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View Full Version : Shuttle’s ST62K XPC: Small & Silent


Jason Dunn
04-02-2004, 10:05 PM
<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-00.jpg" /><br /><br /><b>Product Category:</b> Barebones computer<br /><b>Manufacturer:</b> <a href="http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=436">Shuttle</a><br /><b>Where to Buy:</b> <a href="http://pocketpcthoughts.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=2456782/search=Shuttle%2520ST62K/ut=44938f58f8444204">Pricegrabber low price search</a><br /><b>Price:</b> $399 USD MSRP, online prices range from $271 USD to $316.<br /><b>Specifications:</b> The Shuttle ST62K weights 2.1 kg without the power supply (5.2 KB with) and is 19 cm wide by 28 cm long and 17 cm high.<br /><br /><b>Pros:</b><li>Almost completely silent;<br /><li>Small size;<br /><li>Sturdy, attractive design;<br /><li>Integrated ATI Radeon 9100 video, audio, LAN - just add CPU, RAM, HD, optical drive.<b>Cons:</b><ul><li>No AGP slot for graphics card expansion;<li>No Serial ATA support;<li>No front Firewire port.</ul><b>Summary:</b>The Shuttle ST62K is a small, quiet box designed for the non-gamer who wants a workstation with everything built-in, or a media PC for integration with a home theatre system. The lack of Serial ATA hard drive support, AGP video support, and a front Firewire port limit the usefulness of this device in some scenarios, but if you’re looking for a near-silent computer with decently performing integrated graphics, the ST62K doesn’t disappoint.<br /><br />Read on for the full review!<br /><!><PAGEBREAK><br /><i>One of the biggest challenges reviewers have is to not pre-judge a product, and to evaluate it on its own merits, not what the reviewer thought it was. I ran into that challenge with this unit, because I made the (poor) assumption that I could just take all the hardware from my current Shuttle, put it in the new one, and call it a day. I was initially very frustrated by the fact that I couldn't do that, but in writing this review I took a big step back and evaluated the Shuttle ST62K based on its own merits, not on what I was expecting it to be.</i><br /><br /><span><b>Love at First Sight</b></span><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-01a.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 1a: Lovely looking, isn't it?</i><br /><br />The Shuttle ST62K is a great-looking computer. The white enamelled front and light grey aluminum case make for a very pleasing design, and when I took it out of the box I was impressed with the build quality. The white plastic makes it look vaguely Mac-like, although I wish it were possible to have the front stay completely white. As you can see in Figure 1b, the minute I added a beige optical drive (my local stores have black or beige) the effect is somewhat ruined. I’ve seen companies advertise different coloured varieties in the back of Maximum PC, so I’m sure it would be possible to get a pure white drive if I looked hard enough. I like case designs that allow the user to cover up optical drives, floppy drives, and memory card inputs. It would be nice to see something like this on future units from Shuttle.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-07.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 1b: The slick white front aesthetically ruined by a boring beige optical drive.</i><br /><br />It wasn’t as small as I thought it would be however – based in the marketing materials I had read about this unit, I was expecting it to be significantly smaller than the SB65G2 I was currently using. The SB65G2 is slightly larger in all dimensions, but not by much – I’d estimate the total mass of the ST62K to be 10 to 15% less than the SB65G2. At first glance, that doesn’t seem to be a significant amount – to me, it’s not, but if you were an inch away from being able to fit a Shuttle in your entertainment console shelving unit, that 10-15% makes all the difference in the world.<br /><br />The power supply for the Shuttle is external, which is why it’s so darn quiet (more on that later). The power supply is quite large (17.8 CM x 12 CM x 5.5 CM) and weighs a whopping 3.2 kg (more then the Shuttle itself). The power supply is located roughly in the centre of the cables on both ends, which is well thought-out, and the cables are both quite long. Kudos to Shuttle for thinking ahead on this – imagine wanting to put the ST62K on the top shelf of your media rack and finding that the cable isn’t long enough to reach.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-03.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 2: The ST62K side-by-side with an SB65G2. Not of a lot of difference in size.</i><br /><PAGEBREAK><br />Now let’s look at what this unit supports and what it doesn’t. First, it’s an Intel-compatible box, so that means a Pentium 4 or Celeron in the 478-pin package. It supports 400, 533, and 800 MHz bus speeds, and hyper-threading, so it’s compatible with all current processors (including, I believe, the newer Prescott chips). The chip-set on the motherboard is the ATI R300, which brings with it support for up to two gigabytes of DDR200/266/333/400 RAM with two slots available for use. <br /><br /><span><b>Integrated ATI Radeon Video</b></span><br />The integrated video is worth mentioning, because more often than not, integrated video completely sucks in the performance department, even for the most basic of games. The exception to this is the nForce chip-set, which offers up a decently-performing nVidia video GPU. And now we can add a second exception to the list: the R300 chip-set from ATI includes a Radeon 9100 GPU, which certainly isn’t cutting edge, but good enough for most basic gaming at lower resolutions (and superior to any sort of integrated video from Intel). It has 533 MHz of bandwidth and operates at an 8x AGP speed.