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Mini PC Grows Up? Shuttle XPC Reviewed
Bender writes "The Tech Report has done a comprehensive review of the just-redesigned Shuttle XPC. These toaster-sized systems, sold with motherboard but sans CPU, memory, and storage, are becoming a very attractive alternative to the standard DIY system that's over twice the size. This latest PC 'cube' has everything: PCI Express, a BTX-inspired chassis design, room for a small RAID array, and pre-routed cables. The only snag is a Pentium 4 thermal throttling problem discovered through some nice investigative work. If Shuttle can fix this problem, this thing could be a killer personal workstation box."
In spite of the thermal problem I want one. Just another challenge to overcome in modding it ;)
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Not to be troll, but a 'shuttle' computer that has thermal problems seems to be Karmic naming.
Did some of the tiles break off during the launch?
My company has a little Shuttle that we use as a temporary server in situations that require a server to go up as soon as possible, and it's the handiest thing on earth. Just stick it into a bag, go to the site, configure it and in an half hour you have a server running. I love those little things.
Wouldn't it be a little more honest to say "an extra hard drive" than "a small RAID array"?
Surely there's a Socket-939 version around too?
Nice way to side-step that whole "Prescott Sucks" problem.
They aren't cooling anything, rather they are preventing being heated by the sun. Big difference.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
If this works, then Apple might crap its pants. Really though, the concept of an ultra-compact, cube computer has been around for a while...this is just the PC manifestation. Maybe this could inspire Apple to re-release the Cube...
...or not.
The real litigious bastards...
They don't have a massive spending budget. At least compared to NASA.
I've been looking around for these Micro/Mini PC cases recently and have only found the Antec Aria case for sale.
Does anyone know of a place to get other cases like this, with or without the motherboards. Thanks.
The new Microstar 180 Mega SFF are amazingly sexy and can be used as a Hifi when turned off, shame they're a little noisy or I'd have one in a second.
Anyone know what's the best SFF for quiet computing? It seems to me that if you buy a SFF PC it's because you want it to be quiet and convenient. Performance is not a priority.
This would make a cool linux router box.. diskless, of course, and on a live cd/dvd... =) A little netfilter, ip2r4oute, freeswan, shorewall, snort -- shake vigorously and "voila" ---- Router...
sloughing heat in the vacuum of space versus... idiotic comparisons. wacky, man. just wacky.
Don't worry - its just stigmata. Pass me a napkin and don't you dare tell my mother.
According to This Page an Athlon 64 XPC of similar appearance is either available or pending - the Shuttle site appears to be under heavy load and is glitching badly so I can't give any further detail.
It's good to see that users who jib at Intel's excessive prices are looked after by Shuttle.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
If there are already thermal problems to start of with the box alone, what happens when you pop a Prescott in it? Oops, looks like the toaster is a flame!
yes
I see there's a built-in graphic (VGA port), but no where can I find the mention of TVOut, so I guess it's not part of the package.
Personally I have to wait until there's a AMD version + TVOut. I (and most people) already have a 'okay' desktop, but I wouldn't mind an entertainment centre that can be placed in the lounge.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
The popularity of these small, easily portable machines would seem to vindicate the G4 cube.
:-)
Although Apple users are not often the sort of gamer who would want a machine to carry to LAN parties, I've always thought that Apple had a great product in the cube, and as the years have gone past, I've come to think that it was, like the Newton, simply ahead of its time. I wonder what would happen today if Apple introduced a G5 cube in the spirit of these mini-PCs.
(And they can re-introduce the Newton any day now, but I won't hold my breath...
I work for an event staging company and we use about 20 of these shuttle pc's to run our portable media (powerpoint, dvd's, mpeg video etc.). For standard presentation fare, and general use, over very long periods of time (sometimes on for days) these little boxes perform very well. we've never had a heat problem (though it doesn't seem outrageous that there could arise such an issue, as they tend to run *very* warm, but not to the point of anything critical).
i didn't rtfa (c'mon, i'm a busy man....) but regardless of what they say, by experience, i say that these get the job done, and take up a hell of a lot less weight/space in shipping.
sigSEGV - doy!
