Shuttle SK22G2 Spec

Air Marshal · 2 Sep 2006 at 10:29

I've been looking at the Shuttle SK22G2 Barebones system, which being rather cheap for a Shuttle box seems like a good buy for those who want a socket AM2 SFF without all the bells and whistles of the £3/400 P2 systems. Only thing is; should I be put off by the VIA chipset the thing uses? I'm planning to use it for:

Some AutoCAD and Matlab.
Photoshop design.
Some mid-end gaming. (UT2004, Civ4, BF2)

The first thing I will do to the Shuttle is swap in a PC50 300W SilentX PSU, but would I have trouble running all this on three hundred watts? How hot/noisy will it run? This thread is intended just to be focused on the SK22G2, as the last one got bogged down with about three different rigs at the same time. Hence, no Conroe arguments please.

CP-166-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-166-AM)
£89.99 £89.99
MY-058-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL)
£139.99 £139.99
GX-114-SP Sapphire X1600 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-114-SP)
£67.99 £67.99
HD-078-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-078-SE)
£59.95 £59.95
CD-030-NE NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE)
£21.95 £21.95
Subtotal £379.87
VAT £66.48
Total £446.35

...or if the jump in performance is worth the money...

CP-172-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 5000+ 2.60GHz (Socket AM2) - Retail (CP-172-AM)
£189.95 £189.95
MY-058-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL)
£139.99 £139.99
GX-124-SP Sapphire ATI Radeon X1900 GT 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-124-SP)
£119.99 £119.99
HD-078-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB ST3320620AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-078-SE)
£59.95 £59.95
CD-030-NE NEC ND4570 16x16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM (CD-030-NE)
£21.95 £21.95
Subtotal £531.83
VAT £93.08
Total £624.91

A few more things:

Budget is £800ish, excluding Shuttle and PSU.
SK22G2 only has two expansion slots, no dual slot video cards please.

Any suggestions?

Steeps · 2 Sep 2006 at 15:51

looks like a great unit, finally they're realised how popular the g2 chassis were and a price to show it!

i don't know that much about chipsets, but i think it might just limit its overclocking potential of the unit. the only review i've found so far is german.

the psu will be fine for what it was intended for, server use running standard kit, however if you are intending to use the pci express port then i would upgrade to the 300w unit. i have a top spec p4 system (s478) running on a 220w psu, so the 300w should be able to handle anything you throw at it (apart from overclocking, thats where they start to run out of juice)

the chipset is passive, the psu has one fan (2 on the 300w) and the chassis uses a 92mm fan which is temp controlled. the unit itself will be quite quiet however using a single slotted graphics card will probably put out a lot of noise unfortunately.

Bane · 3 Sep 2006 at 16:49

Post back with your impressions of the unit, if you decide to try one.

I'm a bit unsure of the chipset myself after using nForce chipset for years.

Planned on a PSU upgrade, meshed case cover, dedicated sound card which starts pushing the price up considerably. Also concerned about finding a nice looking DVD-RW drive as my Pioneer 109XL is silver, and Plextor's slot loading DVD-RW doesn't seem to be available any more.

Was also considering the reflective face plate accessory you can get, except the SPDIF socket would remain empty. And not sure it would compliment a silver optical anyway.

Air Marshal · 5 Sep 2006 at 20:07

Bane said:
Post back with your impressions of the unit, if you decide to try one.

Will do. Anyone have a better spec for 300W and ~£800 exc. Shuttle and PSU?

EVGA 7900GT KO Maybe?

Air Marshal · 7 Sep 2006 at 16:35

Okay, I think I have a final build here:

Shuttle SK22G2 Barebones
Shuttle PC50 300W SilentX
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Low Power 35W
2GB OCZ Gold Series XTC PC-6400 Memory
Sapphire X1600XT 256MB
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music
Seagate 7200.10 320GB
NEC 4570 16x DVDRW
XP Pro

~£840

Any power/heat/noise problems? Also, how is this going to perform against:

3Ghz P4
1GB RAM
X600 256MB

Any suggestions?

thefishydidit · 7 Sep 2006 at 17:25

I would have thought that the 200w PSU would be sufficient for your planned spec.

The PCI slot might not be usable with your choice of graphics card due to the large heatsink on the rear of the card.

Air Marshal · 7 Sep 2006 at 18:46

So I see. Should I substitute for a regular X1600XT then?

Or perhaps a X1900GT, but that would get bottlenecked by the CPU probably.

Bane · 7 Sep 2006 at 19:18

You found a 35W TDP AM2, or just a planed spec?

Best I've see is the ADO prefix 65W TDP.

Air Marshal · 7 Sep 2006 at 19:20

Managed to source a 35W one, should take the load off the SilentX a little.

Air Marshal · 7 Sep 2006 at 21:56

Should I sub the 1600XT for the 7600GT OC? It's about £20 more, the memory is clocked higher and the core lower, but benchies I've seen indicate it draws less power than the ATi card.

Air Marshal · 8 Sep 2006 at 13:03

Ordered it all, it should arrive Saturday apparently.

Mulder · 8 Sep 2006 at 23:32

I'm thinking about getting a system similar to this. How much better would a new conroe chip be?

Air Marshal · 8 Sep 2006 at 23:36

At this stage? Probably 30-40% gain.

But you'd have to change to a decent mATX motherboard in a couple months.

Mulder · 8 Sep 2006 at 23:43

So for a £600 SFF spec would you recommend waiting for the new Intel mATX boards or getting an X2 now? Are there any other alternatives? Sorry for the hijack!

Air Marshal · 9 Sep 2006 at 13:53

Okay, I can boot to BIOS now; is there any way of checking it can see the X-Fi without installing Windows?