Shuttles

judder

judder

judder

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Joined
25 Jan 2007
Posts
72
Hi. I like the look of these Shuttles (style more important than performance I'm afraid). My brother has had one for about 18 months and has had no end of trouble with it and I wonder if it is trying to run too much stuff for its PSU or cooling ability.

Anyway, I waffle, what can they cope with? I want to build my own Shuttle, but I'm a complete novice. I'm thinking along the lines of:
an AMD dual core (>2GHz) retail,
2Gb RAM,
>300Gb HDD,
TV card,
fastest DVD dual +/- writer available,
USB Wi-Fi,
Windows XP,
No additional graphics card (initially) as I don't play computer games.

It will be used mostly for video and music editing, some general office work and a bit of TV/DVD viewing.

Q1) Would the Shuttle cope or just shut itself down?
Q2) Does my spec look reasonable (I'm open to being shot down and have new suggestions made)

Thnaks very much.
 
Looks fine, I'm running a similar setup in an old SB75G2 with:

Intel P4 2.4GHz 'Northwood'
1x512Mb Crucial PC2700 DDR
1x300Gb SATA Hard Disk
Club3d GeForce FX5200 (AGP) video
Hauppauge HVR-3000 tv card
Linksys USB adapter w/speedbooster

I would guess your brother had problems with cooling as I've had my old 9800 Pro's molex connector burn out due to the heat (though it might've been age). As you're not adding a video card then you should be fine with your choices.

Make sure you have 3-pin 80mm fan in the case so you can control temperatures/speed/noise as I guess you're wanting it as a HTPC/PVR? Not sure what cooling is in the more modern Shuttles these days though.
 
Thanks for the reply. I'm about to embarrass myself through my own ignorance, but what is a HTPC?

I'll probably do a bit of PVRing, but mostly home movies and mixing.

Cheers.
 
Thanks for the confirmation. As for my brother, the whole system collapsed and he lost everything from his HD when it was about six months old. The supplier installed a new HD after which all was well for about 6 months then it just shut itself down after about 2 hours work. This time period has become shorter and shorter so that now you can just about get XP loaded before it dies. It has been 'repaired' again but still has the same trouble. Any thoughts?
 
A mate of mine bought a SD37P2 and the shop who assembled it had to send it back for repair because it kept rebooting, that turned out to be the power supply. It was fixed under guarantee and has been ok since.
 
Your spec looks easily do-able - however be careful as to which shuttle model you buy as most dont have inbuilt graphics, so you will require some kind of graphics card (even if its a low spec one)

I have a 25P with the same kind of spec as you suggested, however due to no mobo mounted graphics I put in a silent 7600GS (never use it for games either, just wanted a reasonably powerful silent card - and for £60 its been a bargain)
 
Thanks guys. I didn't realise about the lack of onboard graphics. I'll keep my eyes open for that. Is there a similar thing with onboard sound or is that all integrated?
 
I think the sound is pretty good for stereo reproduction - it doesnt decode 5.1 or anything as far as I know but using spdif stream to an external amp will give you full surround using the amp's available decoders.

I have ripped a lot of cd's to 192kbps mp3's and using a shuttle to play the mp3's plugged into a half decent stereo amp and warn but decent speakers (for their age) its impossible to tell the difference between the originial cd playing in an external cd player attached to same amp compared to the mp3

I think that makes the onboard sound on the shuttle (25P in this instance) pretty decent - the 37P2 is just as good sound wise and MI III on HD-DVD sounded incredible
 
Hi

As far as quality of construction and general reliability go, I would definately rate them. Obviously there is going to be some failure rate and overtaxing the system will decrease its life.

I have deployed 20+ shuttles at work that are on 24/7, not heavily loaded mind you. In 3 years I have had 1 power supply failure.


Regards
 
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