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Hardware

Review of the New Shuttle XPC Chassis 194

Posted by chrisd from the nicer-than-you-think dept.
DigiKid writes "Mini PCs are all the rage these days it seems, especially for the LAN Gamers in our midst. Shuttle Computer has been releasing new additions to their line of XPCs, that have the latest features, like USB 2.0, Firewire, and even support for Intel's Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading. This review takes you on a tour of the newest XPC from Shuttle, based on the i845GE chipset. The benchmarks don't lie and this tiny little cube PC holds its own versus a full sized rig." Last week I put together a 51g from them and was very impressed at how well it works and how quiet it is.
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Review of the New Shuttle XPC Chassis More

Review of the New Shuttle XPC Chassis

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  • Damnit! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No replies yet and the server is allready inaccessable. SlashCache! I'll gladly pay for this service.

  • Small form factor MB's (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:04AM (#4737520)
    Should check out the MiniITX boards from VIA. MiniITX [mini-itx.com]. Smaller than this, and quite efficient. Not really a gamers system though.
    • Can't we just stick with good old-fashioned Turing machines?
    • Believe it or not there are actually hard core, fully dedicated gamers who's lives revolve around. . .an older game or two.

      For me it's RB3D and especially Grand Prix Legends, a game now over four years old.

      The mini ITX looks just the LAN party ticket for these games, in fact, I'm intending to use one of these boards built into a custom pedal set to make a "PCless" PC. Everything will just plug in to the pedal set base.

      It's small enough and some "super" joysticks are now big enough that you could do something very similar with a joystick base. 7"x7" Joystick base, very stable, lets you rest your hands on it for extra stability AND. . . contains the entire PC!

      It's a brand new world out there folks.

      KFG
    • SOYO is coming out with their own SFF system soon. Pricing (according to them) will be ~$200 USD. People keep worrying that the SFFs are not gamer systems, Tom's Hardware seems to disagree.

  • XPC? (Score:3, Funny)

    by The Original Yama ( 454111 ) <lists.sridhar@dhanapal a n .com> on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:05AM (#4737521) Homepage
    Does XPC stand for something or was it chosen just to sound cool?

  • Heat (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Nalanthi ( 599605 )
    I was a little confused by their "heat tube".. It didn't look very well designed. Is their anyway to mod the cooling on these guys for better performance? Has anyone benchmarked how they performed when refegirated? We ceartainly firdge most of the comuters at our lan parties.... Nalanthi
    • The specs on these boxes are pretty high. I'm not sure you really want to fridge these guys. I'ze seen a few attempts at cooling the mini's with very poor results as well.

    • Re:Heat (Score:4, Informative)

      by muon1183 ( 587316 ) <muon1183@gmaiMENCKENl.com minus author> on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:07AM (#4737759) Homepage
      Actually, the heat tube works quite well. Heat tubes are used in many high end servers were cooling is critical. In fact, heat tubes can be better than the traditional heat sink/fan combo. There is a review of the athlon version of this system at http://www.tech-report.com/reviews/2002q3/shuttle- ss40g/index.x?pg=1 [tech-report.com] complete with benchmarks and comparison tests. So, if it's good enough to keep your athlon cool, it's good enough for just about anything.
    • Apparently the weird design of this particular heatsink (fins on the CPU _and_ at the end of heat pipes) is not intended originally -- it's a modified heatsink that is supposed to have beem "folded in half" with noth heatsinks directly on the CPU, and heat pipes moving heat from the lower heatsink to the upper one. In the design that they have now lower fins are useless because all heat they dissipate heats the air and ends up decreasing the efficiency of the large heatsink at the end of the case.

      The heat pipes are effective because they allow to not just pull the heat but to distribute it over a larger area of the large heatsink -- regular heatsinks have the limit on their size because the farther the fin is from the CPU, the less is the difference in the temperature between the fin and the air, so heat exchange is slower. Heat pipes move the heat to the remote pieces of the heatsink and distribute it more evenly, thus keeping it efficient regardless of the size. This was the idea of the original heatsink (a "sandwich" made of small lower heatsink and larger upper one with heat pipes between them) and it works on this one, even though four pipes is probably excessive, and lower fins are not doing anything useful.

