is Shuttle XPC good for Video work ?

[DeeKnow]

I have been looking to upgrade my old PIII-500 MHz system and been drooling over some of the newer Shuttle XPC's.. it certainly seems to fit better into my desk space than some of the larger systems, but I have some concerns

1) I dont think I want to expand my system much, and one can anyways add a lot of accessories now a days using USB and 1394 ... will I miss the expansion slots after I get this system ? ARe there things that just cannot be added using USB/firewire ?

2) Will such a system do well for Video editing work ? I was planning on getting a DVD writer pre-installed

anyone have experiences to share about this ? or horror stories ?

I've heard some about them being very noisy ??

Dee

 

[drewshin]

they are quite noisy, but if you go to sudhian.com's forums you can get a good idea of what you need to do. basically what i've done so far is:

1) replace the psu fan with the fan from the "chipset cooler" kit from compusa - $9.99
this made a huge decrease in noise. you'll need to remove the existing fan, and cut the wire leads. then run the new fan's wire leads to the fan2 or fan3 connector on the motherboard.

2) replace the "ice" fan (on the shuttle heatsink). most people go with panaflo L1A's. you can either replace it, or I just left mine in there and attached the panaflo to the back of the case by the air holes.

 

[Plester]

I built a pro video edit system around a SB51G (it had to be portable). i put 2x200gb WD SE drives and a Pioneer A05 DVD burner in it. Ran Avid XpressDV. The hard drive that was sandwiched between the burner and the other hdd failed after about 2 months of heavy editing, obviously due to heat. Moral of the story is these are not good for mission critical edit rigs unless you use one drive, but then again your media drive should always be seperate. The bottom line; these are fine if you dabble in video editing, but don't use them for real deal!