Does it play Doom 3?
-nt-
They make nice little machines. As I've said many times before, quiet and small is the future for PC's.
They have always been rather pricey though. And they never seem to get cheaper. Even the very old versions cost the same as they did when they were the latest design. All they do is keep coming out with new versions that cost even more. Goofy. That's why I haven't bought another in several years.
I wish someone would take this design a step farther. That is, since they are supplying the motherboard, power supply, and case there is a perfect opportunity to tie the components that get hot to the case. You know, to be cooled from outside the case by using the case itself as a giant heatsink (just add some subtle ridges/fins to the outside). That way you have less fans and more room inside. Or more room to make the whole thing even smaller.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
I have two of the SN41G2s at home that I got about a year and a half ago. One has an Athlon XP 2600+/333 w/ ATI 9800 Pro and the other an Athlon XP 2400+/266 w/ ATI 9600 XT. Both have 1G memory. My fiancee and I use these as our main machines and we carry them every so often over to friends' house for our mini-LAN games (mini being that there are usually only around 6 of us there). They are much easier to transport than any one of our other four tower/mini-tower case machines. Both of the machines run very well and are very performant given their hardware. I'm glad we got these (and so are our backs).
Given some recent problems with Asus boards NOT running Linux, I'd check. Perhaps running Linux could be one of the benchmarks.
shuttles are becoming increasing popular as servers in datacenters. You can stack 8 on one 'level', (face to face so the ports/exhausts are all facing out the rack) in the space of ~4u.
I have two for MythTV boxes. They are the previous model, but they're still great. The best part about one of the new model is the power brick is external, so you have less heat generated inside the small box. The fan and thermal pipe configuration makes for a *very quiet* box; perfect for home theater applications.
--- witty signature
I've personally built quite a few Shuttles, among 4 different models, and I love them; unless I need a big server with redundant RAID or something, Shuttle is all I'll ever go with now. Quiet, runs fast and cool, and my decked out one is more than adequate for games; I'm willing to bet I can run Doom3 at a bearable frame rate, even. And I tote it to LAN parties to destroy people in UT2k4 or America's Army, running either 1600x1200fullscreen or 1280x1024windowed with no performance loss.
/.'s love of a Beowulf cluster of xxx :p Small form factor is the way to go.
You can make a perfect home/office/small business machine for under $400, that will last for years. Media center PCs, LAN party rigs, Shuttles can do just about everything; they can even fulfill
Only thing they lack is space for more than 2 or 3 hard drives (without modding), so a large redundant RAID is not so easy. But the SFF PC is the way to go for most things now, and Shuttle leads the market there. My only complaint is that I like the G2 case style better than all the others, and they haven't put out a new G2 in a while.
http://thechubbyferret.net - Ferret pictures and informative links.
They're great PC's, but not for quiet environments.
Is there /any/ well designed PC out there? The only great box I have ever seen is this one: http://mini-itx.com/news/images/story0334.jpg, which is built for the less-powerful mini-itx board only.
I wish there were more boxes not looking so... PC. Hush (http://www.hush-technologies.com/start.html) is getting close, but not close enough... this is still look kind of cheap. Any hints?
Wait... so does this mean I really *CAN* put Linux on my toaster?
...it is called the SN95G5. Looks extremely cool, but personally I find socket 939 to be a drawback at the moment. Currently even the slowest socket 939 carries a high premium, personally I would prefer a socket 754 machine. Unfortunately, then you're stuck with an old chipset (nForce 150), at least going with Shuttle.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If only Transmeta would quit fucking up their manufacturing line and actually produce a chip, something like Efficeon can be ideal for such applications.
I like tiny electronics as much as the rest of us, but for desktop PCs I don't think they're always the way to go, especially not for Do-it-yourself-ers. If you're going to be inside moving around parts and whatnot, a lot of times a small case will just piss you off (hell, I have the same problem with my full-size case, and it's one of the better designed ones). For normal desktop users they make more sense because [i]they're[/i] not going to be the ones playing with the guts when they want to add something or need it repaired, some repair tech will be.
I think if you're fed up with your PC taking up all your desk space, a better solution would be investing in a graphical dumb terminal and just use your current PC as a server you throw in your basement or a closet. Sure it's more expensive in the short run, but you'll be able to keep it between anytime you upgrade your system. Plus it'll be smaller and run quieter than any small system you would build yourself. Also, anytime you upgrade you'll be upgrading a cheaper full-size desktop rather than a more expensive "compact" system.
It'd be nice if someone would take the lead and get rid of the legacy tech that still haunts these boxes. Floppy drive? PS/2 keybaord/mouse con ectors? For reals?
That being said, this might be worth a look as nice little media-server system to replace a Toshiba laptop that recently died on me.
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
Back when I had my camaro, I built a nifty computer mp3/music video/misc. media player for my car.
Shuttle PC in the trunk
5.6" LCD mounted in the dash
IR Remote Control to run it, with a touchpad in the center console in case stuff broke.
It worked great, for the most part. Occasionally had some stability issues with the chipset on the board, but that stuff got fixed later. When I get around to building one for my new car (miata) I probably wont use a shuttle, because its not as small as I want for the application, but its still a damn good small box.
To run Linux, you need to download and install the nvidia drivers, but other than that it isn't hard to configure. With the Batesias 17" flat screen it replaced a big loud desktop with a tiny, quiet work area. I love it.
I'm sure everybody remembers the Cube, which flopped in the market, but still enjoys a cult following (much like the Newton). They were one of the pioneers of the SFF PC but have completely withdrawn from this market. They were also one of the pioneers of the one spindle ultra-portable, but have since left the market for true ultra-portables to PC manufacturers. The 12" PB is nice, but at 4.6lb it's one of the heaviest 12" laptops on the market today. For people who never use the optical drive on the road, lighter is nicer.
Pitty that Apple currently does not offer products in the catagories I'm most interested in, the SSF PC and the ultra-portable laptop.
Antec cases aren't that bad. There are lots of good designs. What exactly would you envision as your ideal case, aesthetically?
I like the name...
This PC can screen save no more.This PC kicked the bit bucket...
It has bought the server farm...
It is pushing up daisy-wheels...
This... is an XPC!
Aww... Come on, you know you were thinking it.
It's rather hard to get rid of waste heat in a vacuum...NASA and the Sat design corps spend a lot of time and money trying to come up with ways to do it.
Anyone know when the nanode is going to be available?
... the formfactor feels a _lot_ like a good old IPC...
;)
Though I can't imagine UT2k4 onslaught on one of those golden oldies
Which is why the thermal blanket. Prevent the heating in the first place and you don't have to get rid of it.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
If you're not into hyper overclocking and ubermodding, these cases are great. I bought an iDeq cube case about a year ago, and have not regreted it. Aluminum case, advanced heat removal, small form factor and amazingly quiet. Well worth the money (which, incidently, wasn't much more than a top of the line mobo + aluminum case)
Antec cases aren't that bad
Ah, they still look like a machine.
What exactly would you envision as your ideal case, aesthetically?
That nanode thingy is actually pretty cool. It is a mini-itx box though.
These toaster-sized systems
Great, now you'll have people putting bread in their systems expecting it to get toasted.
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_cdroms.shtml
John Kerry is a Joke!
Please, get off your high horse.
;)
In what way was the poster specifically belittling or poking fun at those that died in the disaster ('shuttle','heat issues')? Even if he was, would that mean he's glad they died or found their deaths funny? It's like the jokes about Princess Diana from a few years back. I found quite a few of them funny. So that must make me a sick and twisted person who laughs at
death and disaster?
Get over it. Humour is a great human mechanism for dealing with issues such as death and helps us get on with life, like when people joke at funerals about what the deceased would have said - 'Bob would have shouted at me for spending so much on the coffin'. You gonna shout at Bob's widow?
If a joke is funny then it is funny, tasteless or not. A lot of hysteria surrounding 'racist comedians' (Bernard Manning comes to mind) is due to the fact that they aren't really funny and just stand there spouting off slur after slur to a cringeing audience. Come to think of it, virtually all racist jokes cease to be funny after the age of twelve.
But as for tasteless jokes in general, If one makes me laugh in future then i'm going to laugh out loud knowing that I'm a well rounded, intelligent adult who can deal with it, not spouting knee jerk garbage while secretly finding it funny anyway.
I can't remember which comedian in particular said it (infact I think several have), but there shouldn't be a subject that we can't poke fun at.
That includes paedophilia
I think in today's society we already do enough politically correct pussy-footing pandering.
*ahem*
Troll.
So it can't be a box with buttons.
....
Those all look like machines.
I think your going to have to build your own. Maby if your good with vanear you can make one look like a pice of furnature.
In that idea you could build one into an end table you keep next to your desk. That wouldnt look like a machine. Actualy i kinda like that idea. I might try it, eventualy.... *sigh* I need 30 hour days, and the will power to quit sleeping.
Don't judge me by my spelling
A BTX-inspired chassis design. I can't wait to see that.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You can make a perfect home/office/small business machine for under $400, that will last for years.
Yes, you can... but not with a Shuttle box. It's a motherboard and a case for $400. With that same $400 I can get an Ugly Beige Box with better hardware on the inside.
Price ain't the reason to get this baby.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Do people really buy a shuttle to fit it with a 3GHZ CPU?
I mean c'mon, small is nice, quiet is nice. There's only so much you can expect from a box that small. Running the latest and hottest (pun intended) prescott CPU in one is probably stretching it a bit. Or more bluntly: a stupid idea.
What's next? Someone informing us that a Shuttle Dual Xeon setup will run into thermal issues, too?
Mod? yeahhhhhh
I thought it was pretty cool at that time.
Personally, I am waiting for the athlon 64 Shuttle XPC to come out WITH the nvidia 250 chipset. The current chipsets just arent worth it;)
Yummmmm......
So it can't be a box with buttons.
;-).
Well, I would not have any objections if there were one button. Though, of course, nobody on slashdot ever needs that one
I think your going to have to build your own.
I am hoping that one day, finally, maybe, there will be more boxes like the nanode.
Maby if your good with vanear you can make one look like a pice of furnature.
I already tried this (seriously). I ran into several problems though, most of them because I was too dumb to build everything properly. But also, the monitor's display quality dropped a lot, apparently because wood does not shield good enough. I do not recommend anyone to try this.
The other week I receieved 30 SN41G2s for the university I work at and I've got another 120 arriving soon. Once you've got used to how they are put together you can get the build time down to less than 25 minutes apiece.
We used to buy Dells (which I detested from a technicians point of view) but a couple of months ago we bought two Shuttle systems as a one-off. Everyone was so impressed about how quiet, compact and well engineered they were we decided to outfit an entire new building with them. The few man-hours spent on building them is well worth it to get a quality system that the usual supects (Dell, HP etc) can't seem to deliver. A classroom full of Shuttles is noticably quieter than a room full of Dells.
One thing though, if you are looking for an SN 41G2 then make sure it's a Version 2 (Silent X) model. There's still a lot of Version 1s about which are a bit noisier.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
PS/2 Keyboards and Mice do the job just fine, work with KVM switches, and are cheaper than USB ones. Why not leave the connectors in place and let the owner decide?
(As an Aside, I prefer my USB keyboard (IBM Rapid Access III) & mouse (Logitech Marble Mouse USB))
listen up you guys: DONT BUY ANYTHING FROM SHUTTLE!