  • Firewire (Score:5, Funny)

    by zapfie ( 560589 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:08AM (#4737528)
    the latest features, like USB 2.0, Firewire..

    Yeah, Firewire! It's the latest feature from 1999!

    • Re:Firewire (Score:2, Informative)

      by dameron ( 307970 )
      feature from 1999!

      More like 1995, that's when IEEE 1344 ("Firewire") first hit the mainstream. The company I was working for back then purchased AVID systems (at over $100K each) that were running on 68040 Macs. Even then Mac folks were splorkin' all over this mythic "firewire".

  • ... and the ACHME power supply [hothardware.com] is a nice touch!

  • other small cases (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:09AM (#4737537)
    i prefer the Samba [fica.com] and Sabre [fica.com] from FIC. I have a Sabre in the car and a Samba acting as a tivo-like device in the house.

    with the integrated pc-card slot, the only cable of significant length is for power. in the car, the pc slot is quite handy for sync'ing tunes to the car. something the shuttle doesn't have.

  • A great Report Card (Score:4, Informative)

    by Chris_Stankowitz ( 612232 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:09AM (#4737538)
    Here is another good review of the shuttle-sb51g [tech-report.com]. I have yet to see a bad review of this. I have a friend who just got his hands on one and the word it is screams like a banshee (But much quieter)
    • I'm sure it performs well but what about space? Upgradeability? In particular I am getting very tired of case designs that have no space on this inside making all repairs/upgrading a chore. Allthought the shuttle doesn't have this particular flaw yet, I am also getting tired of the use of plastic clips and plastic everything for the case.

      Why do people want to buy these? I just don't get it. I would much rather have a nice full tower case that is roomy enough for all my stuff as well as not having any sharp edges/angles to cut myself on or curse at because I can't get to Part A without Removing Parts B,C, and D. I mean one/two PCI slots and a single AGP? Sure everything is intergrated but, personally, most of that intergrated stuff is junk. Compare their integrated audio to a nice sound blaster audigy or the integrated ethernet to a nice 3com gigabit NIC. It only has room for 2 hard drives assuming you don't want a floppy... I am baffled why anyone would buy one of these. To me it makes no sense...
      • Had I not already gotten my notebook, I would get one of these for LAN gaming. It's a hell of a lot cheaper and it'd be easier to upgrade my graphics. I've got a 1.5 GHz P4m, GeForce4Go 440 and 512 MB of DDR. With one of these, it wouldn't cost me $500 to upgrade to a 2.0 GHz processor and I'd be able to stick in a Radeon 9700 Pro. As it is, the best graphics I could get is the Radeon Mobility 9000 (assuming I can find the part number somewhere).

        Now, I've also got a full tower, and I've had it for quite some time. I knew it'd be stationary, so I got the biggest case I could afford. If I didn't have the notebook, I wouldn't take a machine to LAN games, meaning I wouldn't be able to keep my profiles for various games easily. The thing weighs a ton, but it's big and easy to work with.

        So, to make a short story long, you have to make trade-offs. I would get one of these miniscule Shuttle deals and accept the space constraints so I wouldn't get a hernia just so I could play AvP2 with my buddies.
      • Sometimes, form and function trade off - I was just thinking about buying one of these today, actually, and the main reasons are size and design. It's the computer that doesn't have to look like a /computer/. I've got my workhorse, and my server cases, but sometimes, you want a nice dining table, not just a door laid flat on two cinderblocks.

      • Why do people want to buy these? I just don't get it. I would much rather have a nice full tower case that is roomy enough for all my stuff

        Space is a concern in many places. For example, since getting a new daughter my old study has become a nursery. All the kit had to be moved into the spare bedroom, and I really don't want that to have a ton of ugly looking kit with fans that scream like a jet.

        I'm not a gamer (well, consoles but not PC) - I've been easily lasting on my dual Celeron 533s with a TNT2-based graphics card for the last few years. By the time I upgrade, all the CPU socket and memory standards have changed anyway so I effectivly replace everything except the DVD and possibly the hard drive. For my usage pattern, one of these does very nicely.

        I'm waiting for the release of the nForce2-based version but barring a terrible review of that, I'm a Shuttle customer in waiting.

