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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."
Do these systems automatically trottle down the CPU as well to decrease system heat?
Shuttle once again raises the bar. They are one of the few companies out there doing something intresting with bland PC architecture. I still love my old SS50, now may be the time to pick up my next Shuttle.
This thing looks almost identical to the Soldam Polo series, the first of which came out around two years ago.
So what's new about this?
Why not kill two birds with one stone (or keep two beatsies alive with one hack). Perhaps you have an ultracompact PC that needs cooling and a nice expansive fish tank that needs warming. So you build a sealed PC module that sits in the tank and makes both the fish and the CPU happy. A sealed cable runs from the tank to a breakout box. A passive convective heatsink in water could easily disappate the heat much more effectively than can air.
The rule for tank heaters is 4 W/gal, so a 200 W PC is perfect for warming a 50 gallon tank. A temperature sensor in the water would control the clock-speed -- underclocking if the fish got too hot. An occasional cleaning would keep algae from ruining the heat transfer coefficient.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I've built and used three Shuttle XPCs, but I have not yet worked with the Zen model. At this point I must say that I'm disillusioned with the XPCs in general, and I can only hope that the Zen corrects the problems of previous models.
:( The drive cage itself is cheaply made and susceptible to vibrational noise; with a 7200rpm+ drive and a fast optical drive, this easily becomes a problem.
Due to the cramped interior design, physically accessing most internal components requires removing a number of other parts first. The drive cage in the SK41G actually has a bumper on the side because there's not enough space between the PCI slot and drive cage! The bumper bends my sound card to one side to keep it from making contact with the cage.
Externalizing the PSU is a laudable move. I've had considerable problems with XPCs overheating, and two of the XPCs I've worked with had bad PSU fans: one made a crackling noise, and the other was totally dead (out of the box). Why not just modularize the thing even further and externalize the drive cage as well?
The overheating problem is especially disappointing considering that, in my experience, the variable-rate SmartFans don't react quickly/intelligently enough to prevent heat-related system hangs. Using a high-performance video card in an XPC exacerbates this problem, which has forced me to run the fans on the highest setting at all times (yes, the CPU is burned-in, and I'm using a non-electrically-conductive thermal grease).
After three systems and two RMAs, I finally decided that Shuttle XPCs aren't for me.