<br /><br />What’s even more interesting about the integrated video is the ability of the chip-set to assign between 32 and 128 MB of RAM to the video card. Does this impact 3D video performance? Yes, although not as much as I thought it would. Using 3D Mark 2003, the ST62K spit out <b>695 3D MARKS</b> when the video RAM was set at 32 MB. When the RAM allocation was set to the maximum of 128 MB, the final score was <b>785 3D MARKS</b>, a 12.5% improvement. Curious about the impact of the CPU on performance, I overclocked it by 100mhz to 2.9 Ghz, and received a score of <b>818 3D MARKS</b>, a 15% improvement above the baseline.<br /><br />By way of comparison, I ran the same 3D Mark test on my Shuttle SB65G2, which was equipped with the same CPU, same RAM, but a Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600 PRO video card. The core chip set is different (Intel 865PE), so this isn't a direct comparison, but the system scored <b>3401 3D MARKS</b> - quite a leap over the 785 3D MARKS on the ST62K. It seems evident that the integrated Radeon 9100 GPU is fine for light gaming at low resolutions, but not for anything high-resolution. That's unfortunate, because anyone who pairs the ST62K with an LCD monitor will want to play at the native LCD resolution, which will probably be 1024 x 768 or 1280 x 1024, and I think the Radeon 9100 GPU would struggle with that.<br /><br />The video also includes support for NTSC or PAL S-Video output to a TV set at a maximum resolution of 1024 x 768, and the box includes a small adaptor to convert the S-Video to a composite video signal. Unfortunately, there’s only one VGA output, so those of you addicted to a dual-monitor experience (like myself) are out of luck since there’s no AGP slot. The quality of the video signal will depend on your TV set and other factors, but the Windows interface in default mode is almost illegible on the screen. It’s passable if you set the font and icon sizes to large, but only barely.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-08.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 3: The video signal being pumped out to a TV set.</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-09.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 4: Windows Media Player in full-screen mode.</i><br /><br />The most common scenario would be to use the TV as a secondary monitor specifically for video projects (Figure 4 shows a video being played), but I was unable to configure the setup to work as a true dual-monitor mode. I was able to configure the ATI driver to pump the main Windows desktop out to the TV set, but I was unable to configure it to leave the desktop on the computer monitor and use the TV set as a secondary monitor. I’m sure it’s possible, but after spending five minutes mucking around with the display settings, I was unable to get it to work. I’m familiar with dual displays, so I was surprised when I wasn’t able to get it working. If this is, in fact, a hardware limitation – only being able to use one video output at a time - this video out port is completely useless in my opinion. I'm going to assume that it was simply a configuration issue I wasn't able to solve. ;-)<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Ports, Ports, Ports</b></span><br />Like most modern computers with integrated chips, the Shuttle ST62K offers an assortment of ports and connections on the back of the unit:<br /><br />• USB 2.0 ports x 2;<br />• 6-pin Firewire ports x 2;<br />• Clear CMOS button: almost as if they knew we’d be overclocking, this is a fast way to reset the CMOS when things lock up;<br />• S-Video TV out port;<br />• VGA output port;<br />• Serial port (who needs one of these anymore?);<br />• Back-mounted SPDIF in and out ports for digital optical audio;<br />• 100 megabit Ethernet LAN port;<br />• PS2 Keyboard and mouse port;<br />• Audio ports: front out, rear out, centre/bass out;<br />• The strange-looking 12V power connector.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-02.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 5: The rear ports on the Shuttle ST62K.</i><br /><br />Front ports on the ST62K include two USB 2.0 ports, an audio line-in, a microphone port, and a line-out port. These ports are ideally positioned for audio tasks like recording from an external source such as a cassette player, connecting a microphone for VOIP, and connecting a device to record audio. The on-board audio is a Realtek ALC650 which supports six channels of audio.<br /><br /><span><b>Where’s the Firewire Port?</b></span><br />And this is where things start to get less optimal - without a front Firewire port, this Shuttle is not an ideal model for those with digital video cameras. There are two Firewire ports on the back, but having to run a cable from the back to the front isn't what I consider a good solution. My first Shuttle, an SS51G had a 6-pin Firewire port on the front, which was fantastic - I could connect any Firewire device to it, and the 6-pin port would also power the device. My next Shuttle, a SB65G2, had a 4-pin Firewire port on the front. This was less optimal, because it meant I had to externally power any device I connected to that port, but it was fine for connecting my Canon GL2 MiniDV camera, which was self-powered. And now this newest Shuttle has no front Firewire port. When asked about this, a Shuttle representative told me that due to the reduced footprint of the ST62K, they were unable to add a front Firewire port. That response makes sense, but it doesn’t change the fact that this renders the ST62K less useful for video enthusiasts, which is unfortunate. I would have gladly accepted a slightly larger ST62K, or only one front USB port, if it meant getting a front Firewire port.