        Cheers,
        Ian

    • Based upon the reviews so far, install a decent 60 GB ATA-133 hard drive, a Toshiba SD-R1202 CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, the upcoming ATI Radeon 9500 Pro video card, an Intel Pentium 4 2.53 GHZ CPU and 512 MB of DDR333 DDR-SDRAM into the case--it could be a very nice gaming system that will run most games decently fast and even support SDPIF out for full Dolby Digital 5.1/DTS surround decoding for DVD movies.

  • Shape of these small computers... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:10AM (#4737543)
    I like these small computers, but I would rather see a PC made the same size/look as a standard piece of audio equipment (cd player or receiver size) so that I could put it in with my audio equipment and not have it seem out of place.

    These cubes are small, but they're a weird akward shape.
    • I've seen more than a couple of Powermac 6100s painted black to get just this result. While the original 66mhz cpu isn't going to do much by itself, there's a floppy bay, 5.25" optical bay and 3.5" internal bay. If you particularly wanted to fit a PC in there, I'm sure it'd be a possible hack-together.

      Admittedly, a whole industry culture of producing machines to integrate into existing household setups like a home entertainment cabinet would be a better solution. These shuttles are well-integrated internally, but from the outside no matter how small you can make a cube, it's still a desktop.

      (a nice desktop that I lust after :)
    • I like these small computers, but I would rather see a PC made the same size/look as a standard piece of audio equipment (cd player or receiver size) so that I could put it in with my audio equipment and not have it seem out of place.

      These cubes are small, but they're a weird akward shape.

      Then you want something like this [thinkgeek.com]. You will loose a lot of the features of the XPC, but it all depends on what you want to do with it.

    • just pick your favourite case [pc-case.de] and then built your computer.

    • If you want a compact computer, then just get a nice long strip of paper, add a pencil with rubber, and you've got yourself a makeshift Turing machine! And the best thing is that it doesn't take up any room whatsoever, simply because it's one-dimensional!
    • "I would rather see a PC made the same size/look as a standard piece of audio equipment..."

      There are several to choose from. Check ExoticPC [exoticpc.com] (which is where I bought my case.) In particular, check out the DIGN Home Theater case [exoticpc.com], the D-Vine case [exoticpc.com], and their CoolerMaster line. [exoticpc.com]

      My favorite is the DIGN case, which is absolutely gorgeous. It would look incredibly stylish in any home theater. You can even get the display for it and program it to show the MP3/DVD that is playing... I mean, the sky is the limit. Of course, it's $229.95 plus shipping, so you pay through the nose for those good looks.

      If you're seriously interested in creating a home theater PC, I'd look no further than these cases.

  • Does anyone have a link to one of the hardware sites which visited Shuttle? (I can't remember if it was TomsHardware or Anandtech, but I've looked on both), they we're shown the new range of cases that are going to be released... especially the multicoloured ones.

    I was hunting for this link the other day, trying to convince my brother to get one of the newer cases (whenever they surface of course).

  • ...current setup with these. I've got a few boxen under the desk now, some old, well..all old, but as far as realestate goes, I could put 3-4 of these on a shelf under a small table and actually save some space. Slapp a diff OS on each of them and have a nice small network of boxen to experiment with.

    -- AcquaCow
    • Me too.
      I was thinking about getting one for a "server", and putting 2 silent HDs in it and install FreeBSD on it.
      One could skip the floppy and install the second drive there or maybe the cd-rom and do a ftp-install. Then the HD's would both have a IDE channel for themself.
      Or a third option, install a Promise controller and mirror the harddrives.
      It it could keep the fan noise down even with 2 HD's in it, it would be great for a machine running 24x7x365.
      • Exactly...I was thinking, that if I actually upgraded...why not go all the way and grab some of the seagate barracuda IV's with the nice liquid bearings =)

        Whenever serial ATA decides to make it into most stores, I want to buy as many sATA enabled barracuda's I can afford and raid them together and just dump all of my data to them. Put a nice journaling fs on them and be fsck free. My actual computers wouldn't need more than a boot drive. If I really had money I didn't need...why not make that mostly some form of ram =)

