HI all, I got a SP35P2 from OcUK last week, my third Shuttle so I kind of know what I'm doing, but I only change it every 3 years so keep forgetting...
This is as much a reminder to self in the future, and possibly a help for those who want to build a similar system. I'm not interesting in gaming but I'm a keen photographer and have revived an interest in video, and budget was a little bit of an issue. I googled a lot to figure out what hardware folks have had problems with in the SP35P2 (past hard lessons have taught me the Shuttles can be more iffy about what you choose), and came up with the following as something that should work (all including shipping):
From OcUK I got:
SP35P2 barebones, 2.6GHz Dual-core E5300, Pioneer DVR-S18L: total £250.-
From Amazon (out of stock at OcUK) I got:
1TB Seagate SATA 7200RPM 32MB drive: £72.-
I wanted a cheap HDMI-out graphics card (none at OcUK) and from eBay I got:
MSI N9400GT-MD512H (512MB): £36.-
From an Amazon vendor (Base) I got:
2x2GB Kingston KVR 800MHz HyperX DDR2: £69.-
I actually wanted 8GB but I wanted to test whether everything worked before placing the same order again, it was free shipping so I reconed it was better to get working memory in two shipments, than one shipment of non-working memory... I've ordered but not received that yet.
The SP35P2 came with an old BIOS (March 2008 if remember right), and it was obvious from Shuttle's "issues" list that it would give problems (resets with 8GB memory etc.), but I plugged all together first, using Artic Silver 5 instead of what Shuttle provided (not sure what's best). Lo and behold, it fires up with no problem. Inserted XP SP3 DVD, created a 100GB partition for XP, and installed XP. I then installed the driver disk from Shuttle, but *not* the Intel RAID drivers which I don't have a need for. I then used Windows Update to get all the patches for XP, before installing the drivers on the MSI DVD. Finally I used MSI's "Liveupdate" to get the latest and greatest MSI drivers.
During the above I had a very annoying problem: warm reboots/resets didn't work, the system hung at the Shuttle splash screen. I had to power the system off and on to get it to restart. So I decided it was time for a BIOS upgrade, which I would need to go to 8GB anyway.
From eu.shuttle.com I got the latest BIOS, and AWDFLASH.exe.
From GoCoding.com I got BootFlashDOS:
http://gocoding.com/page.php?al=bootflashdos
I didn't have a standard USB key around but used a 48MB CF card in a USB reader, and created the boot disk with that, I don't think I needed to select any of the options.
I then copied the BIOS and AWDFLASH.exe to the USB CF card, and created a file "doit.bat" with the following line:
awdflash.exe SP35S20J.BIN /cc/cd/cp/sn/py/nbl/wb/r
Some of the switches are explained here:
http://hww.ru/contents/articles/bios-update-guide.htm
Power on the Shuttle while holding down the ESC key gives you the boot device menu. Select the entry for the USB drive, and boot.
It came up with the "C>" prompt, and I just typed "doit" to start the upgrade, sat back and (important) didn't touch the keyboard. The BIOS install went perfectly, and at the end I had to power the system off and on.
From now on the system warm-boots just fine.
After a couple of days there are a couple of niggles:
1) I can't get the DVD drive to eject by pressing the eject button the front. I have to use "Eject" from Explorer, which is a bit of a pain. To be investigated.
2) The "hidden DVD drive" is poor design, when the tray hits the cover the cover flips out. However in 50% of the cases the DVD drive thinks there's an obscruction, and closes again. Of course autorun kicks in as well, argh... To be modded at leisure...
3) The system is noisy: once I really make those cores busy and the fans start spinning they are *loud*. Another mod probably coming up...
4) The system runs a bit hot: I use "speedfan" to monitor the temperatures and it's a bit hotter than I'm happy with.
Apart from that, an utterly well-running system, that's as fast as I need for now, and where I can install a quad later once the price falls if I need that...
In a few weeks we'll see how well it does with Windows 7...
This is as much a reminder to self in the future, and possibly a help for those who want to build a similar system. I'm not interesting in gaming but I'm a keen photographer and have revived an interest in video, and budget was a little bit of an issue. I googled a lot to figure out what hardware folks have had problems with in the SP35P2 (past hard lessons have taught me the Shuttles can be more iffy about what you choose), and came up with the following as something that should work (all including shipping):
From OcUK I got:
SP35P2 barebones, 2.6GHz Dual-core E5300, Pioneer DVR-S18L: total £250.-
From Amazon (out of stock at OcUK) I got:
1TB Seagate SATA 7200RPM 32MB drive: £72.-
I wanted a cheap HDMI-out graphics card (none at OcUK) and from eBay I got:
MSI N9400GT-MD512H (512MB): £36.-
From an Amazon vendor (Base) I got:
2x2GB Kingston KVR 800MHz HyperX DDR2: £69.-
I actually wanted 8GB but I wanted to test whether everything worked before placing the same order again, it was free shipping so I reconed it was better to get working memory in two shipments, than one shipment of non-working memory... I've ordered but not received that yet.
The SP35P2 came with an old BIOS (March 2008 if remember right), and it was obvious from Shuttle's "issues" list that it would give problems (resets with 8GB memory etc.), but I plugged all together first, using Artic Silver 5 instead of what Shuttle provided (not sure what's best). Lo and behold, it fires up with no problem. Inserted XP SP3 DVD, created a 100GB partition for XP, and installed XP. I then installed the driver disk from Shuttle, but *not* the Intel RAID drivers which I don't have a need for. I then used Windows Update to get all the patches for XP, before installing the drivers on the MSI DVD. Finally I used MSI's "Liveupdate" to get the latest and greatest MSI drivers.
During the above I had a very annoying problem: warm reboots/resets didn't work, the system hung at the Shuttle splash screen. I had to power the system off and on to get it to restart. So I decided it was time for a BIOS upgrade, which I would need to go to 8GB anyway.
From eu.shuttle.com I got the latest BIOS, and AWDFLASH.exe.
From GoCoding.com I got BootFlashDOS:
http://gocoding.com/page.php?al=bootflashdos
I didn't have a standard USB key around but used a 48MB CF card in a USB reader, and created the boot disk with that, I don't think I needed to select any of the options.
I then copied the BIOS and AWDFLASH.exe to the USB CF card, and created a file "doit.bat" with the following line:
awdflash.exe SP35S20J.BIN /cc/cd/cp/sn/py/nbl/wb/r
Some of the switches are explained here:
http://hww.ru/contents/articles/bios-update-guide.htm
Power on the Shuttle while holding down the ESC key gives you the boot device menu. Select the entry for the USB drive, and boot.
It came up with the "C>" prompt, and I just typed "doit" to start the upgrade, sat back and (important) didn't touch the keyboard. The BIOS install went perfectly, and at the end I had to power the system off and on.
From now on the system warm-boots just fine.
After a couple of days there are a couple of niggles:
1) I can't get the DVD drive to eject by pressing the eject button the front. I have to use "Eject" from Explorer, which is a bit of a pain. To be investigated.
2) The "hidden DVD drive" is poor design, when the tray hits the cover the cover flips out. However in 50% of the cases the DVD drive thinks there's an obscruction, and closes again. Of course autorun kicks in as well, argh... To be modded at leisure...
3) The system is noisy: once I really make those cores busy and the fans start spinning they are *loud*. Another mod probably coming up...
4) The system runs a bit hot: I use "speedfan" to monitor the temperatures and it's a bit hotter than I'm happy with.
Apart from that, an utterly well-running system, that's as fast as I need for now, and where I can install a quad later once the price falls if I need that...
In a few weeks we'll see how well it does with Windows 7...