A Value Performance Chipset, a Budget-Oriented mini PC
Written: Jun 14 '05 (Updated Jun 26 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Performance, attractive case, quiet, feature-full, SATA RAID 0 and 1
Cons: Memory performance a bit slower than Intel's i975, poor SATA performance
The Bottom Line: Great little performer from both Shuttle and ATI that is affordable.
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| nad_masters's Full Review: Shuttle XPC ST61G4 Barebone |
While I already reviewed some of the important parts in an HTPC (and had to send one back to where it came), ePinions did not have the most important part of all listed on their site - the Shuttle barebones PC. Who'd blame them? They have so many models, colors, and choices. But I still remembered when it was just two models - one for the AMD Athlon XP and one for the Pentium 4 crowd.
I am talking about Shuttle's infamous barebones miniPC, of course. This particular model, the ST61G4, is a Pentium 4/Celeron based system (socket 478) with ATI's first chipset (RS300). I heard good things about it, and the fact that Fry's had a great deal on it during its 20th Anniversary sale, I found myself carrying it to the check-out line without even knowing it.
The deal consists of the Shuttle ST61G4 barebones miniPC and an OEM Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz (Prescott core) for $300 even (after mail in rebate). Not bad, considering that later on, I was able to purchase a Seagate 300 GB SATA hard drive from the same place for $150 after rebate, as well as $80 for 1GB of Crucial Value Select series of RAM at NewEgg.com. The original TV Tuner card I bought was $65, and was replaced by Hauppauge’s WinTV 150 MCE when I thought it was defective for the same price. An MCE remote for $30, and an RF keyboard /w joystick mouse for $50 rounded the project off. The total cost was around $675, or nearly $700 after miscellaneous things such as taxes and shipping. Not bad for a P4 3 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, and 300 GB HD miniPC. Add $150 for Microsoft Windows Media Center Edition 2005 to break the camel's back, and you're still under a grand for a full-functioning self-built Media Center fit to be placed next to your entertainment system.
In the Box
The box was curiously small, which already gives a great first impression for the first time buyer. The shiny graphics and texture of the box will sure lure you in, as well as ATI's logo, if you are an ATI fan to begin with. An ATI chipset? You don't say!
The barebones PC is snugly fitted in the box by form-fitting Styrofoam. Next to it is a box which contains screws, manuals (one for the quick install, the motherboard, and the built-in SATA chipset), driver CD, S-Video to Composite converter, a single SATA cable, a single 80-pin PATA cable (flat), and a single 40-pint PATA cable (sliced and tied to take up less space). Then there is the required standard computer AC power cable.
If you are truly interested in pictures, I recommend going to Newegg's website, and they have excellent self-shot photos there (as they usually do for most of the items they sell).
Specifications
Processor
Socket 478
Pentium 4 & Celeron
400/533/800MHz FSB
Memory
Dual Channel DDR 200/266/333/400 * 2
Graphics
Integrate high performance ATI Radeon 9100
Audio
Realtek 650F 6 channel audio
Storage
ATA-100
Front-panel I/O
USB * 2,
6 in 1 card reader,
1394 * 1,
MIC * 1,
Line in/out * 1
Rear-panel I/O
SPDIF In/Out * 1
Serial Port * 1,
LAN Port * 1,
VGA Port * 1,
USB * 2,
TV-out Port * 1
Silent X (system cooling)
Integrated Cooling Engine (ICE),
Accessories Included
FDD Cable * 1, HDD Cable * 1, CD-ROM Cable * 1,
SATA Cable, Screws, Twin Adhesive
Power Supply
250W (PFC)
Dimensions (L x W x H, mm)
(L)300*(W)200*(H)185
Weight (net / gross; kg, lbs)
2.85Kg (N.W.)
4.65Kg (G.W.)
Features
The ATI RS300 is one of the better performing chipsets for the P4 outside of Intel's own. It comes integrated with the ATI Radeon 9100 IGP video circuitry that is a DX8 performing part, and is DX9 compatible. The performance was tested to be much faster than Intel's integrated video solution, and (more importantly) faster than nVidia's integrated video in their nForce chipset. It is still slower than even the lowest GeForce FX 5200, but still performs well enough for casual gamers.
Being able to support dual channel DDR400 memory is also crucial to a performance-oriented chipset. The RS300 memory controller is still a tad slower than Intel's i975, but not so much that you'd notice in real-world testing.
Where as the ATI IXP150 fails, Shuttle augments with other chipsets from third parties! The RS300 does not have native SATA or LAN circuitry, leaving these duties to a Silicon Image 3512 controller (which has RAID 0 and 1 capabilities) and an onboard 10/100Mbit Broadcom 4410 controller respectively. However, in a small form factor PC (SFF), there is only room for one hard drive. You can always remove the multi-media card reader, as the bay it takes up is a standard 3.5" bay. However, the memory slots are already pre-cut on the face of the case, which leave users (other than yourself, since you built it) to believe they are real memory slots (commence hand-slapping, when they reach for the slots with a SD card in hand).