        -- AcquaCow
        • I just replaced my IBM disk with a Seagate Barracuda and it was great to get rid of the noise. Now the PSU is the noisy bit, specially after after a while when the fan picks up speed to dump the heat. In the beginning, it's nice and silent but after about 10-15 min it gets worse, specially if the GF3 TI500 has been put to work.
          Now if the Seagate keeps on working well in my PC, I'll be using them for my server too.
    • Is a different OS viable with these? I guess linux hardware support is much better than it was 2 or 3 years ago, so maybe it's a good idea. I'd hate to buy a little lunch box like this and have some piece of hardware on it not recognized/working in linux. Pretty standard stuff inside right?
    • Or you could just get one decent box and invest in a copy of VMWare. Just a suggestion. You might save on KVM's and the electric bill.

  • Friend just got it yesterday... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pilferer ( 311795 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:34AM (#4737605)
    My friend, who always wants to borrow money from me, just got this yesterday. He says it's the ONLY computer he was able to put together without ANY problems on the first try. All the drivers loaded without problems (Win XP), and it was up and running in less than an hour. He had/has the Cappuccino, too, and it was a nightmare. The sound was flakey and the drivers were crap.

    He notes two things: One, it's REALLY QUIET, and two, the on-board video is pretty bad. But he loves it. He's using it for recording live music, to carry around with him, not play games on.

    I can't help but feel like the end of the "build-it-yourself computer" era is near. Things are getting smaller and smaller. Parts are getting cheaper and cheaper (except RAM..). When I had a job last year repairing PCs, people would bring in E-machines with their cheap, hard to replace power supplies, and Gateways that didn't even have a serial or PS/2 port, and only supported "half height" PCI cards. While there will always be people that want a huge tower and everything "custom built", what happens when the typical desktop PC is a small black box that's warranty voids as soon as you (after finding the "secret screwdriver") open it?

    Eh, I feel old, and I'm only 25.

    And yeah, I think I'll be getting a Shuttle as my next case. LOOKS AWESOME!@!$
    • I can't help but feel like the end of the "build-it-yourself computer" era is near. Things are getting smaller and smaller.

      Come on, it is only starting to come back! When I entered university (1990), most of the higher students were building computers for themselves and for friends. And guess the size? Those (mostly 8080-based) computers fit completely into keyboad! (the only external part was optional regular cassette recorder used as external data storage). Of course, the way you built your box was different - you did not just fit two-three parts together, you bought all parts separately and had to use soldering iron.

      Of course, it is hard to solder CPU to motherboard at home now, but still miniaturization is good thing. I am waiting for return of those times when your computer was all inside your keyboard, and when it produced no noise at all!

      • When I entered university (1990), most of the higher students were building computers for themselves and for friends. And guess the size? Those (mostly 8080-based) computers fit completely into keyboad!

        8080 in 1990? Don't you mean 80486 or 1980?

        In 1989, the 80486 was out. In 1991, I bought an 80486DX-33 with a whopping 200MB "Brand Technologies" IDE hard drive (a complete POS drive BTW).

        The 8080 came out in 1974! 8086 in 1978 (16bit CPU+bus), 8088 (16bit, 8bit bus) in 1979, 286 in '82, 386 in '85, Pentium in '93...

        Students were building 8080's in 1990 in your area? I don't doubt that some may have built 8080 machines as part of a Computer Engineering degree, but surely this was not the typical student built machine in 1990.

  • ATX Standards (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What I don't under stand is they say the MB is flexATX but the ports are not standard flexATX.

    Isn't port location and Chassis compatibility part of the ATX standard????

    • Re:ATX Standards (Score:3, Informative)

      by foonf ( 447461 )
      Isn't port location and Chassis compatibility part of the ATX standard????

      Not really. On most (standard) chassises, the IO backplate is removable. You can pop it out and replace it, or not use one at all. There is a de-facto standard arrangement that is used by most boards (and the plate that comes with most cases is designed for), but many times when integrating different combinations of ports it is not only desirable, but necessary, to deviate, and the standard accomodates this. The one thing on that box that is kind of abnormal is that the backplate seems to be held on with screws, and might even (I've never been inside one of those things) be physically attached to the motherboard, like most NLX systems. They could have gone a step further and used a different screw arrangement also, to make mounting third-party mainboards impossible. I wouldn't put it past them.

