Anyone work with and have comments on a Shuttle ST20G5?

[Dadofamunky]

I'm pretty impressed with its fit and finish. And since I'm not a gamer, its built-in ATI X200 DVI video out may well be sufficient for my needs. I also plan to to be very deliberate and cautious in the course of building this thing out, and wondered if anyone else has any tips or things to watch out for. I'll probalby take a week or two getting my components in, testing it out, and installing Windows. This is my first SFF and probably the last time I will ever custom-build a machine.

 

[Cardio]

Have one and it is my favorite after about 20 other SFFs. You will probably like it even better with a video card. If you are going to use a SATA drive it is somewhat complicated to install the OS. You need to go to Sudihan Forums and look up the ST20 threads and see what you are up against. It is not a beginner model for sure, but worth the effort, in my opinion. Can be fast and almost silent. LEt me know if you need help.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll do that. I note that it's not a beginner case, but I'm not a beginner to BYOMs. I am definitely taking this one slow. I have a 7800GT that I'll eventually pop in here, but I have a 250 GB IDE drive that I'll probably use for this thing.

 

[Ayah]

Watch on the total power consumptionation, I think that Shuttle made a poor choice in the case cooling and the PSU. Cooling isn't the best and the PSU isn't the strongest.

 

[Megamixman]

The PSU is fine and the cooling is amazing. Don't listen to what SFF-haters say. Shuttle PSU's might not much wattage, but they can handle the same equipment that 500W ATX PSU's can. The cooling is also good. The heatpipe keeps the CPU in the safe temperatures and the same with the rest of the case. Take to note, you can overclock, but you need to be a little more cautious with an SFF since the overall volume is significantly less. Once, you get a shuttle going though, it's nothing but ooh's and aah's.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Boy, I'll freakin' say. It took me all of three hours to install everything, update the BIOS to work properly with the X2 processor, and set up the OS and drivers. This is the first time I've ever gotten an on-board Ethernet controller to work. The setup was easier than any other system I've ever built, and that's saying something as I've built perhaps a dozen systems in my time.

This thing is a real beauty. I am very impressed overall with the engineering and the cleanliness of the design. The only issues I've seen are that the sound chip drivers don't work, and my Sony DVD burners aren't physically compatible (the disc tray jams against the front bezel). The BIOS also doesn't support default RAM speeds above 200 MHz. So the ST20G5 isn't perfect, but it is so far working better than I had been led to expect from the reviews.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Originally posted by: Ayah
Watch on the total power consumptionation, I think that Shuttle made a poor choice in the case cooling and the PSU. Cooling isn't the best and the PSU isn't the strongest.

I don't think you're right about that. Bear in mind that you're running a lot fewer devices in this type of system. Also, this is not an Intel chip I'm running. So far it's doing a fabulous job.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Oh, I've also got it overclocked now to 2.41 GHz with no problems....

***Scratch that, system wasn't stable. Runs at defaults for days. as long as all the devices work I'm happy....***

 

[Dadofamunky]

It really looks like Shuttle nailed the BIOS, just before I bought the ST20G5. Previous reviews stated that it was impossible to get a NVidia card to work in this system. Well, I've popped in a nice new 7800GT single-slot PCI-E card and it is running just peachy & creamy. 15.6K in 3dMark03 and 85.5K in AquaMark are the only tests I've had a chance to run so far. But those things do pretty much beat up a card and if isn't fairly stable they just won't function, in my experience. Of course more testing needs to be done. It won't be the fastest thing in existence but beats the snot out of anything else I've ever had.

I am super impressed with this little thing. Thank God Shuttle kept updating the BIOS. Looks like I got lucky here. This little thing screams. I'm so in love.... (Knock on wood). For now, I would recommend this unit to anyone who asked.

 

[Gunslinger08]

I just put mine together, and my Opteron 165 is running at 49C idle. Is that typical? Seems about 10 degrees too high.

 

[Dadofamunky]

Seems about normal for this class of system, mine's about there too.

I have found that even though the temps seem high, I have had this thing running constantly for a month or so now. No overheating, not a single crash, not a single problem under heavy application loads. The only time I shut it down was to install 2 GB of low-latency RAM. The machine is running silky-smooth and I really couldn't be happier with it.

I set the bios fan settings to a pretty forgiving level because I'm not interested in having too much noise on my desk. So the CPU runs hotter. Not a whisper of a problem.

At some point I might look at a different cooling solution but for now I'm loath to mess with a good thing.