Powerful, Small, Stealthy: Shuttle's SD11G5 XPC [Archive]

Jason Dunn

03-27-2006, 05:15 PM

<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/SD11G5-3D%20view_left_1.jpg" /> Product Category: Barebones Computer Manufacturer: <a href="http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SD11G5.asp">Shuttle</a> Where to Buy: <a href="http://thoughtsmedia.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=13115913/sort_type=price">Low Price Search</a> Price: from $339 USD System Requirements: n/a Specifications: <a href="http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SD11G5-Spec.asp">Shuttle specifications</a> Pros:<li> Great design, clean lines; <li>Effectively silent; <li>Capable of running high-end video cards; <li>Easy installation and setup.Cons:<li> Frustrating optical drive bay button problem; <li>Only one DVI port, one VGA port; <li>No integrated memory card reader; <li>Only available in white.Summary: Shuttle has hit a home run with the SD11G5. Despite my major frustrations with the optical drive bay button, the SD11G5 is a powerful blend of stylish design, clever engineering, and powerful hardware. If you're looking for a silent desktop PC that still packs some serious punch for productivity and digital media editing, the SD11G5 is tough to beat. Read on for the full review! <!> <PAGEBREAK> Starting at the Beginning I've been a fan of Shuttle XPC computers since buying my first, back in 2001, if memory serves (when you buy/build computers frequently, you tend to lose track). So, of all the products I've reviewed, I may have the most amount of "reviewer's tilt" towards the Shuttle – I really like their stuff. That said, I think you'll find this review to be fair and critical in the right places. If you're not familiar with Shuttle's XPC units, the concept is simple: they provide the case, motherboard, and power supply, already pre-assembled. I love building new PCs, but I dislike mounting the motherboard, so this is one reason why I really enjoy what Shuttle offers. The end user rounds out the PC by adding whatever CPU, RAM, hard drive, video card (optional in some cases), and optical drive they want. The Shuttle motherboards often come with onboard video, and all recent models include USB, Firewire, and onboard audio. Plug in a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and you've got yourself a new PC. What's particularly compelling about Shuttle XPCs is that they combine the slick design and tight hardware integration of a big-box vendor with the customization of a local white-box vendor. With my XPCs, I get a machine that looks better than any Dell box, with exactly the components that I want. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-01.jpg" /> Figure 1: The Shuttle SD11G5 in angled profile (protective plastic still on). Like every other Shuttle XPC, the unit I'm reviewing bears an unfortunate and difficult to remember moniker: the SD11G5. SD11 is the model, and the G5 indicates the chassis type. The G5 chassis has "stealth doors" that cover the front of the optical drive, giving it clean lines. It's definitely the only way to go – who wants to see the ugly front of a BenQ DVD burner? The G5 chassis is shorter than the "P" chassis, which means is lacks the integrated memory card reader. It's not a show stopper, but I'd like to see Shuttle figure out a way of putting CompactFlash and Secure Digital memory card slots (at minimum) on there somehow. I've seen photos of the SD11G5 with a memory card reader, so there is an accessory, but I'd like to see it come standard. What's in the Box Opening up the box on the SD11G5 reveals the usual: the SD11G5 unit itself, and a box containing the accessories. One thing that makes the SD11G5 different from most computers, and in fact most Shuttle XPCs, is that it has an external 250 watt power supply. This is a dramatic shift from the way most PCs work, which I'll delve more into below. The out of box experience isn't particularly impressive, which is somewhat surprising given Shuttle's efforts into making their XPCs feel luxurious. They should take some lessons from Apple in this department. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-02.jpg" /> Figure 2: The accessories box. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-03.jpg" /> Figure 3: Everything you need to build the XPC. A software and drivers CD, manual, parallel ATA cable, screws, S-Video output cable, thermal paste, and a few odds and ends. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-04.jpg" /> Figure 4: The external power supply is big. Really big. We're talking bigger than the Xbox 360 power supply! Using the Pentium M CPU changes all the rules for power when it comes to designing a desktop system. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9087">Here's what I wrote</a> about this when Shuttle first announced the system: "The real killer part of this unit is the support for the Pentium M processor. This means serious performance at low power consumption and almost no noise. What surprises me though is that when I saw that the power supply was 220 watts, I immediately thought "Ok, no high-powered graphics card, perhaps an NVIDIA 6600 at the most". But on the features page they say it's been tested with an NVIDIA 7800GTX. Wow! I couldn't figure this out until I realized that because the Pentium M processor sips a mere 27 watts of power, it leaves much more headroom for the graphics card. On my current Shuttle (an SB95P2) the 3.4 Ghz P4 CPU guzzles close to 100 watts of power, which is why I need the 350 watt power supply to drive my 6800GT video card. Having a CPU that only needs 27 watts really changes the rules of system design." I was too conservative in my estimates on how much power my 3.4 Ghz Pentium 4 CPU needed - it uses around 100 watts of power at idle, and nearly 150 watts under full load. The Pentium M changes everything, but even with the wattage to power a hefty video card (it's certified for use with an NVIDIA 7800GTX), I ended up deciding not to use one - more on why below. <PAGEBREAK> The Shuttle SD11G5 in Pictures <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-05.jpg" /> Figure 5: The SD11G5 has a great look. My shoddy photography doesn't do it justice. In this photo the protective plastic is still on. The white looks great, though I wish it came in black as an option since my dual monitors, keyboard, and mouse are black. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-06.jpg" /> Figure 6: The bottom front panel pops down with a simple press on the right side, and reveals (from left to right) a microphone jack, headphone jack, two USB 2.0 ports, and a 4-pin Firewire 400 port. These ports make it easy to connect USB thumbdrives, digital video cameras, etc. A couple of years ago I would have complained about the lack of a front-facing 6-pin Firewire port, but Firewire is less and less common these days, so the 4-pin is sufficient. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-07.jpg" /> Figure 7: This panel clicks down with a press. You can see the top of my hard drive just inside the revealed space. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-08.jpg" /> Figure 8: The rear of the SD11G5. The right hand side shows the slots for PCI Express cards. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-09.jpg" /> Figure 9: Ports, ports, everywhere! From top left on down: optical audio input and output, analog ports for 7.1 surround sound, a CMOS reset button, a single six-pin Firewire port, a keyboard and mouse port, and an S-Video out port for connecting to a TV set (does anyone really do that anymore?). Moving right we have a gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 2.0 ports, VGA and DVI ports, and the power connection point. More USB ports would have been nice to see, but given the size constraints it's still impressive how much they can jam onto the back of this. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-10.jpg" /> Figure 10: A side view of the SD11G5. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-11.jpg" /> Figure 11: A closer look. Notice the large heatsink on the chipset for passive (and silent) cooling. The Pentium M CPU is on the left, and while slightly smaller, is connected to the passive cooling pipes that run to the back fan. Two slots for DDR2 RAM, the unit maxes out at 2GB total. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-12.jpg" /> Figure 12: The other side of the SD11G5. There's one x16 PCI Express slot for a video card, and another x1 slot for whenever x1 PCI Express cards become available. There's so much built into the machine though, I'm not sure what you'd add here. A RAID card perhaps? <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-13.jpg" /> Figure 13: The slow-spinning fan. It's a smart fan (controlled by the BIOS) capable of going up to 3000+ RPM, but in day to day use the fan spins at a mere 869 RPM. You have to put your head next to the SD11G5 to hear the fan – it's that quiet. Even putting the CPU under 100% load didn't increase the fan to audible levels, though the fan did speed up. <PAGEBREAK> Motherboard Features Like all Shuttle XPCs, the SD11G5 is packed with features. It supports 400mhz and 533mhz-bus based Pentium M CPUs, including the low-voltage Pentium M. It requires DDR2 RAM (400 or 533 speed) up to 2 GB total in the form of two 1 GB sticks. SATA support is integrated, with dual-channel UDMA 150 MB/s speed. I've grown accustomed to on-board audio in Shuttle XPCs, but the SD11G5 one-ups my previous Shuttle with a Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit, 7.1 channel EAX Advanced HD audio chip on board. I have to admit that I haven't noticed that the SD11G5 sounds any better with my Klipsch 2.1 speakers than my previous Shuttle did, but it's impossible to determine that