      (aside: its really a shame that NLX and other riser-card systems are largely dead now, with a riser you can build machines that small or smaller, with full-size, uninhibited expansion slots.)
  • I run a dual pIII 700 system with a gf3 ti200
    their test system is over twice as fast and has a much newer graphics card. My guess is that they didn't change the "com_maxfps" variable from the default of 85 to something a tad higher. I tend to average around 150 fps in q3 at 1024 in 32bit with most everything turned on. In hallways I peak over 300 (i set com_maxfps to 350 =) ...no, I can't make the framejump with this setup)

    -- AcquaCow
  • If I look at I have in my own pc, it seems that all my cards could be replaced with the onboard chipsets, except for adding a proper graphics card.
    But how good is the sound chip Realtek ALC 650. How does it compare to fx a Soundblaster Live. I don't need a lot of fancy features, the digital output is fine since I can connect it to my external sub. and speakers.
    Is it lacking any features that could degrade the performance in games like "Hardware Sound Acceleration". I have seen a few reviews of the shuttle PCs, but none of them really mentions if the Realtek chip is a good replacement.
    Maybe it doesn't matter. :)
    • Avance Logic merged with Realtek. The Realtek ALC650 is what's commonly known as the Avance Logic AC97. A.K.A. Garbage.

      I guess for cost cutting reasons most of the newer motherboards now come with this onboard.
      • i don't know, but if you've been playing games lately, more than 99% of them recommend turning off hardware audio accel on creative cards... ..which is really messed up since one would except fancy sb's to be really great and integ. suck.

        aww.. whad do i know though.. i prefer my old isa sb16's(_not_ vibra's obviously) for sound anyday.. (they just sound better in my opinion, i don't care if they distort the sound or something).
    • I'm posting this on my sg51 as we speak.

      The ALC650 may not the be the greatest of sound cards, but it does serve its purpose quite adequately. I've used mine as an mp3 mixer (the 5.1 audio and dj software allows you match beats rather easily) for dance parties without significant problems. You should know, however, that getting the sound to work in Linux requires a great deal of fiddling; i.e. using different AC 97 ALSA drivers made for other cards, and once you finally get it working, you find that your browser sometimes hangs when it tries to play certain flash media while you're running XMMS, thus I've had to turn off flash in my browser. If anyone knows a workaround for this, please post a reply.

      There are also some other properties of shuttle systems worth noting.

      The network card is NOT IEEE compliant... i.e., they never registered their MAC address and so, the LAN I am on refuses to recognize it, so I had to use my only pci slot for a networking card.

      Other than that, I love my little machine. I bought it because I do a bit of research in graphical programming and a good deal of modeling in Maya, and it handles batch renders quite quickly with a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4. Since I am a student, I often need to take my work home over breaks and I didn't want to comprimise power by getting a laptop. It's one of the most portable desktop computer I've seen and has met my needs quite reasonably.

      Overall, with the exception of a few sound issues in Linux and the network card, I have few complaints. XP runs quite well, as does Slack 8.0, and there's nothing better than building a machine that is twice as fast and one quarter the size of your roommates' massive towers.

  • Sound? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Moridineas ( 213502 )
    I'd be very wary of sound on this. I bought 2 of the early model SV25's (Shuttle also) and they are SO loud. The powersupply fan is part of the problem..it's ourageously loud. People really don't like using it because of the sound alone.

    I would definitely check out the sound factor on this one before buying.
    • i have a sv24. I just converted the power supply fan to 5v, put a temperature controlled fan in the back, and since I have a via c3 in there, I put a heatsink on it without a fan. Now without the hard drive it is silent. Stupid hard drive.
      • Do you have any links / advice about what was involved with this? If it's not too hard I'd like to give it a shot. (the 5V trick)
        • If it's not too hard I'd like to give it a shot. (the 5V trick)

          Some 12V fans will just barely run at 5V, others not at all (usually these will shudder at start, but not actually get enough momentum to keep spinning). If you wire them between the 12V and 5V rails you'll be running the fan at 7 volts, which usually works for the troublesome fans.

          I assume Skyfire's new temp controlled fan is designed to run at a wider voltage range though.

