I'm thinking about investing some money in a shuttle...

[obiant]

They look neat

Problem is I notice that I more than likley cannot add another sound card into my shuttle. I'm hoping to have at LEAST 5.1 on board but doesn't look like that is going to happen. Heating might be an issue as well. I'm planning to go all out on this if I do choose to get one. At least 2 GB ram 300GB HD, hopefully a nice video card etc.

I'm hoping the people who have shuttles can give me some input on their shuttle, what they like about it what they don't like about it etc.

 

[WackyDan]

I have an older SB51g???

THe form factor hasn't changed much on these, and even back in March 2003, mine came with 5.1, and the new ones come at least with that on select models. I haven't had any heat issues. Though you are only going to get up to 2gig of ram into one of the shuttles.

 

[ShellGuy]

Ob,
Why if i may aks would you need AT LEAST 2gb ram in this SFF???


Will G.

 

[ShellGuy]

If you have to have more this one can come with up to 4gb of ram... Just don't fall over at the price tag.



Will G.

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: ShellGuy
Ob,
Why if i may aks would you need AT LEAST 2gb ram in this SFF???


Will G.

Photoshop will eat up and spit out 2GB doing the right stuff

 

[ND40oz]

Just about any shuttle will do for you. They all have 2 dimms, which you can populate with a pair of gig ram modules. They hold either 2 or 3 hard drives, depending on which chassis you get. The P series chassis are bigger, but they have better cooling and support 3 hard drives. The G5 chassis holds 2 harddrives as long as you don't want to use a floppy or card reader where the floppy would go. All of the newer shuttles are PCI-E, with a PCI, except for the sn25p which has a 1x pci-e instead of the pci slot. The P series are also BTX, so you can put a double wide video card in them.

 

[obiant]

Originally posted by: ShellGuy
Ob,
Why if i may aks would you need AT LEAST 2gb ram in this SFF???


Will G.

Keep things running smoothly Things tend to take up alot of ram when you're multi tasking etc. Such as encoding DVDs and what not.

 

[obiant]

Originally posted by: ShellGuy
If you have to have more this one can come with up to 4gb of ram... Just don't fall over at the price tag.



Will G.

Holy crap I almost had a heart attack looking at the price.

Would be so much cheaper if I just built...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16856101471

And add my own things to it.

 

[erwos]

At least in my experience, Shuttles are reasonably easy to build up from scratch, probably easier than normal PCs due to the fact that the mobo is already in the case.

The only thing is to really, really think about what end result you want to see from your box. The limited expandability options means that even a single missing feature that you NEED to have could be sucking down your only extra PCI/PCIe slot. I recently had this issue with my own Shuttle - I wanted another Firewire channel, but couldn't, since I already had a Gigabit PCI card in the box.

An interesting choice could be to compromise and use an Antec Aria case. This gives you some motherboard choice (any micro-ATX board) and more slots, yet helps keep the computer on the small side, if not as small as a Shuttle.

-Erwos

 

[ShellGuy]

The one you linked istn't the same... If you want apples to apples from new egg here is the one for that.


Will G.

 

[imported_bum]

Shuttles look nice and cute, but DON'T buy one just because of that.

I was in the same situation probably about two years ago. I decided to take the dive into SFF because I moved my computer to LANs 3-4 times per month. I thought the cool factor plus the portability would make me happy in the end. After about 8 months, I got tired of it. The limited expandibility bugged me the most. It isn't only size that prevents you from installing some components, but it's also excess heat and a weak power supply. Having a specialized case/motherboard combo means no upgrade path when the new gen CPU socket rolls around.

Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of great things about these systems. I had fun modding the case (there are some CRAZY things that you can do with these) and installing a water cooling set-up. Having limited options forces you to get creative and try "out of the box" methods to achieve a goal. For people who love computers enough, problem solving like that can make things more interesting.

I guess my point is that while shuttles are nice, they aren't for everyone. If you plan to keep an SFF system as your primary machine for a long period of time, make sure you're prepared for the set backs. My advice is to stick with a desktop unless you CONSTANTLY move the machine, have VERY limited space, etc, etc.

Now that I think about it, getting one of these as a project computer sounds like fun. Anyway, good luck in your final decision.