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| Shuttle SN45G Hi-C for nVidia/Shuttle | ||
| (Review by MS, June 26, 2003) |
Summary
nVidia's release of the "C" or Ultra400 revision of the nForce2 chipset, natively supporting a 400 MHz external CPU bus and DDR400 in synchronous mode is naturally followed by the relase of the respective XPC from Shuttle. Stripped off the IPG, the SN45G is a no-compromise performance machine with all overclocking functionality one could wish for, including Vre settings of up to 2.0V.
However, this time, we went the opposite way and underclocked the SN45G to run at the lowest multiplier supported by the Barton CPU, that is 5.5X while cranking up the bus as far as it would go. Reducing the core voltage to 1.5V helped to keep things cool to the point where not even under stress, the rear exhaust fan would wake up from its idle slumber. Consequently, the loudest part of the system were the fan on the Tyan Tachyon 9700 and the hard disk drive, which, being a Barracuda ATA V is already amongst the quietest in its genre.
And whatever happened to performance?
If a tree falls down in the forest and nobody hears it, does it still make a noise? If an XPC has no integrated graphics, is it still an XPC? Is white gold a paradox? There are many ways of looking at things and striking up esoteric discussions with the result of creating confusion. Bottom line though is that there is no such thing as one answer that tells the whole truth, especially, if there is only a yes or no choice.
An old face for a new box: the SN45G looks almost like the SK41G. There are still a few subtle differences, though.
The original XPC was meant to be the all-encompassing solution for everything at a budget price point and maybe bringing some sort of performance to the table. There was not even an AGP slot on the mainboard. We have come a long way since. SFF systems have narrowed the performance gap to full-blown towers and even overtaken them on occasion. Granted that SFF in this case encompasses the Shuttle XPC and the Shuttle XPC and finally, the Shuttle XPC.
To be honest, there have been a number of different and deliberately not-so-different approaches, Soltek's QBiq, Iwill's XP4, the original Arprotek e-Cube also known as Thunderbolt and last not least the MSI MEGA. Each of these solutions has found its own tribe of followers, some of who were even found giggling with glee, as strange as it may sound, just for the sake of little buttons to play with and diversity in the front screen display.
Suffice it to say that it is time for the mini-barebones systems to shed the image of surrogates for entertainment systems only. Our own modded SN52G2 with its four disk SATA RAID 0 and standard Gigabit Ethernet has made it into the rankings as my own favorite day-to-day workhorse system, courtesy of the incredible I/O performance and associated spryness, without making any noise and even without any AGP interface. Likewise, any nForce2-based SFF qualifies without saying for a position in the high-end desktop category.
And then, there has always been the issue of IP, short for intellectual property or patented features. The XPC is built around a number of rather cryptic elements of such IPs covering aspects of the heat-pipe technology used as well as a few other proprietary features geared towards setting the XPC apart from the competition (in case anybody has been wondering about some awkward aardvark cooling methodology used in the SFF genre).
The one thing missing from the repertoire of SFF systems has been a no-compromise performance machine, stripped off any ballast or redundant features. Performance in this case also implies the use of a dedicated high end graphics adapter which makes the presence of the integrated graphics superfluous. Playing this game a little further, it is easy to see where the omission of the graphics core will not only lower cost but also reduce cooling requirements, meaning that in this case, the active cooler will become a victim of Ockham's Razor hacking down through all instances of the board. The result is the Shuttle SN45G, a mini barebone system in its purest form.
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