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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)
What makes this any different from mini-ATX?
Looks very alike to me
-Glitch "We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds." - Linus Torvalds
How can people care so much if their box is all snazzy and fancy, it's the hardware dammit, it's what's on the inside that counts...or atleast that's what I tell myself everytime i look in the mirror...
excuse me, i think i have something in my eye..
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.
Does this mean sneaky little proprietary rails that keep things in by friction, but can never be exchanged with another system.
I hate those things.
The proper way a drive should be secured is with a Phillips screwdriver. It is not like a Phillips Screwdriver is some exotic tool that is hard to come by.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Insert lame joke about said hardware not being able to handle a slashdotting, despite the fact that said hardware is not running the web site.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
I may be blind but I couldn't find the dimensions of this bare-bones unit anywhere in TFA. So then I went to www.shuttle.com, and I couldn't find this particular model anywhere. As the article states, it apparently is not for sale yet. Then I started looking at the specs sheets for the P-series models and couldn't find dimensions there either.
It appears to be bigger than a breadbox to me, and with my total inability to find the dimensions (which are likely on the front page of the article) that description will have to do.
Don't know why they don't mention this things in the article... MirrorDot
Just what we need. PCs labeled as being "bristley".
"I would have loved to buy that powerful Athlon 64, but the system bristled with ports, unlike the smooth surface of my legacy free Mac mini."
Sometimes my arms bend back.
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
Why is the industry going with PCI-X, rather than PCI-Express or PCI-66 which are both speedy AND backwards compatitble?
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.
Looks interesting. Good to see a greater Atholon 64 availability with PCI Express. I wish it had been as easily accessible when I bought my comp.
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).
Why is it always a competition?
If you find something that fits you and you're the only person in the world that likes it who cares if it sells 1,000,000 copies or 1, as long as you get what you like.
BTW, Dell will sell more shitty OptiPlex GX280's than Apple will sell mini's. Does it make them better? Or do the specs make the better? Or is it the price that makes it better? The reality is your opinion is what makes something better. Unfortunately you have yet to learn it is only better to you.
I recently built a video acquisition box for work. I wanted the smallest case that could support RAID, a fast processor, and an addon PCI board (the frame grabber). The Shuttle was the perfect choice.
But if I were buying a computer for my wife or kids, the Mac would probably be better.
It all depends on your needs.
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
I've got a pegasos machine currently for my low end server behind my DSL line. It satisfies some of my requirements (fairly small, low power consumption) and it is fun to play with a different arch. However, it is too slow, too hot, and too loud.
I guess I could replace it with a mac mini and then I'd only have the problem of it being too slow, but I've been thinking of fixing all the problems by replacing it with a 'low end' SFF A64 since they use less power when idle but have the grunt when necessary. However I have been concerned that Shuttle haven't thought about noise ever since I played with a SFF P4 box that sounded like a jet engine.
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.
...how many serial ports does it have?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Inside the Case
Outside the case
Note: excuse my references to the Lanboy. I'm not trying to whore for Antec; it's just that their product is the most readily recognizable example of the design I'm referencing.
During the last two years of college, I got very into the LAN scene. All the guys I worked with were big on LAN gaming, and some people at my apartment complex were into it. Even my girlfriend had her LAN machine (in addition to her art major necessity Mac), which she decorated with Hello Kitty stencils on the requisite LAN computer window and dubbed "Halo Kitty."
We mostly leaned toward aluminum cases for weight benefits coupled with smaller LCDs. Because a fair amount of us were PC repair techs, we'd always have that one slightly older machine that could still easily hang with the games we played. New people would show up, get hooked, and start wanting to build/buy something so that they could participate.
A few people ended up with Shuttles or similar SFF cases. While fairly convenient in size, we consitently saw overheating issues and high noise levels. Shoehorning a good graphics card into these things (since LAN action is obviously a target market) sends heat levels through the roof, and the smaller size means only one fan. The need for a single fan means that fan must turn at very high speeds. This made for some excessive noise levels, especially for people who wanted to use these as their primary computer, and (logically) envisioned setting them atop their desk beside the monitor.
So the question out of all of this is here: are these SFF designs worth it? I love the convenient size of the Mac Mini as much as the next guy, but (in addition to being much smaller than most SFF PCs) they target a totally different market. When I look at these squatty boxes and compare them to an Antec Lanboy or other similar aluminum chassis w/ handles, I start wondering.
Isn't it just smarter to buy a lightweight mini-tower? With space for 3HDDs, isn't that what this thing really is, anyway? A Lanboy comes with a carry strap, weighs less than 20 lbs. loaded with an HDD and optical drive, and avoids the excessive heat and noise levels generated by the SFF design. While a Lanboy might be 2 or 2.5 times taller, it's also skinnier, so we're not talking about a huge gain there. On top of this, I get to choose my own internal components, whereas I was always put off of these because I'd end up having to use a shuttle mainboard.
So SFF buyers, what draws you to these things?
Oxford announced the addition of the word "macmini" to their dictionary which appears to be a unit to measure size and coolness at the same time. Typical examples of its usage are:
- Cool, my new Mac Mini is exactly one macmini
- Duh, my iPod is less than half a macmini
- Who the hell would buy a 10 macminis Shuttle XPC SN25P
- Add a full macmini to your p****, 100% safe!
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.
But, the Mac mini doesn't come with a mouse![!!] So, your USB mouse has infinitely more buttons than the Mac mini's mouse. :)
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are hundreds of cases out there in the PC world, don't like this one? Find another. Atleast with a PC I'm not stuck with whatever Steve Jobs thinks is cool.
For the record, I think Apple makes some pretty cool looking cases (like the Mac Mini). But they have some butt-ugly stuff too (like any of the iMacs).
But each to their own.
Yep. I went Shuttle with my latest upgrade and ended up with an SN85G4/Sempron3100/6800GT. The size is nice for LAN use, but it's terribly noisy. There is no way I'd use it for anything but gaming. Even then I only use it with headphones that muffle the constant fan noise *ffffffffsssssssshhhhhhhhh*.
If I ever buy another desktop PC, it'll be a normal size case with a couple of 120mm (if not larger) fans. I finally see what those quiet PC guys were on about. Quiet > Small. Unless you're deaf.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?desc ription=56-110-030&DEPA=0
Asus Terminator C3 - $115. VIA C3 processor, running at 800MHz. Comes with processor, floppy and CD-ROM. Put in your old PC2100 RAM, a couple SATA hard drives, install your favorite Linux/*BSD distro, and you have a perfect home server. It even has a PCI slot, FireWire, USB2 and TV OUT.
I found most of the review to be a waste of time because of this oversight.
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