Which Shuttle?

Hi All,

I want to upgrade my main PC to a Shuttle. I'm having a hard time deciding which one. Their choices are so numberous!

Can anyone help me narrow it down to a model? Things that are important to me:

1) Quiet
2) Want to have USB 2.0 and FireWire (800?) - (for possible future use - do I need the 800)?
3) I like their Card reader clusters on some models.
4) Want to get an Intel P4 chip.
5) Want a BIOS and chipset that is HEAVILY supported. I don't want to get left in the dust by a Microsoft upgrade, for instance (a friend of mine can't use his mainboard VIA chipset USB 2.0 since Microsoft did FP2)
6) Expandability is important to me. Since most stuff is built in, I don't think I'd NEED to add cards, but I want to be able to if necessary.
7) Gaming is NOT that important to me, but I do want to play the occasional HL2 or similar game...

Lastly, lemme ask a quick question... I currently am using an Abit motherboard and the built in sound processing that comes with it. I get a ton of noise through my speakers with this config. I can hear interference from the HD, and other stuff. I always figured that I'd need a seperate Sound Blaster type card to fix this. If I get a Shuttle, should I still expect to need a seperate card? Is this a typical problem with on board sound chipsets? If I use the SPDIF output, I'm guessing that this kind of issue wouldn't be present. Any comments?

- Thanx
- Jon

Go with the SB95Pv2 if you want the highest peformance box with 4 SATA drive bays plus the optical bay.

Go with the SB86i if you want a quieter solution, but limited to two hard drives.

There is also the SS77G5, though it seems similar to the SB86i.

All 3 offer PCI Express 16x slots for graphics cards. Slap in a good $200ish NVidia 6600 GT and you will have a good little gaming box too. The ATI alternative in that price range is the x700 Pro line, though it tends to be slower then the 6600gt. Sadly ATI gave up ground in the middle of the road market this past time around.

All the above boxes have USB2 and Firewire 400. I haven't seen any Shuttle with Firewire 800 yet.

Drakino,

Thanks for the tips. I was looking and salivating over the SB86i already. I have an NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 in my old PC that I can use in this new one. How would that video board compare to the one on board the SB86i with a "Intel GMA 900"?

I also notice that the drive controller is ATA 100, and not ATA 133... Big difference in speed?

- Jon

Nearly zero different between ATA100 and ATA133 on any modern system. The drives themselves are still slower than that. And those terms are n/a for SATA.

Cheers

Quote:
I have an NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 in my old PC that I can use in this new one. How would that video board compare to the one on board the SB86i with a "Intel GMA 900"?

All 3 boxes above come with PCI-Express slots, and not AGP slots for graphics cards. Thus the GeForce Ti 4200 you have would not work in any of the above. Not sure how well the integrated graphics would do, but I can say the "Intel Extreme 2" on my workstation here at work seems just a bit slower then the Radeon 8500 it used to have. Sadly the 8500 decided to need VPU recovery every 5-10 minutes and had to be removed. Anyhow, odds are the integrated on that system would at least be on par with your 4200, as it came in below the Radeon 8500 for peformance.