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Shuttle used to be known for shipping their boards with about just the barebones, that is, hardly any accessories beyond the usual items absolutely necessary for setting up were ever included with their mainboards. With recent boards, the winds of add-ons have changed and even though the package is not luxurious, it contains a very reasonable, albeit price oriented bundle in form of serial ATA cable, USB 2.0 and SPDIF back brackets which is essentially all you need. Anybody expecting extra bay inserts and fancy LEDs will be disappointed but realistically speaking, everything needed to make use of the various headers included on the board is present.

The board we received was a very early production board and as such did not come with the final printed manual, the manual was included, though, as standard letter-size pages that, aside from a few typographical errors showed the usual organized layout without digressing into electronic tattletales made in Taiwan we see very often from other manufacturers. Likewise, the install shield of the driver CD is of the almost proverbial Shuttle simplicity and ease of use, inserting the CD and following the instructions on the screen is really all there is to getting the board fully configured.

USB 2.0 backpanel bracket, S/PDIF interface and SATA cable make a sensible and rounded bundle without inflating cost.

The Board

Quality Considerations

In times where quite a few manufacturers move towards a 2 phase voltage regulator circuitry, Shuttle stays with the established Intersil HIP 6301 programmable multiphase controller using three phases for minimizing ripple currents. In addition, two different FETs are used for each phase to provide staggered onset, that is further reduction of switching spikes. Overall, this solution can hardly be surpassed in terms of overall efficiency and smoothness.

BOARD Power at its best: The HIP6301CB (1) running on three phases, each of which uses two different Fairchild FETs in counterphase for the upper(2) and lower FET(3) for staggered phase onset. The 5-legged RichTech RT9173A (4) serves as high-frequency bus termination regulator and is not part of the power circuitry. Power to the board is supplied via the ATX power connector as well as the 4 prong auxiliary and the Smart-Plug.

A novum for the SocketA platform is the presence of the auxiliary 4-prong 12V jack on the board along with yet another "Smart-Plug" solution to ensure that the board will receive every possible bit of current needed for running a high-speed processor in conjunction with high system memory densities. The combination of these features makes the AK37GTR the best we have yet seen in any SocketA board.

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