Slashdot Mirror
Shrinking the PC is a Zen Thing
TheRaindog writes "Tech Report has one of the first reviews of Shuttle's new "Zen" small form factor system, which is almost 20% smaller than current XPCs. The Zen uses a passively-cooled external power supply and variable speed cooling fan to keep the system's noise levels and footprint to a minimum. With support for the latest Pentium 4 processors and ATI's Radeon 9100 IGP chipset, performance isn't too shabby, either."
Umm, no they didn't. Remember that big white thing you had to plug into the wall and the cube? That was the power supply.
My other car is first.
...and while I'm looking at building a new box in the next few months, one option I've ruled out are these small form factor PCs.
I built my SFF system about a year and a half ago. It's a Shuttle SS51G; the first XPC they offered with an AGP slot. At the time, it seemed like a great idea: it was small, quiet, attractive, and wasn't hideously expensive, and it would allow me to have plenty of power to run Dark Age of Camelot (which was the only game I played at the time). This was especially true in light of the fact that the whole reason I was building a new PC was because my incredibly large, hot, and noisy beige box AMD system had decided to destroy itself after AMD's 'recommended' fansink died only 6 months after being installed.
The problems I've had with heat in my Shuttle, however, have been even more irritating. Those, coupled with some of the other minor annoyances from the XPC line (which I'd assume are really problems of all SFF systems) have turned me away from them.
First and foremost, I've had major heating issues. The review sites, like Ars and [H] were right when they said that Shuttle's ICE cooling system (a heatpipe, really) was quiet and kept the processor running reasonably cool. The problem is that I automatically assumed that meant that the case itself had adequate cooling, and quite honestly, it doesn't.
My first heat-related issue was with my video card; a Radeon 8500. The AGP slot in Shuttle's cases is literally right next to the case wall. I honestly can't imagine there's more than a 1/4 of an inch between the case and the fan on my Radeon 8500, which means the thing can barely breathe. I've had to underclock it to maintain stability.
Second, I had issues with the RAM causing heat build-up, too. The system defaults to a speed of DDR200, even though the mainboard supposedly supports up to DDR333. I have a pair 512 MB DDR266 sticks from Crucial; both identical. When I changed the multiplier to force them to run at DDR266, I noticed I would get more crashes and lockups, and I wasn't even running an aggressive timing configuration. Ultimately, I had to back my RAM down to DDR200.
The worst part about the heat-related issues is that there's really nothing to do about it. There's no room for expansion in the case; it's not like you can just stick another fan in there. There's barely any room for the components that're already in the case.
Other minor annoyances I've come across are the excessively spartan BIOS, and complete inability to do any work inside the case without disassembling the whole damned thing.
Don't get me wrong, Shuttle doesn't make a bad product. My XPC has great construction quality, and was rather reasonably priced. But despite their claims that these systems offer gaming-quality performance, they really don't. And they're barely any more upgradeable than a laptop.
I'd recommend one to anyone who wants a good web browser or maybe to put together a media box or some sort of small server, but for any performance-intensive, stay away.