Best Shuttle? SFF?

brightonrvf

brightonrvf

brightonrvf

Associate
Joined
6 Jul 2004
Posts
317
Location
All at sea
Hi all

I have the system in my sig, I am thinking about changing to a SFF and keeping as many as the components as possible. (Have two HDDs, a DVD Rom and Writer that is like to keep if poss. At worst ditch the ROM).

I use my PC for gaming and general other bits office etc.

Which SFF would you recommend?

Thanks in advance.
 
There's:
SN21G5
SN25P
SN26P

The first one is a smaller chasis that only supports single slot cooled graphics card, but has the advantage of a PCI slot should you want to put in a dedicated Creative sound card for gaming purposes. Might also need to upgrade the PSU which costs mucho money.

The next two allow for dual slot cooled graphics card (might need to cut a bit from drive cage and remove a directional plastic piece used for airflow), but only have a PCIe x1 for alternative plug-in cards. And it would restrict graphic card cooling as its located on the fan side of the PCIe x16 slot.
 
not forgetting the ST20G5. same as all the above. but with ati's chipset in it and a stadard 32bit pci slot as well as a 16x pci-e slot. handy if you want to use a pci card of some description, sound card maybe??

smaller than the 25P but still fits 2 hdd's in, 1 dvd drive (so would have to be your rw), also keeps cool and quiet as most shuttles are :)

id go for this or the 25p. their probs the best performance for the price at the min
 
Personally i wouldn't go for a shuttle, you get what they supply and thats it, no choice on anything to do with the mobo or psu at least going SFF you can pick which case you want that best suits your taste / needs then you can pick the mobo.

I can recommend the Aspire X-Qpack also known as OcUK Value X-Qpack Cube Case (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/OcUK_Value_Cases.html) if you shop around you can geta windowed one too, couple that with a motherboard of your choice and it will still probably cost less than a shuttle, you can fit 2 optical drives in it and with a bit of luck you might even be able to squeeze your current psu in it too, i have a Thermaltake 600 watt in mine. There are also othe SFF cases out there so don't think the Shuttles (nice as they are) are the only answer.
 
Last edited:
you raise some good points there, infact for my next upgrade i think im going to go for a mATX board and a sugo case instead of a shuttle :)

but to be fair, the motherboards shuttle provide are pretty damn good and the psu's, well they really are exceptionally high quality and will power anything you can throw at them (powered my entire A64 rig off their stock 200watt psu before with no problems). im not saying a bit of variety isnt nice, but with the components shuttle provide, i dont know of many people who'd like to upgrade their shuttle mobo etc.

only reason i could think of would be for better overclocking options etc (most clock reasonably well anyway, and will give a moderate overclock which a lot of people are usually happy with), but then, why buy a SFF for uber overclocking???

though having said this, it would be nice if shuttle actually sold their mobo's seperatly. then if your mobo ever died, you wouldnt have to buy a whole new chassis etc for a new shuttle, but instead just drop a new mobo in
 
cokecan72 said:
you raise some good points there, infact for my next upgrade i think im going to go for a mATX board and a sugo case instead of a shuttle :)

but to be fair, the motherboards shuttle provide are pretty damn good and the psu's, well they really are exceptionally high quality and will power anything you can throw at them (powered my entire A64 rig off their stock 200watt psu before with no problems). im not saying a bit of variety isnt nice, but with the components shuttle provide, i dont know of many people who'd like to upgrade their shuttle mobo etc.

only reason i could think of would be for better overclocking options etc (most clock reasonably well anyway, and will give a moderate overclock which a lot of people are usually happy with), but then, why buy a SFF for uber overclocking???

though having said this, it would be nice if shuttle actually sold their mobo's seperatly. then if your mobo ever died, you wouldnt have to buy a whole new chassis etc for a new shuttle, but instead just drop a new mobo in
Click to expand...

I agree shuttles are nice enough pcs and for a lot of people i don't doubt they would be perfect. I'm a picky so and so though :p and for the same (or similar) money as a bare bone shuttle you can get a much more flexible system imho, like you said if the mobo dies then you can easily pick another up. Also i wouldn't trust the 200w psu in a shuttle to power a reasonably powerful gaming rig complete with top endish gfx cards ie 7800/1800 or better. Maybe they would i don't know :confused: but the way things are going my SFF could end up being my gaming rig if i can find a decent clocking mobo (i dunno why but i just have to tweak it's a weakness of mine :D ) and i'll put my 1900xtx in it and i'll have no doubts of it working with my 600w psu.
 
brightonrvf said:
Hi thanks for the reponses :)

It al sounds good, if I were to go SFF, which Mobos should I be looking at do you think?
Click to expand...

