Shuttle SN45G
Mini PC - Review
by DaZZaBoY


The Shuttle series of mini-PC's are SFF (small form factor) units 
and are aimed at buyers who are after a compact but powerful system 
and want to take up less space than a run of the mill desktop or 
towercase. The Shuttle systems are also handy when you have a load 
of leftover parts (like I did) and want to build a portable system 
without having to fork out the best part of a grand for a decent 
spec laptop.

These units mainly come in 'barebone' form (case and mainboard only) 
and are aimed at either AMD Duron/Athlon or Pentium 4 CPU's. I 
purchased the SN45G model due to it's relatively cheap price 
compared to other units and it's future upgradeability.

The SN45 comes with the following spec as standard:


* Socket 'A' FN45 mainboard (200-400FSB)
* NVidia NForce2 Ultra 400 chipset (Northbridge)
* Dual channel DDR sockets (upto PC3200)
* Onboard 6 channel audio via NForce SoundStorm drivers
* Onboard Fast Ethernet
* ICE (Integrated Cooling Engine)
* 1xAGP 8x / 1XPCI slot
* Front Panel - 2xUSB 2.0, 1xHeadphone, 1xMic, 1xFirewire
* Rear panel - PS/2 k/b + mouse, 1xSerial, 1xSPDIF, 2xFirewire, 1xRJ45
* Bays - 1x5.25", 2x3.5"
* Dimensions - 300m(L)x200mm(W)x185mm(H)


The SN45 comes with a measly 200w PSU but is a very good quality and 
quiet running unit. However, some reports of booting problems have been 
found when using power hungry, top end GFX cards like the Radeon 
XT5800 etc.. Apparantly, this can be solved by fitting a larger 250w supply.

Another feature that this unit boasts, is the use of ICE or Integrated 
Cooling Engine which is basically a steel slab that sits on top of the 
CPU (instead of the normal heatsink & fan set-up) and is connected to 
six heatpipes which transfer heat along to a large fan and grill 
situated on the back inner side of the case. This fan has various 
settings which can be played around with via the BIOS, but when used 
with the very handy Smart Fan setting, it can run at the lowest RPM 
it can handle whilst keeping the CPU temp stable.

You can also adjust the temperature settings at which the fan RPM 
increases - I have mine set to speed up at 53oC which is never 
reached anyway.

The spare components that I fitted in this unit are:


* Athlon XP1600+
* 512mb DDR RAMmage
* GeForce2 Ti 64mb DDR
* Maxtor D-Max+8 30GB 7,200rpm HD
* LiteON 16x DVD-Rom (needs a combo drive tho!)
* Floppy


When fitting the parts into the unit, everything is pretty straight 
forward and accessible due to the easy removal of the drive bay 
cradles. If you get a little bewitched when building, everything 
is explained in pictorial form in the excellent user manual. What
also makes this shuttle special is the little cables hooks and 
other nooks and cranny's to route power/IDE cables through, so 
not to hamper the airflow in the limited space inside. So far I've
found the SN45 to be an excellent quiet running, professional 
looking unit and I've had no problems at all. The only thing I 
can suggest if you take the plunge and buy one, is if you have 
no use for the single PCI slot, fit a system exhaust blower to 
give the components an extra few degrees cooler running and use 
a decent thermal compound like Artic Silver on the CPU die before 
fixing the ICE in position.

The temperatures (after a few days running in period) were monitored 
thru MBM and were CPU 48oC / Case 43oC, but after fitting the exhaust 
blower the figures were showing a drop in temp to CPU 45oC / Case 
40oC. Nice!

There is also a full range of accessories for the SN45 which include: 
carry bags, changeable cover plates, USB Bluetooth modules, remote 
controls etc. so you can personalise it till your little heart is 
content!


I've now got the shuttle connected to a 15" Relisys TL540 TFT screen 
and is great for banging out loads of articles here in the back room. :o)

[End]