    • fwiw, the new ones have a dramatically revamped cooling setup (invloving heat-pipes) that is supposed to be lots quieter than the SV24/25 was.

      But I don't own either one, so I can't give a firsthand impression.
      • I have a Shuttle SS40g which already has this heatpipe thingie. The original fan has three speed steps of which the first is ok quiet. But it is hard to keep it in first stage with any standard CPU running for a while.
        The second speed step was too loud for my taste, since I sleep in the same room. Thus I did two things: I exchanged the original fan with a silent Pabst fan and I underclocked the Athlon XP 1600 I have. It is now running at 1050 MHz.
        This is really quiet!
        Even when I encode some oggs and watch a movie at the same time while running my small icecast radio station in the background.
        The two things you can hear is the small fan of the power supply which could also be replaced with a more silent one I guess and the hard drive.

        Other things: Linux is running fine on it with all the features enabled I need. I use an external Firewire case for making backups, use the internal net card and a second rtl8139 to make up a router, the sound is connected to my stereo and listening to my ogg vorbis collection has a sound quality which is really good enough for me. I can't hear the difference between a normal CD player and this setup.
        The built in graphic card is good enough for watching movies with mplayer and running X-Windows. I am not a gamer, but I guess if you are, you can use a good card in the AGP slot of the recent Shuttle models.

        When I opened the package and started assembling the machine I was very (VERY!) pleased how clean and well done this case is. Everything fits right, there is no sharp edge, the case has finger screws and even though there is little space in there it is easy to replace stuff, because the outer hull, the drive bay (shuttle bay?) and the fan case can easily be removed.

        All in all this is the first machine of the many I have had so far which I really fell in love with. If you need a home entertainment machine, I can surely recommend the shuttle barebone series.
        Not perfect, but close...

        -rolf

  • I still don't know... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tfbit ( 314233 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @04:37AM (#4737720)
    why they put the SPDIF Out on the front and the In on the back.

  • Might be worth waiting for the SN41 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @05:23AM (#4737782) Homepage
    The SB51G is a really nice machine, and has the advantage of supporting the hyperthreading chips. However, for those of you not planning to add an AGP card and just stick with the built-in stuff, it might be worth hanging on for the Athlon-based SN41.

    It's not the fact it's based on the Athlon that's the lure, though I imagine that's the case for some. It's more the fact it's based on the nForce2 chipset. Built-in dual monitor and Dolby 5.1 support, plus ATA-150 (I think - might be ATA-133).

    Cheers,
    Ian

  • ... or, isn't this just the Apple G4 Cube done two years belatedly and considerably less prettily by the PC world...
    • Sorta-kinda, but let's face it -- the G4 Cube was Apple trying to go a little too high in the cool factor and pricing itself out of the market as a result. Their problem was creating a system that was essentially an iMac with a G4 and pricing it like a high-end system, and they blew it. They got it right with the Luxo Jr. iMacs, but got burned pretty bad in the process... /Brian
  • For all those people who have been waiting for an XPC with socket A *and* AGP, it seems finally Shuttle are releasing one. I noticed the SK41G seems to have been released.. See the shuttle website here [shuttle.com] and here [shuttle.com].
    • Very nice. Personally, I could care less if I was using an Athlon or a Pentium as long as the machine handles what I do. I'm sure the price will be a factor in this particular Shuttle versus the Pentium-based ones.

    • Sweet, that's exactly what I've been waiting for. Now to go scouring the net again for information on how well the sound, network, video, and TV-out on these *new* ones work under Linux...

  • Shuttle is Low Quality (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm using a shuttle PIII/ddr mb that I couldn't afford. It has everything, it was given to me when the capicators popped off it.
    Easy to fix, though..

  • Distributors? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by babycakes ( 564259 )
    I know perhaps the whole idea of the XPC is that you buy the bare bones and insert the rest of the components yourself, but has anyone found a distributor that sells the machines completely-prebuilt? I've been looking for someone who does that, for a university project, and many companies are very willing to sell the basic case + motherboard, but not so keen when you ask them to equip it for you..

    • Re:Distributors? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Go_Ask_Alex ( 459685 )
      It appears that Directron will build the system for you for an additional $29.

      http://store.yahoo.com/directron/sb51g.html

      Not sure if installation also includes OS installation or just hardware components.