without doing A/B testing. Let's just say that I'm pleased to finally get back to the audio-lovin' arms of Creative after years with generic on-board audio. Connectivity is handled by the Broadcom 5789 chip, which supports gigabit Ethernet – that's 1000mb/s of pure screaming file transfer goodness. When I'm pushing around 4 GB VOB files, I greatly appreciate having gigabit speeds. Firewire duties are handled by the VIA VT6307 chip and top out at 400 mb/s – no Firewire 800 goodness here, but given how rare Firewire 800 accessories are, I don't view this as a real problem. Shuttle tends to go with Intel chipsets for their Intel-based systems, and the SD11G5 is no exception. It uses the Intel 915GM + ICH6M chipset, which comes with onboard video (Intel GMA900). The words "onboard video" tend to fill me with dread, but in this instance I wasn't building a gaming PC, so I wasn't overly concerned with 3D performance. What did concern me, however, were the single DVI and single VGA ports on the back of the SD11G5. I have dual Dell 20.1" LCD monitors, and at 1600 x 1200 they need to run in DVI mode for maximum quality. I connected both monitors to the SD11G5, the left to the VGA port, the right to the DVI port. The Intel adaptor worked very nicely with two monitors, and setting them up was a breeze. The problem? Quality. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/text-comparison-large.jpg">Take a look at this image</a> (292 KB). This was a single instance of Internet Explorer spread over both monitors. The photo I took is telling – the text on the VGA monitor (left) is blurry and the white background doesn't look like true white. The DVI-connected monitor (right) is a world apart: the text is crisp and clear, the white background is vibrant. The onboard video is wholly unusable for someone with two digital LCD monitors. It's easy enough to put on a DVI to VGA adaptor if someone has a monitor that can only accept VGA, so I'm at a loss as to why Intel and Shuttle would do this "one and one" solution. The reason must be cost, but given the premium-grade solution the SD11G5 is supposed to be, it's a shame they don't have two DVI ports. The rest of the ports and specifications can be found on the <a href="http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SD11G5-Spec.asp">SD11G5 specifications page</a>. <PAGEBREAK> Picking the Parts One of my favourite parts about building a Shuttle XPC is picking the parts to go inside it. I demand high performance from my PCs, so I try to pick the best parts I can, within reason. I don't mind spending money to get performance, there there's a "rationality ceiling" that I won't go above, no matter tempting it is. That's the reason I don't yet own a <a href="http://www.voodoopc.com">Voodoo PC</a>. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-14.jpg" /> Figure 14: The 2.13 Ghz Pentium M 770. For the CPU, my choices were obviously limited to the Pentium M. At the time I built this (February 2006), there were several options, ranging from 1.63 Ghz up to 2.13 Ghz. The 2.13 Ghz CPU features 2MB of L2 cache and runs on a 533 mhz bus, but it was also a huge price jump from the 2.0 Ghz version that had the same specs other than speed. I opted for to save nearly $200 and lost only 130 Mhz of speed, but when I contacted my favourite local computer store (<a href="http://www.memoryexpress.com">Memory Express</a>) a helpful fellow named Yet offered to try and get me a deal with Intel because this was for a review. Sometimes I'm fortunate and vendors will send me hardware for review, but when it comes to CPUs, I'm on my own and almost always have to buy them (Intel has sent me one in the past, AMD always refuses). Memory Express managed to get me the 2.13 Ghz CPU for only $50 dollars more than the 2.0 Ghz version, so I went for it. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-15.jpg" /> Figure 15: The glorious Raptor X. When it came to hard drives, I had two 3.5" bays to fill, and I knew exactly what I wanted for the primary drive: when I was at CES in January 2006, Western Digital had just announced the upgrade to my beloved 74GB Raptor drives: <a href="http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=189">the Raptor X</a>. The Raptor X retains the blistering 10,000 RPM speed of its smaller siblings, and the 16MB cache, but doubles the storage to 150 GB. <a href="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/dmt/2006/raptorx-spinning-up.wmv">Here's a video of it spinning up</a>. It has a few other features such as NCQ (Native Command Queuing), but the tests I've seen show no performance gains using NCQ in day to day desktop use. In terms of storage size, 150 GB is perfect for my needs – if I total up all my must-have software, data, and video/photos/music that I need to have on every computer I own, it comes in at about 80 GB. Everything beyond that is just gravy, though I won't deny that