shuttle sb51g or fic ic-vg61?

[tokamak]

i'm looking to make the move to a SFF pc soon. i've pretty much narrowed it down to these two choices, but i'm having a hard time chosing between the two. my main concerns are noise, heat production, and looks in that order. i want something that will be as quiet and cool as possible. it seems like the shuttle would be the quieter of the two, with its heatpipe configuration. however, the FIC is a good looking machine, too. can anyone offer any info that could help me make up my mind?

 

[mooncancook]

I did some research be4 i bought my FIC. As I learn from reviews, their performance is neck to neck, with FIC runs slightly cooler while Shuttle slight quieter. Price is about the same so i went for the look of FIC, and I don't regret.

Look is subjective, but at least the cool looking handle on the FIC is really handy coz i like to move it around to connect to living room TV for big screen gaming. My main concern with such a small PC is heat dissipation especially that i will install my own sound card and a Radeon 9500pro and overclock my CPU. As i've learned, things get hot quickly. after some gaming, the graphic card gets really hot coz it's right next to the side panel and the air it blows out has nowhere to go. the m/b chipset heatsink also get very hot, cpu and memory gets very warm. I ended up drilling some holes on the acrylic side panel to let air out from the graphic card fan. this worked wonders. it's easy to drill, and with patience and some care it doesn't look too bad at all. next i found an old fan from a P3 heatsink. it's probably a 50mm or 60mm fan which is small eough to fit inside the case. I glue it under the harddrive rack using heat tape. it draws air from the holes on the front panel over the RAM and blows over the m/b chipset to the back. This helps significantly cool the system. now everything runs very cool, and noise level doesn't increase by much. Now i'm running a P4-2.4 at 2.53GHz with 512MB DDR333. knowing that it runs cool, i'm confident to overclock my Radeon 9500Pro now.

Overall i highly recommend the FIC. you don't have to do what i did if you are not goin to install a fast graphic card, but it's good to know that the system has room to grow and easily modifiable, and noise level is not that bad (note that shuttle gets more noisy when system gets hotter). and it looks really cool at night.

 

[tokamak]

i'm not planning on overclocking. basically i just want quiet quiet quiet. i guess i'm leaning shuttle right now, but you are right, mooncancook the FIC looks very slick, and that handle on the top is nice (although sometimes i tend to get messy and pile stuff up on top of my pc

 

[NeoZGeo]

You should look for the AMS gBox. FIC is just a rebadger.

SVC sells them for $229, check hot deal section first thread.

gBox comes in two color silver or black as of FIC only has silver, also pre drilled air intake on both sides of the windows.

Pros and Cons

Shuttle SB51G
Slightly quieter (passive cooling)
Very HOT, around 35 idle, over 50 at heavy load. (my SS51, same thing)
thin aluminum, vibrates when HD at high RPM.
Noisy power supply fan (when at high temps)

I think price is around $279+

gBox/ FIC
Slightly louder (active cooling)
Very COOL, around 20c idle, 34c (mine) at heavy load even with OC.
better construction
2 sides see through window with air intake (gBox)
handle (removable)
a nice blue led CPU fan came with it looks really nice.

SVC $229

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: NeoZGeo
You should look for the AMS gBox. FIC is just a rebadger.

SVC sells them for $229, check hot deal section first thread.

gBox comes in two color silver or black as of FIC only has silver, also pre drilled air intake on both sides of the windows.

Pros and Cons

Shuttle SB51G
Slightly quieter (passive cooling)
Very HOT, around 35 idle, over 50 at heavy load. (my SS51, same thing)
thin aluminum, vibrates when HD at high RPM.
Noisy power supply fan (when at high temps)

I think price is around $279+

gBox/ FIC
Slightly louder (active cooling)
Very COOL, around 20c idle, 34c (mine) at heavy load even with OC.
better construction
2 sides see through window with air intake (gBox)
handle (removable)
a nice blue led CPU fan came with it looks really nice.

SVC $229

So the only difference between the FIC and gBox are the air holes?

 

[tokamak]

that seems to be the case.

 

[icronticrefugee]

I thought the g-box were only 400 mhz bus...they fic box supoprts the love of 533

 

[mooncancook]

for the FIC, i found that its noise is quite annoying when i place it very close to me, i.e. right next to my monitor. it's noisier than some quiet full-size desktops. but if i'm playing games or listening to music then the noise is not noticeable. I figured the CPU fan is the noisiest (not 100% sure), so i'm trying to replace it with a quieter fan. on the other hand, it doesn't run very hot, with a 7200rpm HDD, DVD-rom, Santa Cruz, and Radeon 9500Pro, 2.4G@2.53G, 512MB DDR333, CPU temp is about 50C here in the scorching valley area of CA after some intense gaming.

for me, my priority is look, heat, then noise. so if i have to buy again i'll still choose FIC. but if your priority is quietness then you wouldn't go wrong with a shuttle either. oh, and don't forget, if you choose a shuttle, don't trash the 5.25" drive bay cover plate. it looks really nice with it on, but when u take it out to install a CD-ROM it looks ugly. you can do a little modification to make it look good. tape the cover plate on the face of the CD-trey, maybe sure you can activate the open/close button when u press on the cover plate. there you'll have a beautiful case with a stealth CD-ROM drive.

have fun with your SFF.