That said, there are no provisions for a floppy drive on the case, even though the motherboard has an available floppy connector. I found it useful, still, to install the SATA driver when installing WinXP MCE from scratch. The BIOS set the floppy controller to off from the factory.
The power supply is rated at 250W, and comes with a 20-pin (main) and a 4-pin (12V) power cables for the motherboard. Two standard Molex connectors and one SATA power connector seals the deal. Two floppy (mini Molex) connectors stem from the standard Molex connectors. The rat nest of power cables are neatly routed and tucked from the factory, so you don't have to undo them completely to connect them to your devices. One set is routed towards the front of the case, while the other set is routed towards the back.
Overclocking is made easy with 1 MHz increments in the BIOS. However, you can only overclock up to 15 MHz max, meaning for 200 MHz FSB, I can only get 215 MHz FSB max. The CPU vCore can be adjusted from 0.8250V to 1.5875V, while the AGP voltage can do 1.5V to 1.7V. Memory voltage can be adjusted from 2.5V to 2.8V. You shouldn't overclock too much on a SSF PC anyways, since it is already a challenge for Shuttle to cool a CPU of this kind in this form factor, image the difficulty of doing the same thing on an extremely overclocked P4! The ICE heat pipe technology should be able to handle the heat of a slightly OCed P4 (I have a P4 3 GHz at 200/800 MHz FSB - when OCed to 3.225 GHz CPU with a 215/860 MHz, the heat generated shouldn't be much worse than stock).
Looks
Shuttle mini PCs have always looked good, but the ST61G4 looks much cleaner! Thanks to a lack of an external 3.5" bay (at least that is how it looks externally - internally, it's there, but used up by the card reader), the mirrored surface, holographic Shuttle XPC logo, and the solid power/reset buttons, the ST61G4 have a much simpler and elegant look than their first mini PC. Dare I say, almost Apple-like (but still much bolder).
Too bad the line-in is in the front (and the line-out in the rear is not configurable to be a line-in), since if you wish to hook it up to your reciever (for both recording and playback), you will have an unslightly wire dangling in the front. This is a convienence for those who uses the line-in to plug in their MP3 player for quick playback.
The brush aluminium finish is beautiful, but can be easily scratched. The same can be said about the front's polished mirror finish. If not scratched, at least hold fingerprints hostage.
If you take to account the entire look, you are actually better off with a white optical drive, as it will not stand out as much as a black drive from the silver/mirrored front stance. Even better, if you can find a silver optical drive (or custom paint yours). Dare I chrome mine? :)
Build it, and They Will Come
Surely the beautiful aluminum mini box is a sight to stare at, but you didn't pay $300 for an art piece, did you? (Well, some of the more eccentric types probably do). We have to stuff it with goodies like the brute techies we are!
Step-by-Step
The instructions should be followed to the T, even if you have built your own white boxes before. This is because of the small size comes tight spaces. Tight spaces require ingenious designs. Ingenious designs mean you have to do things a certain way to get things installed and bolted down. So follow the letter!
1) First, there are three thumbscrews on the back. Remove them! The light aluminum cover should slide back and up easily.
2) Once there, undo two screws holding the drive cage. Pull the cage towards the back and pull up once it clears.
3) Using only your hands (no tools needed), push down on the metallic tab on the heat sink. Using your other hand, pull the tabs out a bit while there is downward pressure on the aforementioned tab. This should pop the clip holding the heat sink.
4) Undo the 4 screws that hold the rear fan housing. You can now lift the fan out of its place (make sure the plug to the fan is unplugged first!)
5) Remove the ICE heat sink, and be careful of both the heat sink block on the socket and the heat sink towards the back of the case - they are one whole piece!
6) Pull the socket handle up and insert your CPU of choice. Secure the CPU by pushing the handle back down. Apply your favorite heat sink compound (may I suggest Artic Silver 5?).
7) Replace the ICE heat sink the same way you removed it, and secure it with the metallic clip/tab with your hands (again, no tools needed).
8) Replace the rear fan, and screw it back on with the 4 thumbscrews removed earlier. Remember to also plug the fan's connector back onto the motherboard.
9) Secure your hard drive in the drive cage removed earlier, as well as the data cable (be it SATA or PATA). If you are using PATA, route the flat cable towards the bottom front of the cage. There is a clip there to secure the cable.
10) Secure the drive cage back into the case. Plug in the PATA cable into the motherboard's Primary IDE channel. (You can see why I asked you to clip the cable! It is out of the way!) For SATA, just route the cable to the SATA plug on the motherboard (which is towards the back of the PC).
11) Find the multi-media card reader plug (it's really USB, but it is an internal connector that looks like a MPC CD-ROM audio cable) and plug into the reader. (This step is necessary because once you install the optical drive, you cannot reach the connector on the card reader!)
12) Finally, install the optical drive. Route the 40-pin IDE cable as shown on the instruction guide (there are rails that old the cable in place and out of flowing air).
If you have an AGP or PCI card you'd like to install, unscrew the two screws that hold the retention flap in place, flip the flap up, remove the slot cover, and install your card. Reverse the steps to secure it.
