Shuttle XPC SB61G2

[BigRed]

After 6 long months I finally upgraded my computer again. This has been the longest stretch ever. I must say though, its been worth it
I bought myself The shuttle XPC SB61G2, a 2.4C p4, and 512mb of kingston HyperX pc3500 ($99 at best buy).
I took tons of pictures throughout the installation of my shiny new XPC and I guess Ill do a little writeup on it. All pictures have been resized to 450x337 to be more friendly to the 56k'ers. Full size (150+ kb each) can be found here:
www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/

This is the newest XPC from shuttle. It uses intels Springdale chipset (North bridge-Intel 865G, South bridge-ICH5). Which supports the 800mhz fsb p4's, dual channel ddr, onboard video, onboard 10/100 network, onboard sound, blah blah blah. Hell with it, for specs go here
http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=283
Now onto the exciting stuff, pictures!

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0045.jpg
Man this thing is tiny. When I first opened it I thought they only sent me half! If your famlair with RedBull, I put a can (empty ) of it next to the xpc for comparison. It comes with all the cables you need 1 short ATA-133 ide cable with just 1 connector (for main hard drive), 1 Regular sized (2 device) ATA-133 cable for cdrom Which is somewhat rounded, 1 Serial ATA cable, 1 serial ata power cable, Manuals, and the generic psu power cable.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0046.jpg

Heres a picture of the rear where you can see the many connectors. Now I proceed to tear the thing apart. Its a nice touch for shuttle to put all thumbscrews on the back although I needed to use a pair of pliers to get them loose the first time.

Gripe #1 = Maybe im just used to the 15lbs Steel side pannel on my old chiftec case but the case cover for this thing feels extremly flimsy. Its light as a feather but I almost felt that I could crush it like a popcan.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0048.jpg

View from the side. Note the 2lbs Silica gel packet they included.
/me Reads "Do not eat"
Mmmm Silica gel....

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0050.jpg

Picture of the inside with the cdrom/hdd tray removed. Its amazing that they could pack all that stuff into that puny little motherboard. Now I have to take out shuttles ICE heatpipe cooler but was rather easy due to the thumscrews on the back holding it to the case. The clip on it was rather difficult to disengage the first time, probably because I didnt know what the hell I was doing .

[BigRed]

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0051.jpg

Heres the whole thingamabob removed from the case. Im sure there are already plenty of reviews on this already so I wont go into much detail. It is a rather intresting design. When you first see the hsf it doesnt look like it would work all that well but once I started up the computer I was pleasently suprised.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0052.jpg

The base needs lapping though. Somewhat smooth to the touch but I could slightly feel ridges with my nail.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0053.jpg

My trusty computer. Its demoted to being a file/game server (yes its dusty, I havent opened it in 2 months).
/me Salutes
You've served me well. Now to gut her for the parts I need for the XPC

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0055.jpg

BFG 128mb Geforce4 ti4200 ($89 black friday BestBuy Deal)
Soundblaster Audigy
80gb Western Digital Special edition 8mb cache hdd
80gb 120gxp IBM deskstar hdd
16x Pioneer slot load DVD

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0056.jpg

Now to start putting it together. After much fiddling with the akward shape of the try I managed to get the dvd drive secured along with the WD hard drive (bottom).
The manaul told me to put a floppy in but what kind of Old fossil still uses one of those? I opted for my other 80gb hard drive. With 2 hard drives its sure to make this thing even more of an oven on the inside.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0058.jpg

Gripe #2 = These shuttle designers must have been on crack. Who in their right mind puts a capicator AND a huge mass of wire connectors right NEXT to the IDE connector? I nearly snaped that poor capictators head off trying to get the secondary IDE cable in there.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0059.jpg

I put the now heavy cdrom/hdd tray back in. It took me 45minutes alone to get all the cables routed and hooked up right in this thing. As you can see there is absoutley no room behind the cdrom for (according to the designers at shuttle) Unessessary things like hands. You can see the somewhat rounded (looks like they squared it instead) ide cable with the handy mounting clips on the side of the XPC.

Mmmmm Silica gel....

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0060.jpg

Heres a side view (Sun went down so im on indoor light now) with all the cables connected, FINALLY!

[BigRed]

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0061.jpg

Gripe #3 = Now why couldnt they have switched the first and second IDE connectors around? The first (in front) IDE cable is all twisted in an akward way to get to the connector on the hdd. Theres this clip underneath the cdrom/hdd try thats supposed to keep the primariy IDE cable in order but its useless because its all twisted because of the way the connectors were set up.
I guess that would have made this too easy...

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0062.jpg

Wahoo Time to put the cards in. This must mean im done with the hard part. Good thing aluminum isnt conductive because the audigy is *Almost* touching the cdrom/hdd tray... To be safe I put a sticky thing of neoprene between them so they wont touch.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0063.jpg

OH MY GOD! I can see light through it! Shuttle you didnt cram enough stuff into that puny case!

This thing is a complete airflow nightmare. When I was putting it together I thought I might be able to crack an egg on top and make my self some breakfast while im at a LAN party...

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0064.jpg

Woohoo finally its completed! Look how small and cute it looks!

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0067.jpg

*Evil Mechanical laugh* MUHAHAHA It's ALIVE!

I just had to get a picture of the Button on my monitor:
"Preliminary operational tests were inconclusive (the damn thing blew up)."