<br /><br />And why the single PCI slot you might ask? As with all things, it's a trade-off between space and functionality. I would have preferred to see an AGP slot instead of a PCI slot, but the assumption Shuttle is making seems to be that the integrated ATI video is good enough for people buying this unit. The question then becomes, what will people put in that PCI slot? Two options come to mind: either a high-end Creative Labs Audigy 2 sound card, which would be appropriate if we're talking about a media PC hooked up to a sound system. However, with the bevy of sound options included in the Shuttle, including digital optical in and out, it becomes an issue of perceived sound fidelity rather than a necessity (unless you want to drive a 7.1 sound system). Another option for this PCI slot would be a gigabit Ethernet connection, especially in the case of a media PC with gigs of audio and video content. 100 megabit Ethernet seems fast until you start moving 10 GB video files across it, then the speed limitations become more obvious.<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>Putting it All Together</b></span><br />Assembling the Shuttle was a relatively quick process, and building your own computer is a rewarding experience – although you’re robbed of the pulse-pounding experience of wondering if you grounded the motherboard correctly and wondering if everything will short out when you hit the power button. :laugh:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-06a.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 6a: The pieces used for attaching your hardware to the Shuttle.</i><br /><br />This is the third Shuttle that I’ve put together, so I knew what to expect, but if you’ve ever installed RAM or CD-R before, this isn’t much more difficult. The Shuttle comes with a well-illustrated manual, and surprisingly lucid instructions in English. From start to finish, I’d say putting your first Shuttle together would take no more than 30 minutes, even if you’re going slowly. This was, by far, the easiest assembly I’ve ever had – Shuttle has streamlined the process quite a bit. Shuttle also includes everything you need except for a Philips screwdriver, but if you don’t own one of those, you’re not the type of person that should be putting together a computer. ;-)<br /><br />The package includes thermal paste for the CPU, so after inserting the 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 and locking it down, I put on some thermal paste and attached the passive heat sink. After re-attaching the fan and connecting the cable to the fan header on the motherboard, I put in two 512 MB sticks of Kingston DDR400 RAM. I then moved on to the hard drive, and my next significant disappointment with the ST62K.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-01.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 6b: The inside of the ST62K.</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-04.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 7: The hard drive slides in from the side, and sits perpendicular to the case.</i><br /><br />Unlike my six-month old SB62G Shuttle, this brand-new ST62K doesn’t have support for Serial ATA hard drives. This was a significant disappointment for me, because it meant I couldn’t use my two 160 GB Seagate hard drives and opted for the only spare ATA100 drive I had lying around: a 30 GB Maxtor drive. After installation, it benchmarked quite well, with an average read rate of 49 MB/s, but I would have preferred to see Serial ATA support since it’s rapidly becoming the standard hard drive interface. After some research I’ve learned that this is a limitation of ATI’s R300 chip-set, which I hope they’ll address in future versions of the chip-set.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-05.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 8: A close-up of the hard drive – notice the user-friendly label.</i><br /><br />The hard drive is installed into a sliding tray which I haven’t seen before – it slides in from the site and locks in place. The cabling was very easy to set up – everything was clearly labelled, and the optical drive cable was already attached and in place. <br /><br />The ST62K has one 5.25" drive bay and two 3.5" drive bays, which means one optical drive, so make it count. I put a 52x CD-R/DVD-ROM combo drive, but if I didn’t already have an external burner in a Firewire enclosure, I would have gone for an 8x Plextor DVD burner. The two 3.5" bays allow for some options: a second hard drive, a floppy drive, or an integrated memory card reader (Shuttle has one as an accessory).<br /><br />After installing the hard drive, the optical drive was easy enough, and things were pretty much finished!<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>BIOS Tweaks</b></span><br />When I first powered up the machine, I was pleased to see that the system BIOS had detected my hyper-threading CPU and turned on the appropriate BIOS flag. It also indicated there was 32 MB of system memory allocated to the integrated video.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-06.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 9: The BIOS identifying my hardware.</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-05.jpg" /><br /><i>Figure 10: Overclocker’s delight!