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Athlon 64 SFF With PCI Express Reviewed
EconolineCrush writes "The Tech Report has an in-depth review of Shuttle's new XPC SN25P. At several times the size of a Mac Mini, the SN25P is an entirely different breed of small form factor system; one that supports one 5.25" drive, three 3.5" drives, PCI Express x16 graphics cards and x1 peripherals, up to 2GB of DDR400 memory, and Socket 939 Athlon 64 processors. The system also bristles with USB, Firewire, and audio ports, including digital S/PDIF inputs and outputs, and even has an integrated memory card reader. Looks like a pretty good balance between footprint, portability, and expansion capacity."
Once upon a time people called that a mini tower.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Don't know why they don't mention this things in the article... MirrorDot
Here:
a sp
http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SN25P.
Dimensions: 320 x 210 x 220 (L x W x H)
I have the previous-generation Shuttle AMD64 model - the SN95 - and I must say that even with two 3.5" drives, cooling them can be a problem.
So even though it has 3 3.5" slots you'd probably be better off putting in at most two drives and investing in heat sinks for them.
Without additional cooling, even with one hard drive I had to set the fan to 'medium', up from 'Smart fan' to avoid overheating within a few hours.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
Just helped move 2 of my friends boxes into these... the aren't really hard at all. They stay pretty cool too, not bad at all. Now I'm considering switching my server over...
The best thing is how little room they take... and you can stack them on top of each other...
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
The P series Shuttles all come with 350W power supplies. Pretty much neccesary for a power hungry PCIe graphics card, 3 hard drives, optical drive, etc.
... the far less power hungry Athlon64 should be even better off.
There is a 350W P series with a Prescott P4 that works just fine
(That's a link to the chassis this story is about).
Note that PCI-X != PCIe. PCI-X is the 133MHz PCI derivative which is backwards compatible with 66mhz and 33mhz cards, whereas PCIe is the not backwards compatible serial link PCI. One PCIe slot/lane has a transfer rate of ~250MB/s (2x PCI). You can easily add mroe lanes to each slot. So with graphics, you have 16 PCIe lanes at 250MB/s each.
I like how now every thing is in a little box, gamecubes, mac minis, the cube lan party rigs. I would be cool to make a lunchbox that looks like that.
Actually, that has already been done.
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/lunchboxpc/
You're making an irrelevant comparison.
Shuttle builds components. The SN25P, like all of the XPCs, is simply a custom barebones. It's not intended to compete with the Mac Mini because it's not a complete computer.
If this was an OEM selling full systems built around an XPC, it would be a little more on point... but still not really.
Does the Mac Mini support top of the line processors or external videocards? I think not. I'm a big Mac fan, but you're just trolling.
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jonathan barket
1) it already has integrated 1000bt, unless you want to go 10gbe there's no point.
2) unless you're capturing HDTV resolutions, a firewire capture device will do fine. i'm also unaware of any PCI-66 framegrabber cards that even exist (nor any which would _need_ PCI-66 to function). hell, PCI-33 is even fine for HDTV capture. bonus: you can disconnect the firewire device when not in use, and save power. also saves a slot which can be used for other devices instead.
PCI-66 is also more expensive to design boards for. PCI express is faster and simpler than PCI-66 and cheaper to design for. PCI express connector can also take much less board space, which is a major issue in SFF designs.
when almost all of the devices you would want to use are already integrated onto the motherboard, backwards compat is less of an issue... when I upgraded to my amd64 motherboards I ended up ditching a lot of expansion cards (gigabit, serial ata, firewire), because everything was already integrated.
Adjustable fan speeds, from 800 to 4000 rpm. If you read the article, the volume from the front is 48db, which is fairly impressive. Quieter than the 2nd gen G series Shuttles which I've seen/heard in person.
Primarily PCI Express is a replacement for AGP, rather than PCI; it's primarily a video interface on the desktop.
Inside the Case
Outside the case
For those of you looking for dimensions, the review lists them as: 325mm x 210mm x 220mm. The article also shows a picture of it next to the smaller original G series case.
I noticed your later post clarifing your confusiong PCI-X and Express.
At any rate, there are a number problems with PCI-X:
1) It's a parallel protocol. That means that all the traces for it need to be the same length to make it work properly. Makes motherboard design tricky.
2) The connectors are HUGE. You have to make a quite physically large card to accomadate that, even if the electronics don't justify it. ESpically a problem in small cases.
3) The electronics necessary to implement it are more expensive than PCIe.
