardware Sound Acceleration". I have seen a few reviews of the shuttle PCs, but none of them really mentions if the Realtek chip is a good replacement.
Maybe it doesn't matter.
my sig
Is a different OS viable with these? I guess linux hardware support is much better than it was 2 or 3 years ago, so maybe it's a good idea. I'd hate to buy a little lunch box like this and have some piece of hardware on it not recognized/working in linux. Pretty standard stuff inside right?
why they put the SPDIF Out on the front and the In on the back.
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
fwiw, the new ones have a dramatically revamped cooling setup (invloving heat-pipes) that is supposed to be lots quieter than the SV24/25 was.
But I don't own either one, so I can't give a firsthand impression.
The Matrix is going down for reboot now! Stopping reality: OK. The system is halted.
... or, isn't this just the Apple G4 Cube done two years belatedly and considerably less prettily by the PC world...
For all those people who have been waiting for an XPC with socket A *and* AGP, it seems finally Shuttle are releasing one. I noticed the SK41G seems to have been released.. See the shuttle website here and here.
Do you have any links / advice about what was involved with this? If it's not too hard I'd like to give it a shot. (the 5V trick)
"I would rather see a PC made the same size/look as a standard piece of audio equipment..."
There are several to choose from. Check ExoticPC (which is where I bought my case.) In particular, check out the DIGN Home Theater case, the D-Vine case, and their CoolerMaster line.
My favorite is the DIGN case, which is absolutely gorgeous. It would look incredibly stylish in any home theater. You can even get the display for it and program it to show the MP3/DVD that is playing... I mean, the sky is the limit. Of course, it's $229.95 plus shipping, so you pay through the nose for those good looks.
If you're seriously interested in creating a home theater PC, I'd look no further than these cases.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
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..
How noisy is this thing? I didn't see any mention of that in the review.
Based upon the reviews so far, install a decent 60 GB ATA-133 hard drive, a Toshiba SD-R1202 CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, the upcoming ATI Radeon 9500 Pro video card, an Intel Pentium 4 2.53 GHZ CPU and 512 MB of DDR333 DDR-SDRAM into the case--it could be a very nice gaming system that will run most games decently fast and even support SDPIF out for full Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS surround decoding for DVD movies.
I recently bought and assembled one of the earlier Shuttle SV25 XPCs. It has a Via C3 866 & 256Mb or RAM, and except for 3D, its performance is pretty good. Assuming that Shuttle have improved, then these new versions should be pretty awesome, although I'd wait for the Athlon version.
The only thing which generally won't work with XPCs is the Savage graphics, 2D is pretty generic, but there is NO 3D support under Linux. Every other device was identified by RH7.3 and booted and worked no problem.
The only warning which I would give, is to ensure that whilst tinkering inside the case, that you do turn off the power, Shuttle forgot to cover bits of electrically live metal, and I found this out the hard way. The mains inlet, (which is unfused) is so very close to the CD power connector, and whilst tidying the CD power cables (with the machine off) I took a jolt, off of uncovered mains pins on that socket.
Or you could just get one decent box and invest in a copy of VMWare. Just a suggestion. You might save on KVM's and the electric bill.
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
If it's not too hard I'd like to give it a shot. (the 5V trick)
Some 12V fans will just barely run at 5V, others not at all (usually these will shudder at start, but not actually get enough momentum to keep spinning). If you wire them between the 12V and 5V rails you'll be running the fan at 7 volts, which usually works for the troublesome fans.
I assume Skyfire's new temp controlled fan is designed to run at a wider voltage range though.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
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
I purchased one of the original Shuttle Spacewalker systems a little over a year ago.
The system does it's job, but I have a big issue with it -- noise. The thing has a CPU fan that runs hard and fast. Since the CPU fan must be low profile, you really do not have a choice in replacing it with something else. There is a fan in the back of the chassis that pushes air out, adding a little noise. And finally, the power supply is very noisy, and designed very badly. It pulls hot air into it from inside the case, and pushes hot air back inside the case -- there is no transient air.
Had I know about the noise issues with the Shuttle Spacewalker before I bought it, I would not have.
I do not know if any of the modern versions have fixed these problems, but I would be wary of it.
Where are the Athlon Processor models?
Based on the good stuff we heard here on SlashDot we bought 4 Shuttle S25's to use as servers for our office, and we were pleased with how the worked...at first.
However, over the last 6 months we have now had power supplies go bad 4 times and required us to get new power supplies from Shuttle with many weeks of delay. Even one of the replacement power supplies flaked. Of the original 4 shuttles, only one still has the original power supply.
Fortunately for us, one of the 4 shuttles was designated a cold spare, so we didn't experience much down time, but it was quite annoying to have so many power supplies go bad. We don't have time to move the servers over to more reliable systems, so for now we have purchased some spare power supplies from Shuttle.
Right now we would be very hesitant to buy more modern Shuttles until we understand more about why there was such a huge rate of failure on the power supplies of their S25's.
-- Herder of Cats
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.
Usage: fortune -P [-f] -a [xsz] Q: file [rKe9] -v6[+] file1
i have about 20 sv24s, 4 ss40s, and 20 ss51gs. i've had 5 of the sv24 power supply fans go bad, but never the actual power supply.
this does appear to be a sv24/sv25 issue; the "heat pipe"-based units (ss40*, ss50*, etc) all have only one fan in the unit: an 80mm easily-replaceable sunon.
i have experienced instability on the ss40s (fixed via replacement) and power supply issues with the sv24/sv25s. i didn't use an sv24 as a router because the power supply had a fan, and i'm glad i made that choice now.
with the good amount of experience with these systems, and i wouldn't hesistate to recommend the ss50 series to anyone.
...does it STAY QUIET as the fan's bearings wear out?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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
Only non-windows? OK, how is a Windows user going to connect up an external modem? The vast majority of the people connected to the Internet from home use a modem. How are they going to do that with one of these crippled machines?
:)
Who has an external modem anymore? I haven't even seen one for sale for years. Do they still use acoustic couplers?
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..."
Has anyone tried to do this?
Especially the Athlon models could win a lot in terms of quietness. Remember: The mobile versions are relativly similar in price.
I prefer a quieter system for 100 MHz more. You barely notice the 100 MHz, but you'll notice a CPU, that consumes 30 Watts compared to a CPU that consumes 60 Watts.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel