Slashdot Mirror
World's First BTX Mini-PC
CTZ writes "We have direct information from CES 2005 show floor that covers Shuttle's first BTX Mini-PC. It's also the world's first BTX system ever displayed. "Shuttle also had a rather sizable booth with an entire line of their products displayed, as it can be seen from the images throughout this article. Perhaps the most important interesting product they had on the show floor was the world's first XPC based on Intel's BTX standard. Shuttle is looking to make the system affordable, so they have decided to use steel for the chassis instead of aluminum. According to Shuttle, this will bring the cost of the XPC system down by $130.00. The only downside, as some may perceive it, is that the BTX XPC system will be 1" wider than regular XPCs, but regardless, you can expect the same quality from Shuttle."
Won't steel add weight to the thing?
Also, the one and only experience I've had with Shuttles was when the one we had had its power supply fail. Hardly a good statistical sampling, but it was fairly new, so I personally have a negative view of Shuttle quality, but I may be in the minority on that one.
here's an Anandtech article on BTX:-7 6
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=18
Again, AnandTech saves the day
i =2317&p=15
i =2317&p=6
i =2317&p=5
BTX: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?
Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?
More Shuttle: http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?
God forbid CTX actually covered the show instead of just rewriting press releases...
Ok, the article is hardly loading for me.. so here are some mirrors of the 2 images from this article and some other images from some other article about the Shuttle stand (I forget where that was, thanks to the original site whoever it was).
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and from the other article...
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I had one of the very early shuttle models--FX25 or something that like, and it was loud as hell. Now we're using a bunch of SS51G's I think is the model, P4's, at work, and you can barely hear them, period. They're great.
I'm surprised that using steel instead of aluminum would cut $130 off the price. Aluminum only costs about $0.83/lb. Does it cost a lot to shape or something? I'd expect the harder steel to cost more to work.
I'm an engineer specialized in manufacturing and I've done some work recently sourcing steel for stampings. Steel prices, along with other raw materials, have gone through the roof in the last year or so largely due to demand from China. (I was there recently and you cannot believe the amount of construction going on unless you see it. Absolutely amazing.) As of a month ago, I was getting quotes on steel that were generally in the range of $0.45-$0.57/lb depending on the alloy you wanted and where you needed it. (this is in North America) If you want forgings or something shaped, that will add to the cost. On a weight basis the steel can't cost more than $15-25 (and that's generous) given the amount of material in a typical case.
$130 seems like a lot just for materials savings unless they were using unusual alloys or really getting ripped off on the labor. Steel is actually pretty easy to work with, often easier than aluminum in my experience. Aluminum is so soft you often have to be careful with coolants and cutting speeds. There are structural considerations sometimes too. Aluminum requires different amounts of material for the same structural strength. But the difference isn't exactly night and day. Frankly I'm having a hard time figuring out where $130 in material savings would come from since the amount of material is so small.