Need Assistance with Choosing a SFF System

[TRCDROM]

I am looking for a SFF system that I can use as a demonstration system for work. It needs to be small (so I can carry it around) butthe one catch is that it needs lots of memory. It needs at least 4GB for good performance.

I have been using Shuttles for years and when I looked for a new one I see that they Max out at 2GB.

Can anyone recommend something the size of a shuttle or smaller that I can get 4GB on.

At this point in time I may just leave teh SFF systems and go with a notebook that has 4GB memory. I wold prefer NOT to go that way

 

[Steeeeve]

get an mATX case with an mAXT mobo....my site show in the sig can show you some to choose from

 

[Knavish]

Like the other reply said, you can use a mATX board and get more memory slots. I like the Antec Aria -- I've built 3 of them and they all work well:

Antec Aria

If you really need all 4GB of ram, you'll have to watch out what motherboards you use. I've never seen an AMD nforce4 based system that will show more than 3.5GB with 4x 1GB installed. (It has to do with the way the nforce4 chipset addresses memory-mapped peripherals like SATA and Ethernet, I think.) I don't know if this applies to Intel boards or VIA / ULI based AMD boards.

The problem with using intel is that you'll probably want to stick with a lower speed chip. Shuttle boxes have really good heatsinks that pipe the heat to the outside, but the Aria just uses the stock heatsink. I suspect that cooling a P4 that runs much above 3Ghz in an Aria box might be a challenge, or it might just sound like an aircraft engine.

Good luck.

 

[Steeeeve]

yeah the mATX cases are bigger than the Shuttle but thats how you get 4gb. I don't think many mATX mobo's use nforce 4...they use the 6150 chipset and ATi has the xpress 200 which is good. MSI is probably the best for what you wish. The aria is a good case so long as you don't need a strong video card as the case doesn't get rid of heat well. Otherwise, the Micro Fly is nice or maybe an SG01...give us a better idea of what ya want

 

[R3MF]

Sugo 01-E case with the Sugo carry pack with an AMD dual-core CPU and nVidia chipset motherboard.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

The Biostar Tforce 6100 supports 4 gb RAM, although I don't know if it has the 3.5 gb limitation that Knavish has mentioned. I don't think you are going to be able to go smaller than a Shuttle.