I droped $350 for one of their fancy little xpc barebones boxes a little over a year ago and I still wince every time I think about how much $$ I lost.
You see, the hard drive controler on the motherboard failed after 4 months, destroying both of my hard drives in the process. I lost more than 60 gigs of data. Western digital replaced both for only the cost of one way shipping, no questions asked (well, ok they asked for my address and such).
Shuttles RMA was a bit more complicated, but I wouldnt complain about just that. I payed the $20 to ship the barebones computer from Ohio to Caliornia. They took a week or two and then shipped it back to me. Exactly the way it was when I shipped it to them. If it hadn't been for the paperwork claiming that it was fixed, I might have assumed they didnt open the box. It had the same symptoms it had just before killing my other two hard drives: it took a long time to recognise the installed hard drives, and refused to recognise the installed cd roms. This time I unpluged it before any damage was done.
Because I was about to move, I didn't immediately mess with it any more. After the move I tried the same setup as before, except I used a pci hdd controler. It worked perfectly except the pci hdd controler didn't recognise cd roms either (it said this on the box).
I called shuttle and was told I would have to rma it again. that pissed me off a little bit so I bought a Gigabye mobo (which works perfectly, by the way) instead.
A little bit later I decided it would be nice to have two computers, so I did try to RMA the shuttle again. They didnt reply to my request.
Case in piont: STAY WAWAY FROM SHUTTLE!
Nathan Friedly
They aren't cooling anything, rather they are preventing being heated by the sun. Big difference.
+5 Insightful? What are you mods smoking?
We're talking about the inside of a PC case. They're moving out the heat that was generated by electrical power dissipation in the CPU (and other components). IOW, they're cooling the CPU. The sun is about 0.65 W/sq. inch. If your PC is in the direct sun (and mine's not), that's about 1% compared to a Pentium.
Oh, I get it: NASA, Shuttle. It's supposed to be +1 Funny. No offense to nB, but I'd vote -1 WTF?!
Please help find my missing daughter: FindSabrina.org
I have one of these at home as my server (running Linux, of course). I've never had a single problem with it. My wife has one as her windows workstation at her office (on my recommendation). Finally, I have one of these at my office doubling as a low volume server and a workstation (again, Linux). Even though I use it as my second workstation, it's never stressed.
In all three cases, I had them configured without a floppy drive. USB drives such as my Laks watch are the way to go!
These babies have everything you need for a workstation UNLESS you need high end graphics. There's room inside for a video card different, but I wonder how it would handle the load.
I don't know why people bother buying full height tower systems with tons of expansion space. What exactly are you going to do with 9 pci slots?
-- Will program for bandwidth
I've started looking around for a SFF last week.
I had restricted choice to just the shuttle reviewed
in this article and an Antec Aria system.
I am worried to go shuttle for only one thing:
why go for a proprietary motherboard? Does it
make sense to go for something that can't be upgraded, customized nor repaired with 3rd party
motherboard, etc..., but only with more expensive mobos from Shuttle? Assuming they happen: can you
upgrade a two years old shuttle to a new, more powerful motherboard today? It sounds so Apple...
This is why I am thinking to go Aria: standard
microatx mobo, plenty to choose from, change it
next year if I want....
Am I wrong? If not, what mobo do you suggest for
use with Linux inside Aria?
TIA,
M.
I found this post convincing until he claimed that he had a fiancee: a /.er with a fiancee?
AGP????
I have an SN45G with 1GB pc 2700, an athlon xp 2100 a 250GB drive and an ATI x800 pro...
I had some considerable problems with it in the very begining having to go through 3 of them before they would actually run (some sort of mobo issue)....
but this new one does *not* appear to have an AGP slot. The SN45G came with a geforce mx onboard - but it sucked ass.
I originally bought this machine for my wife - but I had so many problems with it in the beginning, that it had to be mine because it wouldnt work for her (bad karma or something..) - but now this has been my primary machine for over a year and I am so far more happy with it than any other machine I have ever had.....
now the fully case modded - lit up like a christmas tree gaming box hasnt been touched in almost a year....
but why the hell would they drop the AGP slot???