ONE NOTE ABOUT THE AGP/PCI SLOTS: Unlike other slots on other cases, this particular case has a closed-top. This is difficult for cards that have connectors near the top, as there will be no clearance for you to install such cards.
For example, the AverTV and Hauppauge WinTV 150 MCE TV/FM tuner cards have many connectors, and the studly RF connector for the TV and FM antennas are near the top! Since the slot's top is blocked off by the case, it is hard to install such a card. You can do it though - just undo the screws that hold the bracket to the card, but leave the bracket on the card. This will let you have some play to move the bracket as needed to clear the slot. Insert the card, and once everything lines up again, you can screw the bracket back onto the card. This, of course, assumes the card provides a way to take off the rear bracket. If not, you are definitely out of luck. :(
After you install Windows XP, though, you must go through each driver installation process and reboot when prompted. TRUST ME. Even if you download your own drivers off the net (updated ones from Shuttle), you HAVE to install them in the order the original driver CD has them listed.
Like a lazy tech, I usually get away with installing multiple drivers and applications and just reboot once. However, in this case, I had problems with XP locking up. After rolling back drivers, I found that the sound drivers don’t play nice if you didn't follow directions. However, even after the rollback, installing the audio drivers again would cause XP to lock up AGAIN after you reboot. The remedy was a complete reformat, and starting from square one.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Performance
Windows XP MCE 2005 boots up relatively quick, though waiting for the SATA BIOS to detect the SATA HD I have drags a bit. Until SATA is considered part of the chipset (and standard SATA drivers are built into Windows installation CDs), this is a necessary evil.
The TV-Out instantly works without much fidgeting, so I didn't even need to connect it to a monitor! Installation of all my applications was fast and slick. No office suites here - just multi-media related apps such as DVD and CD rippers, WAV editor, DVD/CD recording software, and a DVD player (MCE needs an MCE-approved DVD codec from a third party).
No benchmarks were ran as of yet (as I have just been enjoying the fruits of my labor), nor do I plan to, as I do not wish to "screw something up". But perhaps I will one day with a separate HD with a test Windows XP installation just for benchmarking and testing. For now, suffice to say I am blown away by how fast my applications perform, as well as the piggish Internet Explorer and FireFox (yes, FireFox can be a pig if you have many tabs and instances of it running).
Noise
When you first boot up, the rear fan spins up as fast as it can, so it is loud for just one second (you can time it!), then it goes back to silence. The fan is still spinning, though at a slow rate of 1500 RPMs (3200 RPMs is the max). You can control when it speeds up in the BIOS.
With a Seagate 300 GB SATA drive spining at 7200 RPMs, I could even barely hear the drive itself. Then again, Seagate is well known for making hush-hush drives (a reason why I chose them to be used in my HTPC).
Even the power supply fan is mums. If you are in a quiet room, you can tell that there is some air flowing, but it's not annoying or even noticable unless you are up close to the unit.
The most noise will come from the optical drive, as I have experienced. Using some utilties to limit spin-up speeds (such as DriveSpeed from Nero) helps calm the eager beaver down. though it will slow down transfer speeds. If you use it to mainly play DVDs, however, it will not affect you much.
All in all, this is the most quiet PC I've ever built. Dell Optiplexes are very quiet (as most OEM boxes are), and having worked on Optiplexes, I can tell you they sort of stole Shuttle's heat pipe idea - they make the heatsink TALL, and have heat pipes draw heat to the top (and evenly distributes it), then have a fan suck air from inside the case to blow out to the rear, but air goes through the heatsink.
Shuttle has set a new standard in quiet and efficent cooling that even major players had to take notice.
Conclusion
The ATI RS300 is a great performance chipset on a value-oriented pricing. You do sacrifice some features, but some can be made up by the motherboard manufacturer. Here, Shuttle did a good job at cramming so much in a small package, including adding features that ATI left behind.
Benchmarks from other sources also indicate that the ATI RS300 (and the Shuttle ST61G4 specifically) performed just a hair slower than Intel's i975 chipset in the memory bandwidth test. Everything else matches Intel's offering. One big performance leap is the integrated graphics - Intel cannot hold its own compared to the 9100 IGP (and surprisingly, tests have shown that the 9100 IGP even beats their previous 9200 IGP!). There is no need for an AGP card if you were to build your own MCE, or a casual gamer.
Where the ATI RS300 chipset fills the gap between value and performance, the Shuttle ST61G4 fills the budget SSF/miniPC niche that is currently unoccupied.
UPDATE: After benchmarking the Seagate 300 GB native SATA with NCQ hard drive, I found that the Silicon Image chipset used for the SATA controller to have a performance issue. Seems that the bandwidth gets saturated at around 50 MB/sec no matter what! That is a far cry from SATA's promise of 150 MB/sec interface ceiling. What could be wrong? As explained in the hard drive's epinion, not being integrated onto the chipset is not the issue, since other onboard and non-chipset-integrated SATA controllers, as well PCI add-on cards exhibit the same crippling performance wall as the Shuttle did.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
nad_masters
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Location: Chicago, IL, USA
Reviews written: 550
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If you mind is in the gutter, where are your hands?
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