      I bought my SS51g from Directron (quite happy with them) and put my system together myself in well under one hour.
  • How noisy is this thing? I didn't see any mention of that in the review.

    • Re:how noisy? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Go_Ask_Alex ( 459685 )
      I have a SS51g with a 2.4-GHz P4, DVD/CD-RW and 120-GB HD installed (SiS651 chipset instead of the Intel 845GE chipset, same otherwise including the heatpipe heatsink/fan combo). The system is pretty quiet where the fan only speeds up and gets noisy prior to system shutdown, aside from one instance while ripping a CD; this is after I reduced the CPU temp at which the fan speeds up from the default BIOS setting (I forgot the exact temp but I dropped it about 15 degrees Celcius if I remember correctly). The top of the case is barely perceptively warm to the touch too.

  • XPC, Linux & a mains shock (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23, 2002 @10:39AM (#4738265)
    I recently bought and assembled one of the earlier Shuttle SV25 XPCs. It has a Via C3 866 & 256Mb or RAM, and except for 3D, its performance is pretty good. Assuming that Shuttle have improved, then these new versions should be pretty awesome, although I'd wait for the Athlon version.

    The only thing which generally won't work with XPCs is the Savage graphics, 2D is pretty generic, but there is NO 3D support under Linux. Every other device was identified by RH7.3 and booted and worked no problem.

    The only warning which I would give, is to ensure that whilst tinkering inside the case, that you do turn off the power, Shuttle forgot to cover bits of electrically live metal, and I found this out the hard way. The mains inlet, (which is unfused) is so very close to the CD power connector, and whilst tidying the CD power cables (with the machine off) I took a jolt, off of uncovered mains pins on that socket.

  • Two Serial Ports? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by strictnein ( 318940 ) <{strictfoo-slashdot} {at} {yahoo.com}> on Saturday November 23, 2002 @12:43PM (#4738710) Homepage Journal
    Maybe I'm missing something, but why would anyone need two serial ports?

    One would think a computer like this would be mostly legacy free. The last computer I built was (using the Abit IT-7) and I haven't missed my PS2 or serial ports one bit.

    Couldn't something more useful have been put in their place instead? Like a RCA/s-video out, as this thing would be great to create some sort of media box. Even a standard printer port would be a ton more useful.

    Or maybe shuttle has a product like this that I just don't know about?

    • Re:Two Serial Ports? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SN74S181 ( 581549 )
      Doubtless you just amble into the mall and buy whatever happy-shiney peripherals are on the endcap.

      For people like us who do a portion of our hardware ourselves, it's just a pain in the ass to not have serial ports available to connect them. 'Solutions' like USB are made to keep the entry cost of developing external hardware up in the 4-6 figures.

      Fuck you, Bill Gates, and fuck your 'ban legacy ports from machines that want the Win-logo.'


  • I purchased one of the original Shuttle Spacewalker systems a little over a year ago.

    The system does it's job, but I have a big issue with it -- noise. The thing has a CPU fan that runs hard and fast. Since the CPU fan must be low profile, you really do not have a choice in replacing it with something else. There is a fan in the back of the chassis that pushes air out, adding a little noise. And finally, the power supply is very noisy, and designed very badly. It pulls hot air into it from inside the case, and pushes hot air back inside the case -- there is no transient air.

    Had I know about the noise issues with the Shuttle Spacewalker before I bought it, I would not have.

    I do not know if any of the modern versions have fixed these problems, but I would be wary of it.

  • Great Machine but? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NetNinja ( 469346 )
    Where are the Athlon Processor models?

  • Power Supply Problems with S25 (Score:4, Informative)

    by herderofcats ( 409703 ) on Saturday November 23, 2002 @03:44PM (#4739463)
    Based on the good stuff we heard here on SlashDot we bought 4 Shuttle S25's to use as servers for our office, and we were pleased with how the worked...at first.

    However, over the last 6 months we have now had power supplies go bad 4 times and required us to get new power supplies from Shuttle with many weeks of delay. Even one of the replacement power supplies flaked. Of the original 4 shuttles, only one still has the original power supply.