If *anything* people should be working on a machine with dual AGP slots, jsut as I tried to convince Intel of when I worked there over 5 years ago.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
I bought myself an aopen EZ-18, which is similar to the shuttle in form and design. It is a terrific machine, and has given me no trouble. It is the best layed out (imho) of all the mini pc's, and working on it is no problem at all for me (I have skinny fingers though). If you are in the market for a mini, give one of these a look. (Don't be put off by the bad Engrish on the box or the crappy ads "Fun your life!" wtf?).
We have 8 of these boxes at my office. They are very nice for workstations.
However, we need to clear something up about this so-called "RAID array".
From the page:
"4 ports Serial ATA 150 via ICH6R south bridge with RAID 0,1 support"
This box uses the Intel ICH6R chip and is software RAID. The box ships with drivers for Windows, but does not offer any drivers or support using ICH6R under Linux.
There are patches to the 2.6 kernel which let you use ICH5R, but why use an unsupported test module when you can just use the Linux MD kernel module instead. MD is well documented, stable and supported by the Linux community.
Here is a great writeup on the state of "Software RAID" and Serial ATA on linux.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
But some of us are married. Even more amazing is we've.... procreated. SSSSHHHHHHH! For God's sake keep it down. No reason to get everybody's hopes up.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Look no further, your dream case is right here.
WTF WTF?
I was responding to a parent which stated:
There is a story over on Wired about how NASA engineers put a thin thermal blanket on the soon-to-be-launched Mercury probe. It supposedly cools the sun side of the craft from a toasty 800+ deg. F to around 95 deg F.
If they can cool down 705 deg F, you'd figure a P4 would be trivial.
-chill
I suppose you neglected to read the parent post before trying to flame me.
Grrrrr.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Visit The Fscking Web Site!
Most shuttle machines have between 2 and 4 USB ports (1.1 and 2.0), firewire and standard keyboard and PS2 ports, The floppy is optional, you don't want it you don't install one.
How difficult is that?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I've had the SN41G2 running for about 15 months non-stop as my media center. With a little Modding you can make this a silent machine. The design these guys come up with is remarkable; while cramming that much functionality into a "toaster" is in and of itself an accomplishment, the forethought in the design of these machines make installation less tedious than one would imagine. My only regret is how much horsepower I'm wasting by only only using it as a home theater pc.
Some people do not need or want to waste time in games.
....
An onboard graphics controller is perfectly addecuate for those people.
several models of these machines have your AGP slot
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
other than impressing fellow geeks at LAN parties, there's no point in this machine... What's wrong with the ATX mini-tower? It sits neatly under the desk, it's expandable and very flexible, and can be optimally cooled. If space is in shortage, get a laptop, at least that's mobile.
Well, duh. That's probably because it frickin is. What do you want, a PC that looks like a pot plant? A rhubarb-shaped car?
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
I count seven fans inside that thing!
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
They could save a bit of room by ditching the disk drive. I haven't had one of those in my last 5 or 6 computers. Everything installs by CDROM these days as long as we're trying to make a small system. Unless you need it for flashing the BIOS, but it seems there should be a way to do that with the CD as well.
F.O.Dobbs
I don't get what you're saying. Wouldn't a thermal blanket keep the PC case (or CPU or whatever you put it on) from losing heat, causing it to be hotter than without the blanket? Seems like it would do the opposite of cooling...
The cube did not fail because it was ahead of its time, because users didn't understand it. For many users there was nothing wrong with it technically and many would have loved to get one. It was simply overpriced. The popularity of these PCs confirm the G4 cube's flaw.
FWIW, these PC go a little beyond the G4 Cube. The are not considered portable merely because of their size. Many have integrated handles, font mounted I/O ports, etc. to facilitate portability. The G4 cube was lacking in this respect. To be fair it was designed to be small and quiet, to be unobtrusive, not to be portable.
