Shuttle - Good, Bad?

thesteve

Howdy folks,

Following my post here asking advice on building a multimedia PC, I've decide to take Jammers advice and go with Shuttle.

Thing is I have had absolutely no experience with them and have always been a bit weary about small machines (the smaller the hotter, etc), so I'm asking for a few opinions. I've read a few horror stories already but reviews like this on the latest Shuttle, the SN25P, are full of nothing but praise, and they seemed to run every test possible on this machine.

For reference on what I'm gonna use it for, I plan on filling the Shuttle with the following components...

-2GB RAM (the highest possible)
-AMD 64 processor (whatever the fastest compatible processor is on build time)
-Dual speed DVD burner
-1 small HD for the OS (prob WD Raptor 37.6 GB SATA 8MB cache 10,000 RPM)
-1 big mother for storage of mp3's, temp dvd rips and DIVXd movies (prob Seagate Baracuda 400GB *MB cache 7200 RPM)
-Graphics Card (haven't researched yet) that has to have s-video out, vga and a digital output (for a LCD TV to follow later). I won't be playing games on this PC.
-A projector will be bought in 2 months, this will get around the reduced quality of DVDs on a TV
-Trying to decide whether to get a surround sound speaker system to plug into the PC or use the digital output to send the sound to an external system (I'm a novice on decoders, etc)

I already have a 250 GB Maxtor One touch External (USB2 and Firewire) also....

So lads, any opinions on the Shuttles in general would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to make any recommendations on the setup I have in mind, etc.

Thanks in advance.....

oh ya, hopefully plan to get my hands on XP media edition as the OS also...

Khannie

I have an asus pundit-r. It's not really a shuttle, but it's very small (I'd say about one third the volume of my other PC) and does use standard components. Heat isn't really an issue in that machine, though it is well designed with heat disappation in mind.

I don't see anything wrong with small boxes myself, though I wouldn't use one for a very high end (e.g. gaming) pc. Heat really is an issue there, but since you're not going to be gaming, I'd say fire away.

HTH.

uberpixie

Built a shuttle SN95G5V2 last week.

They are a bit fidily to build and having small hands is a bonus!

No real probs with heat.

Nvmonitor shows temps to be 33c for the cpu and 36c for the system. As long as you have good airflow around the shuttle and open the window once a day to let some cool air in overheating should not be a prob.

Temps are mid forties under load playing games.

The shuttle is not the most silent though, quiter than my last box but it might be a bit louder than you want for a multi media box.

The most noise out of a shuttle box is the dvd drive, so watching dvds might not be as silent as you thought.

All in all very happy with it. Had to replace the onboard sound with an old audigy 1 though as the feedback was driving me mad. Only issue so far with it.


That shuttle you are looking at is very sweet. It def should be the shuttle you buy for amd 64. Nice power supply, pci-e, and will take 3 hard drives and very dacent onboard sound.

Also have a look at this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Kloss.html

Has gotten very good reviews and is very quite. Also a p4 so might be a bit faster for encoding than the amd64 depending on the software.

Also has very sweet onboard sound and comes with a normal pci slot and a x16 pci-e gfx slot. Also uses ddr1. So it's a very good mix of old and new tech.

The pci slot is handy if you want to replace the onboard sound.

All in all the spec you have above should make you a ****ekicker of a rig.

thesteve

Cheers for the replies lads...