    Fortunately for us, one of the 4 shuttles was designated a cold spare, so we didn't experience much down time, but it was quite annoying to have so many power supplies go bad. We don't have time to move the servers over to more reliable systems, so for now we have purchased some spare power supplies from Shuttle.

    Right now we would be very hesitant to buy more modern Shuttles until we understand more about why there was such a huge rate of failure on the power supplies of their S25's.

    -- Herder of Cats
    • i have about 20 sv24s, 4 ss40s, and 20 ss51gs. i've had 5 of the sv24 power supply fans go bad, but never the actual power supply.

      this does appear to be a sv24/sv25 issue; the "heat pipe"-based units (ss40*, ss50*, etc) all have only one fan in the unit: an 80mm easily-replaceable sunon.

      i have experienced instability on the ss40s (fixed via replacement) and power supply issues with the sv24/sv25s. i didn't use an sv24 as a router because the power supply had a fan, and i'm glad i made that choice now.

      with the good amount of experience with these systems, and i wouldn't hesistate to recommend the ss50 series to anyone.

  • Forget it (Score:2, Insightful)

    by linuxpaul ( 156516 )
    I got sucked into this subtle advertising scheme last time, without checking Linux compatibility and got burned.

    If this is the right machine for you then great, but be sure to look into the details first.
  • ...does it STAY QUIET as the fan's bearings wear out?

  • SS51G - SiS Chipset. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Psyko ( 69453 )
    These machines are actually really cool, I had my doubts but I picked up a Shuttle SS51g (SiS chipset, not intel) about 2 weeks ago. Currently I've got the following in it:

    P4 2.24G
    512MB PC2700 ddr
    Radeon 9700Pro AGP
    2x Maxtor 80G 7200rpm ATA/133
    1 Teac 48x burner

    Under normal working conditions (99F cpu, 110F drives) the heat pipe and single fan (+power supply fan) seem pretty adequate. The only time I notice the heat start to spike up is when I'm really pounding the drives and when I'm gaming, (CPU at about 109-111F, and drives about 120-130F). I think the majority of the heat build up is because there is only about a 1/4" gap between the 2 hard drives and there is no real airflow between them, also the fan on the Radeon only has about 3/8" clearance from the outside aluminum wall of the case.

    I'm going to cut a blowhole in the case over the GPU fan and I might cut a small intake slot on the front of the case to allow some airflow across the disks, although I'm hesitant because I don't want to damage the aesthetic of the case.

    From a performance perspective I've been really impressed (I replaced a Dell P330 workstation with this machine). The integrated perephrial set leaves little to be desired (I'd like an spdif coaxial digial out from the integrated audio for the old reciever I'm using with it, but that's it) 6x USB ports eliminated my need for a usb hub. The integrated ATA133 controllers provide throughput approaching what I was seeing from a PERC3/dc with 2-10K rpm U3 160 disks (no raid) that were in the P330 (even with 128MB cache). Memory performance and overall system is also right on target. I primarily built this as a game box, (running WinXP :( ) and 3D mark 2001se pulls over 13k 3dmarks at 1024x768x32, with 210+ fps on the low detail benchmarks. Overall I think this is a great chassis & MB combo. Like I said, the only real issue is when you cram it full it starts to get a little warm.
  • Shuttle introduced one called the SS41G that has an AGP slot and sockets an AMD Athlon XP CPU. I have one running now as my media PC connected to my HDTV and it's running beautifully. I put an Athlon 1400 in it and the CPU temperature is a cool 31C.

    One gripe - it does not have a connector for the SPDIF output of a DVD player on the motherboard. This means that SPDIF pass-through will not work, and the Dolby AC3 track must be processed by the CPU instead of just sent directly to the stereo receiver.

    BTW - I also have three SS51G machines with Pentium 4 2.53GHz CPUs running as database caching servers (Linux RH7.2). They've run without any hiccups under load for several months now. Great performers, and I think the SB51G should be similar.

    Kudos to Shuttle!

  • Has anyone tried to do this?

    Especially the Athlon models could win a lot in terms of quietness. Remember: The mobile versions are relativly similar in price.

    I prefer a quieter system for 100 MHz more. You barely notice the 100 MHz, but you'll notice a CPU, that consumes 30 Watts compared to a CPU that consumes 60 Watts.

    Bye egghat.

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