I know it's possible to add a video card to this box, but then we start talking about more heat, more fans and more fan RPMs.
I've got an Alienware laptop, and for the past six months or so I've been getting horrible performance from it. Games would play fine for five or ten minutes, then the frame rate would plummet and everything would jump. Online games like BF 1942 and UT2K4 were miserable.
Elevating the laptop on four Post-It notepads failed to make any improvement. Reinstalling Windows didn't help, either.
So, I blamed the problem on Alienware. After all, I had tried taking a *vacuum* to the side of the case to clean it out. Finally, I called up an Alienware tech support guy. He confirmed that my processor and video card were working fine. I hoped to convince him to tell me how to *underclock* my Pentium IV. Yeah, right. I hung up when the tech told me to format my less-than-month-old install of WinXP Pro.
I dealt with the issue for a few more days. Finally, I decided to go psycho on my laptop with a can of compressed air. Ten minutes and several large puffs of dust later, I booted up the laptop. Miraculously, it ran like new again.
I know it was the thermal throttling problem. The computer ran hot quite often, and just a few minutes at 100% CPU usage would cause the fan to go to max speed. Five or so minutes later and I'd begin getting the seriously decreased framerate. Another five minutes at that speed and the computer would go back to normal, and then cycle again a little while later. This process was repeated until I decreased the CPU usage.
Now that I've somehow cleaned out the case better than an Oreck could, the PC runs a lot cooler (though still pretty darn hot) and has no problems in games.
Was that Alienware's fault? No, not directly--the thermal throttling was what caused the slowdown. Now, the fan speed, at this point, was not enough, so the settings for thermal throttling was not at fault. But, it is my belief that Alienware has some culability--they should prevent the fan's ability from ever being exceeded and therefore make the thermal throttling only necessary in starnge, extreme, unique emergencies. Alienware should either do a better job "building" their cases (buying them wholesale from Sager or Clevo) or figure out some better way to deal with heat.
I've heard a handful of horror stories about heat issues with AW cases, and I think that a company should use a case design that lasts more than six to eight months without clogging up with so much dust that performance is seriously impacted. Coupling this knowledge about the cases with their high prices, questionable tech support, HORRIBLE shipping times and computer arrival condition (so many broken things; do a search), I know I'll never buy another Alienware.
Shuttle PC, maybe. I might risk it. But, Alienware, never.
You are quite entitled to take your money anywhere you like - but to expand from your ONE bad experience to slander a whole company is just silly.
I've got three generations of XPC boxes running different applications around the place, and I've convinced a lot of my friends to buy them, too.
None of us have ever had anything that even LOOKED like a hardware error. Which, frankly, is a miracle considering that these are BAREBONES machines and require you to stick your hands inside them just minutes after you take them out of the box.
Ever thought that it might have been something that _you_ did that fritzed the drive controller? Of course not - you're far too busy jumping to illogical conclusions from single data points.
Great, great, I YESTERDAY put in an order for an SB75G2!!! And now a whole new shuttle that would be way more fun to play with has come out! Admittedly, this new one is a bit big and I don't want PCIX... but DAMMIT ANYWAY!
*fume*
PS I still love shuttles anyway.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
well, one of the Athlon versions and I'm very happy. I started off thinking I wouldn't like it as I always tinker with the insides of my computers but to be honest, I don't anymore. And I like that, for some strange reasons things have stopped breaking too. Surely a coincidence ;-)
The only bad point is the noise - the cooling systems are innovative but they are noisy. I know a lot of people mod their cases to remove the grill at the back and fit more air-holes around the case. On a good day the thing is near silent, but playing any games or doing any heavy work means you have to put up with the revving of the auto-fan thingy.
It's not a living room PC and the cat can't fall asleep on it anymore, but it's tidied up my desk and stopped me from tinkering needlesly.
Play!
Suttree, a weblog about casual games development
in shitdatacenters.