</i><br /><br />The BIOS allows for some useful overclocking tweaks – I had never seen the “CPU Over Clock By" option before, but it allows you to specify speed bumps between 1 and 20 mhz. This translates to much more than that though – a 5 mhz speed bump resulted in a CPU overclock of 100 mhz, and a 10 mhz bump gave me a 200 mhz boost up to 3 Ghz. The system wasn’t stable at 3 Ghz however – when I was running the 3D Mark 2003 benchmark, the system would reset itself at the same point each time. A 100 mhz overclock seemed the most stable. If you do plan to overclock, it’s best to move up in 50 mhz increments and test the system like crazy before making another speed bump.<br /><br /><span><b>Deathly Quiet</span></b><br />When I first booted the ST62K after installing my hardware, the fan was roaring, and it was every bit as loud as the SB62G I was currently using. However, a few seconds after boot the fan went into a lower RPM mode, and I nearly fell over in shock at how quiet things were. It’s not an exaggeration to say that you’d need to be in a silent room to even know if the ST62K was turned on or not. Yes, it’s that quiet. The fan will only kick into high-speed and ultra-noisy mode when the CPU temperature becomes critical, and will idle back down when things return to normal. With a single hard drive and no PCI card in the system generating additional heat, I doubt I’ll ever hear the fan turn on.<br /><br />I took a short video using my my Canon S400 camera to demonstrate the sound produced by the multi-speed fan - you'll want to turn your speakers up fairly loud in order to hear the audio properly. In this video, <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/st62k-fan-noise.wmv">you can hear the volume of the fan</a> when the ST62K first turns on, then it disappears a few seconds later. Even when the camera was right next to the back of the unit, there was no fan noise to speak of (I trimmed that part of the video out to save space). Calling this computer nearly silent not an exaggeration!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-11.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 11: The huge external power supply is the secret for a near-silent computer. Why didn't someone think of this sooner?</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/shuttle-st62k-12.jpg" /> <br /><i>Figure 12: The power supply connects with an odd-looking cable to the main unit, but the connection is solid and won't fall out.</i><br /><br />I have a real grudge against noisy computers, which of course means I have a grudge against almost every computer out there. ;-) I’ve always built machines myself or purchased from a local “white box" vendor, so when I ordered a Dell Inspiron 4100 for my wife, I was in shock at how quiet it was. And, in truth, I was envious that her computer was so quiet while mine roared away. Both my SS51G and SB65G2 Shuttles have been equally loud. On the SS51G I replaced the main system fan with one that was a bit quieter, but the real decibel demon was the power supply fan. It must be a side effect of the power supply being so small, but the fans they used were atrociously loud. So when I heard (or didn’t hear, rather) the ST62K, I wanted very badly to use it as my main computer. Unfortunately, I can’t.<br /><PAGEBREAK><br /><span><b>A Mixed Bag For My Needs, Perhaps a Winner For Yours?</b></span><br />Overall, I have mixed feelings about the ST62K. On one hand, it’s small, great-looking, very quiet, and comes chock-full of integrated functionality. It would make a great media centre-type PC – put in a big 250 GB hard drive, a PCI TV tuner, and load up <a href="http://www.snapstream.com">Snapstream’s Beyond TV 3</a>, and you’re laughing. Or, if you’re deploying systems in an office environment the ST62K would make a perfect office computer: small, quiet, and highly functional. Special emphasis on the quiet part – office environments tend to be brutally noisy, usually because of the computers, so the stealthy ST62K would be especially welcomed there.<br /><br />On the other hand, I wanted this to be the basis for my new personal computer, but it can’t be. The lack of Serial ATA support means I have to ditch my 160 GB hard drives and spend hundreds of dollars on outdated ATA100 hard drives, which is frustrating considering those drives are less than six months old. The lack of a front Firewire port means I’d have to run a cable from the back when I want to connect my DV camera, which I find unacceptable. But most frustrating of all is that without an AGP port, I’m unable to connect my twin 17" Samsung LCD monitors, and I’ve grown very accustomed to working with two monitors. Yes, it might be possible to track down a PCI card with twin outputs (my SS51G was unable to work with integrated VGA + AGP card at the same time), but I’d probably end up with even worse 3D performance. And on a 1280 x 1024 native resolution LCD monitor, playing games at anything less than that resolution is ugly.<br /><br />So, despite how impressed I am with the ST62K, I’ll probably end up building a secondary system around it and will keep my very loud SB65G2 in service – at least until Shuttle takes the same external power supply concept and applies it to a new Shuttle designed with less compromises. When that happens, I’ll be happy indeed! In the meantime, if you haven’t invested in Serial ATA hard drives and aren’t a serious gamer (or videographer), Shuttle’s ST62K gets a very strong recommendation from me as a good choice for a personal computer well-suited to being general SOHO computer or a media centre-type PC.

Kent Pribbernow
04-02-2004, 10:14 PM
No AGP Slot? Bleh! :puppydogeyes: Makes it useless for gaming or graphics work.

Jason Dunn
04-02-2004, 10:26 PM
No AGP Slot? Bleh! :puppydogeyes: Makes it useless for gaming or graphics work.

Hard-core gaming, yes. But graphics work? Why would you say that? It's not like Photoshop needs AGP bandwidth... :wink:

Kent Pribbernow
04-02-2004, 10:31 PM
Vector graphics and 3D rendering. Not something I'd want to use Maya on.

Jason Dunn
04-02-2004, 10:34 PM
Vector graphics and 3D rendering. Not something I'd want to use Maya on.

Ah yes. If you're doing 3D rendering and need serious firepower, you're right, this would not be a good fit. Darn, here I thought you were going to tell me that this wouldn't be "fast" enough for 2D work. :lol:

Kent Pribbernow
04-02-2004, 10:38 PM
Ha. Well just knowing that my video was permanently stuck in Circa 2003/4 would make me nervous enough to effect my daily work performance. So in that sense, it does effect 2D graphics. :P

ctmagnus
04-02-2004, 10:56 PM
I setup a Dell a few months back that was as silent as you describe. I had an epiphany at that moment. Never again will I purchase a noisy computer.

ctmagnus
04-03-2004, 01:57 AM
Oh yeah, the Dell also had that noisy thing at first but afterwards you could not hear a thing. My Voodoo PC does that as well, but it never totally silences short of shutdown/hibernation/suspension. I've actually encountered several PCs that have the noisy-fan-at-startup thing, most of them from generic white-box dealers.

Steve
04-04-2004, 06:54 AM
I would like one for little things, you could sort of use it as a home theatre system. To listen to mp3's, watch videos, so on. Well that much is obvious I guess, but I really like that.

Jason Dunn
04-04-2004, 04:56 PM
I would like one for little things, you could sort of use it as a home theatre system. To listen to mp3's, watch videos, so on. Well that much is obvious I guess, but I really like that.

Yes, it would perform well in that task, especially because it's so quiet...

Steve
04-15-2004, 08:52 AM
the more I see little boxes like these, I really want one. When I posted that other post, I had completely forgotten about it being silent. It really would be perfect for a home entertainment system of some sort.

fslongo
06-04-2004, 06:48 PM
Hey Jason, after reading your review you have me wanting one to configure as a PVR. How is your trial going? My biggest concern is the lack of SATA.

Jason Dunn
06-05-2004, 04:00 PM
Hey Jason, after reading your review you have me wanting one to configure as a PVR. How is your trial going? My biggest concern is the lack of SATA.

Right now I'm running it in "stand alone" mode - not connected to my TV set - but the trial is going very well. The lack of SATA is only a concern if you have a big SATA drive waiting to go into the unit. I ordered a 200 GB Seagate drive a few days ago, so that will be my "PVR drive". Even with the old 30 GB drive I have in there now, I haven't noticed any speed issues. SATA and ATA133 are almost identical in terms of real-world speed right now anyway. Right now I'm using SnapStream's BeyondTV 3, but it seems that the IR remote or the Hauppauge card they sent me is bad, so I'm in a holding pattern at the moment.