Did the fun stop here though? Oh no.. it goes on.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/DSCF0069.jpg

For some odd reason (me thinks lens is dirty) My slot load would refuse to install windows correctly. I kept getting read errors off my windows xp cd. Convinently the same day the XPC and processor arrived the USB2.0 external IDE enclosure, that I got off ebay, came as well. So I slapped my cdrw into there. I had to install windows off of the external drive, but that went flawlessly (although a bit slower). The motherboards bios detected the USB drive no problem and happily booted off of it.

Gotta love the sexy blue power LED.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/MBM.JPG

Eventhough this only has a 200w power supply all voltages are very solid. For some reason I cant get mbm to read the fan on the heatpipe correctly, I highly doubt it runs at 65k rpms.

Sensor 2 is the Case temp and sensor 3 is the CPU temp. Like I said before I was suprised by the results of that heatpipe cooler. These are load temps, not idle. Amazingly the inside doesnt get all that hot either.
The air comming out the back though is rather toasty.

In the bios there is a fan option called Smart Fan. You set the starting temp and the fan adjusts itself according to cpu temp.
Example: If you have it set on 40c when its below that the fan spins at 1k rpms and is near silent then for every 5 degrees it goes up the fan goes up in speed a notch. Thats probably the reason why MBM cant read the speed of the fan.
I have it set on full speed though, because im running folding. It is still not all that loud, The harddrives make more noise than my fans now.

The number of [img] tags I could use was limited so I had to hack this apart. Enjoy

[BigRed]

Overclocking results!

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/450x337/CPUID.JPG

Which are not very good
Thats the highest I could get my 2.4C running in this oven. But thats ok considering its nearly a 50c load. I had to raise the CPU voltage to 1.6v to get it stable at 218mhz fsb. But my ram timings are 2-2-2-7 Which is crucial since this is going to be a LAN party gaming rig.

[cloasters]

Most cool, a lot of power is packed into this little box! The pic of it sitting where a mid? tower usually does is priceless. Thank you very much for the guided tour of your new mosheen, it's a very worthwhile effort!

[Mad old tory]

Great job man i wouldnt worry too much about the oc it will still p*** on a lot of systems gd job

[Aedan]

BigRed, This is definately worthy of a front page mention. Excellent work, excellent pictures, and a darn nice machine to boot!

[BigRed]

Originally Posted by Áedán

BigRed, This is definately worthy of a front page mention. Excellent work, excellent pictures, and a darn nice machine to boot!

w00t!

Thanks all

[kat]

i could never get all that stuff packed into such a tiny box, my chubby hands would never allow it

nice rig big red

[Daniel ~]

Don't know how I missed this one...guess that's why we have a front page":O} Well done B.R.!!

[BigRed]

Update:

Just got a new credit card and I "Needed" to buy somthing to make payments on to further increase my credit rating. So I purchaced myself a Sapphire Radeon 9800pro (128mb) and another stick of pc3500 hyperX 512mb for 1gb dual channel goodness

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/DSCF0071.JPG

All that running off a 200w power supply

Edit: Yes it is all 100% stable, voltages stayed the same and are barley moving. After I put the card in I played rtcw:ET and some bf1942 for 3 hours with no crash. I did bring it all back to stock though because its only a 200w psu after all

[Daniel ~]

That's compact!

[The Spyder]

cant wait till i get mine! Too bad it wont be here till next week

[Postaldave]

how the hell do you freaks afford all this stuff.... im dead broke and i make good money..and i dont pay rent

lol

postal

[BigRed]

Originally Posted by Postaldave

how the hell do you freaks afford all this stuff.... im dead broke and i make good money..and i dont pay rent

lol

postal

I got most of the money for this from selling off my F@H rigs. and the rest (9800pro, 2nd stick of ram) went on my shiny new credit card

[BigRed]

*Insert Evil mechanical laugh here*

With some help I found the fsb/ram divder in the bios.
NEW OVERCLOCKING RESULTS!

*foams at the mouth*
2.4ghz @ 3ghz in an XPC at default voltage!!! Wunderbar!

1ghz fsb

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/XPC%...ies/Wcpuid.JPG

For all those hounding me about it, I did some benchies with sandra.
Lets see an AMD xpc do this. Eat my dust!

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/XPC%...ies/Sandra.JPG

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/XPC%...Sandra-Mem.JPG

My psu is being streched to the limit. My +12v line dips down to 11.7v when the cpu is loaded. It goes down to 11.5v when im playing a game thats stressing the 9800pro.
Default voltage rules!
Dont mind the load temp, it was 96 degrees here today and my room is still blazing hot.

http://www.bigredwa.com/shuttle/XPC%20Benchies/MBM.JPG

Edit: Did I mention its all 100% stable? Ive been running F@H for a few hours now and I played a 2 hour stretch of RTCW:ET. No lockups

[BigRed]

The motherboard maxes out at 255mhz fsb, I tried going that high but no boot I could run the ram slower but the next divider would slow my memory bandwidth so much its not worth it. I would only gain like 50mhz anyway.
I Had to raise the ram timings to 2-3-2-7 for some reason . I would throw more voltage at the ram to bring it back down to 2-2-2-7 but its only a 200w psu

[Uncle Bob]

Originally Posted by BigRed

The motherboard maxes out at 255mhz fsb, I tried going that high but no boot I could run the ram slower but the next divider would slow my memory bandwidth so much its not worth it. I would only gain like 50mhz anyway.
I Had to raise the ram timings to 2-3-2-7 for some reason . I would throw more voltage at the ram to bring it back down to 2-2-2-7 but its only a 200w psu

Nice, BR. It certainly looks great in light of the cost and PSU size. That's one killer box.