SilentPC Review is always THE place to go when you are concerned about PC noise.
:-( ). There's a noise comparison in all of their SFF tests (direct link for convinience. IMHO Sudhian is THE place to go when you're searching for SFF infos. The forums are very valuable resources on both sites.
And Sudhian had a review of the new Shuttle XPC a few weeks ago (hey, that how far ahead slashdot is
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
That's probably because it frickin is. What do you want, a PC that looks like a pot plant? A rhubarb-shaped car?
Why does it have to look like a machine? Technology is supposed to integrate well with its environment to be more comfortable, especially in your home environment. For example, why do people prefer an air-conditioning system that is integrated well enough into the building so that they don't have to see the large, ugly box?
The nanode already proves that something better is possible, so is it asked too much? I don't think so.
*cough* *hack* *retch* *ptooy* Idiot.
;-) Nice. (but no, not exactly my style ;) )
What ever happend to the no-case approach? I think... whoops just spilled coffee on my power sup... zzzzz crack!
"Initial success, or total failure!"
remin8.com
Undoubtedly the best small form-factor case... http://www.hoojum.com/html/product_cubitp4.htm#spe cs
Indeed, /very/ neat! Unfortunately they have only mini-itx cases either :(.
Err... wait, it is not. This thing is my dream case! :-)
Wow, I /love/ it.
Thanks, guy!
Yeah, this is a pretty ace box - up to 3.2 Ghz cpu, and sexy looks....
I used to have a Shuttle SV24 and, even replacing the fan and hacking the voltage down to 7V, it really wasn't as quiet as I'd hoped. Maybe the newer ones with the heatpipes are better, but I haven't seen any evidence solid enough to balance out the price premium. My second try was a VIA Eden in a Morex 688 case, but the power supply was just so crappy that the system wasn't stable so now it's in a Chyang Fun e-Note which stable but much bigger and louder. *sigh* Most of the components from that SV24 are now sitting in a different system based on an Antec Aria microATX case. It's a little bigger and it's still not exactly silent, but it's definitely a lot closer to my goal of a reasonable balance between capabilities and decibels. The simple fact is that, as near as I can tell there are no systems out there that are both small and quiet without being crippled. For now you have to pick which two matter, or compromise on all three.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
You're right -- I didn't read the parent. It was rightfully modded "-1 Offtopic", and I don't read at -1. My WTF should have been directed at him. I assumed we were talking about cooling the Shuttle, because I RTFA'd.
I apologize, and I would suggest that you quote the parent when you reply -- especially if it is OT.
Please help find my missing daughter: FindSabrina.org
- The hard drive(s) sit underneath the 5.25" CD/DVD drive, sandwiched underneath that hot drive.
- The Northbridge heatsink and RAM heatspreaders sit directly under the hard drive(s), cooking them.
- The air is completely stagnant at the front of the case.
The inevitable result is a hard drive oven. Even with heatsinks applied, I had a WD Raptor cook within a year of use - the one sitting over the RAM was the first to go. So you end up adding active cooling and replacing the drives - a herculean task, as here are the steps just to replace the middle hard drive:- Remove the right side of the case
- Unplug the bottom drive's SATA and power cable
- Unscrew the bottom drive cage and slide it out
- Remove the top side of the case, which requires removing the left side
- Unscrew the top drive cage
- Tilt the top cage then slide it upwards; this would be impossible without removing the bottom cage first
- Teeter the top cage on the case and unplug the CD ATA/power cables, and SATA/power HD cables - this may require prior experience as a juggler/circus acrobat
- Unscrew the middle drive and remove it
Reverse the entire process with the new drive.This new clipped approach certainly makes the replacement process a snap... literally. If it also keeps them cool, which I'm very skeptical of given their location at the top of the case, then this might be the next case I build with (AMD64 only please).
Is there /any/ well designed PC out there?
... but here.
Reportedly if you're high enough it looks like a sunflower.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)