4) There's no real expansion path to it. There isn't any plans for how ot scale it in speed that wouldn't require a reworking and probably add more complexity.
PCIe is real nice because in it's slowest implementation, 1x, it is still fast (about the same speed as PCI-66) but takes a very small slot with very few traces. Nice and cheap to implement, and easy to stick in small cases. However it scales real easily, you can whack on more lanes to a slot, and you can have multiple slots with lots of lanes. So on a low end board with integrated graphics you can have a couple 1x slots, on a workstation barod a 16x, a 14 and a number of 1xs and on a highernd server or visualtion board, multiple 16xs.
Also since you can have more than one 16x slot, unlike with AGP which is single slot only, you can have multiple high power grapihcs accelerators in a system that supports it.
Like with Serial ATA, it is a technology that's needed to keep scaling well and to simplify things. Yes, right now there's really no performance reason to go SATA over PATA, however there will be soon, and SATA should keep scaling. Plus the smaller, simpler connectors are a real boon in many applications.
Also PCIe is compatible with PCI in the fact taht you can have PCI slots on a PCIe motherboard without any problems. So you get a PCIe board and you can still use your old cards, then you slowly replace them as technology progresses, and eventually ouy just don't need it anymore.
I built a shuttle SK43G (athlon XP) for my mom in July and it is a lot quieter than my mid-tower desktop and easily 20 times quieter than a powerful laptop. This despite that my midtower sits under the desk on carpet and her shuttle sits on her desk on glass. Except when it first turns on its almost silent. There is no AGP card in there though. Just 2 hard drives and cd burner.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
it's primarily a video interface on the desktop. No. It *is* replacing AGP, but it isn't limited to that. PCI Express devices are being developed or are already being produced to support networking, mass storage, and so on. Pretty much anything you can buy a PCI card for today, you will be able to buy an Express card for now or in 1 to 2 years time. There's even a PCMCIA-style form factor using PCI Express, and a daughterboard form factor for use in laptops.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
I've been LANing for years, my first LAN box was an overclocked Celeron 300 (running at 450!) in a full tower. It had 12 fans in it and would stay cool in any environment.
::Digitac
Then I got tired of lugging it around. I bought a Lian-Li mid-tower aluminum case and was in heaven. It ran cool with fewer fans and was light!
Then I got tired of lugging it around. I bought a Shuttle SN41G2, dropped an MSI Geforce 4200 in it. It ran like a dream. I didn't over clock it so I didn't have any heat issues (Athlon 2600+).
Then I got tired of lugging it around. I bought a "gaming" laptop. Nice and portable, built in screen.
Then I got tired of the crappy performance. I'm back to running my SN41G2. I upgraded the power supply to the 250w from Shuttle and dropped in a XFX 6800 GT and a pair of 200GB HDs. This is a great combo. It's fast, light, ane easy to lug around.
All that being said, this is the only SFF I've owned, though my friends have had several. I'm not aware of any over heating problems in environments up to around 85 degrees F. That's about the temp that the Penitum based boxes would start slowing themselves down to prevent heat death. My Athlon based system never complains.
I'm not a fan-boy, these aren't right for everyone, everywhere. But for me, for LAN parties, they work great.
Sorta, the All-In-Wonder line from ATI is moving to pci-e as the base cards do.
This is a bit sub-optimal as AIW cards 'honor' macro-vision crap (if the card detect macrovision it proceded to turn the resultant video into what looks like a scramble cable signal) and there is no fix for modern AIW's and drivers on this issue yet. There is a hack for 7k series and one 8k series radeon based AIW's that the creators are working on updating IIRC to more modern cards.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
First off, these things aren't quiet. Read the posts.
If you're into hacking, I'd assume you'd want something without a prorietary mobo and PSU design. See, you can get any kind of small microATX case and a matching mobo if all you're interested in is a small computer with reasonable power. The SFF design, though, ties you into the mobo that's already installed and the PSU that's already installed. If either dies, you get to pay Shuttle's gouge prices. With a microATX design, you can buy a mobo and PSU from more than ten different vendors.
Don't get me wrong here; I'm not some teenaged fan boy who thinks that gaming is the only use for computers and that everyone should have a GeForce 9000. As I mentioned in another post, I came at it from the gaming angle because that's obviously who Shuttle is targetting. When you add Gigabit Ethernet, a bleeding-edge expansion slot designed for high-end video cards, and SPDIF audio output, it's pretty obvious that you're gunning for a gaming crowd. Anyone who just wants a small case has many more options than these, and most of those options make a lot more sense.