What exactly will you be wanting from it?? Are you a tweaker like me and want to squeeze as much out of it as possible? Or are you happy to leave it as standard?

DFI infinity and biostar 939 seem to be pretty good for overclocking but each has a few minor negative points and aren't easy to find. If you want to leave it as standard then pretty much any matx mobo should do it just depends on what features you want.
 
lol im the same for tweakin etc but yeah..

you've brought up a typical misconception about shuttle psu's. their not like your typical ATX psu, the normal rules dont apply. with these shuttle psu's watts doesnt mean anythin. they will run anythin you throw at them, hence why theres an sli shuttle :) lol

ask any shuttle nut such as EVH, steeps etc, they'll tell you the same :)
 
Last edited:
Yeah i heard they are good quality but the thing is though 200w is 200w end of, thats kind of what puts me off. If they can power kit that needs 400w of power then why not rate them as such??
 
lol i cant quite describe what im tryin to say here, so another try:

doesnt matter how many watts you have, as long as it can supply a constant good 12v and 5v rail, it should run what ever you want it to run (by good i mean anythin in the range of about 11.4v and upwards for the 12v rail etc)

the quality of the components in the shuttle psu's are good and are very capable of providing this. im not sayin that other ATX psu's aint good quality cos they are some of the best psu's you can get. but if one of these companies decided to make a smaller 200watt psu with the same/similar components they use in their highend ones, it would also have good rails and be able to run what ever you want it to
 
Hmm still not convinced, afterall a psu is rated for a reason and if your pulling enough power out of it to start the rails dipping then that can only be a bad thing.

Being an electronics engineer myself i know that power = voltage x current and that is the laws of physics and you cant just say they don't apply to shuttle psu's. Maybe im going ott :confused: (certainly off topic sorry op) but why rate them at such a low rating if they can handle so much more?? Thats all i want to know?? :cool:

I know all psu aren't the same, god help anyone that actually believed a 500watt qtec psu could actually power a pc that needed near on 500watt. I also know that the hardware manufacturers probably err on the side of caution when they specify that for example GFX card XYZ requires a pc with a psu of no less than 450 watts when no 2 pcs are the same and i know a decent 400watt psu would suffice (assuming custom built pc's here not prebuilt off the shelf that rarely get upgraded).

Anyway we have raped the original posters thread enough and guess we will just have to agree to disagree on the subject of shuttle psu's :cool: ;)
 
i know where ya commin from, i've done electronics at college and uni over the past few years lol

all i was saying is that they are good quality and run everythin you want to throw at them (7800/7900's etc included) that was all :) just wanted to make sure the OP didnt think that cos they were rated with low watts they were a waste of money cos they wouldnt be able to power anythin. giving him both sides of the story so to speak

so i guess its still kinda relavent to his post lol in a wierd and obscure way :)
 
Hi you guys are getting a bit technical for me there, its interesting though :)

What am I looking for? Well I think I have done my tweaking/clocking phase etc and in all honesty I think I'm just looking for a stable system now that is pretty quick.

I am not bothered about building a machine as I have put together a few tower systems already. I play Warcraft and a bit of Eve OL. I do use the machine a lot.

So with that criteria does that help with narrowing a few components down? :)

As I said Ideally I'd like to utilise as many bits as possible from the rig in my sig.... and I'll be selling the rest to fund this project.

The Shuttles look good but am quite happy to procure mobos and cases etc :)

Thanks again.
 
one thing i will say, shuttles are getting stupidly expensive :(

take the SN26P for example.

to be honest, if you want somethin thats not too expensive and will house all of your components you got then id go for a sugo and a mATX boar dof some falvour. they look jsut as good as shuttles if not better, cheaper and a bit bigger which is always an advantage.

check out the last page of the case gallery adn spec thread, theres a few sugo's in there with VFD's been modded on the front panel, they look v.cool :)
 
rxmac said:
I can recommend the Aspire X-Qpack also known as OcUK Value X-Qpack Cube Case (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/OcUK_Value_Cases.html) if you shop around you can geta windowed one too, couple that with a motherboard of your choice and it will still probably cost less than a shuttle, you can fit 2 optical drives in it and with a bit of luck you might even be able to squeeze your current psu in it too, i have a Thermaltake 600 watt in mine. There are also othe SFF cases out there so don't think the Shuttles (nice as they are) are the only answer.
Click to expand...

I can vouch for this.

These are nice little cases. I have one with window panels and one with solid panels. You can pack in two optical drives and two hard drives and there is still enough free space to allow half decent airflow.

One thing is that there isn't much headroom above the CPU for a decent sized heatsink & fan - maybe somebody here could recommend a decent low-profile cooler for it?

Stan :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom