Navigate: Advice Beginners BIOS Guide CPUs Links Mainboards Memory Network Storage Video/Sound Cards Contact Forum SiteMap Sponsors WebNews Home	.	.
Prices: CPU Intel P4 2.4C-800 P4 2.6C-800 P4 2.8C-800 P4 3.0-800 P4 3.2-800 AMD AthlonXP XP 1700+ XP 2000+ XP 2400+ XP 2500+ XP 2700+ XP 3000+ XP 3200+ Athlon64 Athlon64 3200+ Athlon64 FX-51 Opteron Opteron 240 Opteron 242 Opteron 244 Opteron 246 Memory Corsair Crucial Kingston Mushkin OCZ Search Prices:

Time to wrap this one up. To make a long story short, like its siblings, the SS40 is an underdog with a ton of performance that only needs to be channeled into the right direction. It is true that for the die hard gamer, the SS40 just like the SS50 and the SV24 are not the top choice but overall, for any office or content creation setup, this is it. At least, it is a trendsetter, just like the other mini-barebones systems and I don't see why any system administrator would even want to go a different road unless there are contracts.

Once again, the overwhelming response of anybody looking at the SS40 was that they all wanted to have one. Granted, there were those who asked questions whether it would be better than their full tower PII / PIII systems. In this case, the answer is a clear "No" but keep in mind that this answer is based on concepts rather than facts. The more detailed version is that my days of trying to be a missionary are over, whoever is happy with the way they do things, leave them alone, I won't even go there.

What else is to be said about the SS40? One thing is, it still is kind of loud. The remedy came in form of an 80 mm Antec fan, propelling 30 cfm at 30 dBa and which fit snuggly into the void left by the original Sunon Fan (after the latter was removed ....)

The result was a dramatic reduction in noise concomitant with a dramatic as well increase in temperature. Suffice it to say that the temperatures were still in the acceptable range, even with the XP2000+ but the recommendation in this case would clearly go towards a lower speed grade CPU to keep the thermal dissipation more balanced with the lower cooling capability of the reduced noise setup. On the other hand, the system would still finish Content Creation Winstone2002 without crashing. However, these tests were run with an open case which, by itself lowered the CPU temperature by almost 10 centigrades. Keep in mind here also that the Voodoo5 does not only suck power but it also generates quite a bit of heat.

Nonetheless, there is a ton of possibilities left to play with, add a Matrox G550 PCI or a GeForce 4 MX PCI card, add extra blow holes and stick a GPU cooler fan onto the CPU heatsink just to move this stale hot air and lower the temps further.

It is a great system, this SS40. There are some drawbacks, like the Lucite front panel, which is somewhat counterproductive in that some plugs will have a hard time to fit into the jacks but who cares. More important is that the SS40 in its present form is the archetyp of a cult object for whatever modification any user can conjure up. The sky is the limit but let's hope that Shuttle comes out with the limited edition in Bronze finish with the "Smoke" Lucite as a start, then we'll add the tube amp on top, am I getting carried away here? .....

Seriously, if you see one, grab it before it is gone, it is a fun system and can be used in more ways one would think of in the first place, but once you have it, they will come.

next page:    => more =>