it would be cool to have all 60 GB of my music in there as well. 150 GB gives me enough space for my needs with plenty left over. So what about RAID you might be asking? The Intel 915GM chipset on the SD11G5 doesn't support it. Is that a problem you might ask? Well, it depends. If you're a dyed-in-the-wool RAID fan and you absolutely need to have it, the SD11G5 isn't for you – look to one of Shuttle's bigger (and louder) XPCs such as the SB95P. I ran twin 74GB Raptors in a RAID0 array on my last Shuttle, and while it off the charts in cool factor, I have to admit that I didn't notice any significant performance increases by running RAID0. And given the performance of the Raptor X, I didn't mourn the loss of RAID in the SD11G5. There's room for another hard drive – I plunked a 7200RPM Seagate 160 GB drive in there – so down the road it would be nice to see RAID supported if only for data redundancy purposes (RAID1). In the meantime, I run <a href="http://www.acronis.com">Acronis TrueImage</a> every night, which gives me a bit for bit cloned image of everything on the Raptor X. In the case of hard drive failure, I just swap cables and restore the image. Good to go! <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-16.jpg" /> Figure 16: Nothing fancy, but two GB worth of reliable Kingston RAM. I transplanted the RAM from my previous Shuttle – it's nothing overly special, no bling-bling RAM here, but it has served me well. Kingston makes very reliable RAM, and with RAM prices being what they are, everyone should be running 2 x 512MB at minimum, or 2 x 1GB if possible. I have four computers in day to day use, and three of the four have 2 GB of RAM, while the wee Fujitsu P7020 laptop gets by with 512 MB. Having 2GB of RAM is pretty amazing when I think back on my father bringing home a 40 megabyte hard drive and I was thrilled at the seemingly endless space. Of course, that didn't stop me from installing hard drive doubling software ("Stacker") and accidentally trashing the data on the whole drive while trying to get even more space. Ah, those were the days. ;-) <PAGEBREAK> Getting Dual DVI: Just Way Too Hard Now what about the video card you might ask? As you read above, I couldn't cope with the nasty quality of the VGA port running a DVI-based monitor, so I needed a dual DVI video card. I happened to have a PCI Express XFX 6800GT video card that I acquired (at great pain and expense) in early 2005, so I slapped that in...and quickly groaned at how loud it made the SD11G5. When you build a computer completely focused on low-noise, a screaming fast and loud video card unbalances the entire thing. The SD11G5 might be rated to run a 780GTX, but what's the point? Video card makers focus on performance, but they could seem to care less about how loud their cards are. If I'm going to spend $700 on a high-end video card, I want great performance, but I also want something better than a 50 cent, brutally loud fan. I know it's possible to use larger, lower RPM fans. I also know it's technically possible to create a video card that doesn't start the fan until it needs to (gaming) while staying perfectly quiet for everything else. No video card company in the market today seems to understand that, though there are glimmers of hope with some passively-cooled cards I've just started to see on the market. So what did I end up doing? The same trick I did with my SN95G5 – I bought an XFX 6600 card and unplugged the fan. That's right kids – no fan. When I tried that with the SN95G5 at the suggestion of a Digital Media Thoughts forum member (thanks David!), I was surprised at the results. At idle, with the fan connected and whirring away loudly, the GPU on the card was at 60 degrees Celsius. The danger zone where the card will clock down or warn the user of a problem is an amazing 140 degrees Celsius, so that left me with a lot of headroom. After unplugging the fan, the temperate went up to 75 degrees Celsius and stabilized. I play games on it so rarely that even if I need to open up the case and re-connect the fan, it's a small price to pay for having a completely silent card. The problem is that it's hard to find NVIDIA 6600-based cards with two DVI ports – they're still rare on low and mid-range cards. I tried a 6600GT card that had dual DVI, but without the fan plugged in the temperatures got to 90 degrees Celsius and kept climbing, so I quickly abandoned that plan. The 6600 seems to be the fastest chipset possible that you can do this with. I managed to find an XFX 6600 card from Tiger Direct that did the trick. Now you see why I was so disappointed that the SD11G5 didn't come with dual DVI ports – this whole issue proved to be a major hassle for me. In the marketing materials for the SD11G5 Shuttle uses the term "Dual Independent Display" to tout the dual video connectors, but until the quality is there I don't think this is something that should be considered a feature. I realize most people don't have two monitors, but it's certainly not as uncommon as it once used to be and anyone buying a Shuttle XPC is probably much more likely to need dual DVI than someone buying a $299 Dell PC. Come on Shuttle (and Intel), step up and give us dual DVI! <PAGEBREAK> Putting the Pieces Together: Assembling the SD11G5 Assembling the SD11G5 was a piece of cake, with one exception that I'll mention below. The manual has colour photographs and reasonably well-written English that makes it easy to follow. If you've never built a computer before, fear not: if you follow the instructions you can't go wrong. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-17.jpg" /> Figure 17: A dab of thermal paste goes a long way. Assembly follows this basic path: remove the CPU heat pipe (which, interestingly enough, is filled with distilled water), drop in the Pentium M CPU, put on some thermal paste, then put the CPU heat pipe back on. Installing the RAM is quick, and the hard drives go in quickly because the cables are already in place. The SD11G5 didn't have the ultra-cool snap-on rails that my SB95P had, but once you get the drives in they're not going anywhere. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-18.jpg" /> Figure 18: The Raptor X hard drive installed. There's no point getting the version with the see-through top if you can't see it, but Western Digital had none of the standard enterprise versions available for review, so this cool feature is basically wasted. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-19.jpg" /> Figure 19: The source of all my problems with the optical drive. Here's where I have to get negative on Shuttle: how they've implemented the "stealth door" is hugely problematic. There's a plastic arm that moves towards the optical drive when you press on the outer button. There's a small plastic pad on this plastic arm – Shuttle includes two different sizes of pads – and the pad can be moved left and right on the arm to line up better with the button on the optical drive. The problem is that despite many hours of fighting and cursing, I wasn't able to get the outer button to open my optical drive. I tried both pads. I tried every single position for the pad along the plastic arm. I tried loosening the screws. I got so desperate to fix this problem I was jamming globs of Silly Putty into key positions trying to get things into alignment. Folks, when Silly Putty comes into the equation, things are bad. Want to see how bad? <a href="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/dmt/2006/drivetray.wmv">Check out this video</a> and how much force I had to use to open the drive tray - and that was as good as I could get it after hours of tweaking, not my first try! I had exactly the same problem on my Shuttle SN95G5, so this isn't an isolated incident – it's a problem with the G5 chassis in general. When I emailed Shuttle about this, their responses was that they were unable to test with every optical drive on the market. So what obscure drive was I using? I Pioneer 16x DVD burner. Yes, Pioneer. You know, the company that had one of the first DVD burners on the market and is still considered a market leader? It's not like I was using some strange off-brand drive – Pioneer is about as name-brand as it gets. Throughout all my testing of the SD11G5, I ran it with the cover off and to open the drive tray I'd pull the entire drive forward in order to make contact with the button. In a strange bit of inspiration, I tried removing the two back screws on the drive, loosening the front two, then jamming the Pioneer drive forward with all my strength and tightening the two front screws. And guess what? It worked. But you and I know it shouldn't have to be that hard, and I dock Shuttle major points for not coming up with a better solution. I'm not engineer, but there has to be a better solution to this then what they're offering customers. <PAGEBREAK> Benchmarking the SD11G5 Because this is primarily designed to be a workstation, I didn't do any 3D benchmarking for gaming performance. I focused instead of productivity and digital media content creation benchmarks. To this end, I used two benchmarks: Business Winstone 2004, and Multimedia Content Creation 2004. Each benchmark installs a variety of applications and runs them though high-speed automatic macros, then measures the result. Benchmarks are like any other form of statistics: they only make sense in context. So in that light, I manipulated two variables on the SD11G5 to see how they impacted the benchmarks: I overclocked the CPU and used different hard drives. The results were interesting, and are presented here without detailed analysis (this review is long enough), just as raw data. The on-board Intel video was used in all these tests. Business Winstone 2004 2.13 Ghz CPU, 7200 RPM hard drive. Score: 23 2.13 Ghz CPU, 10K RPM Raptor. Score: 23.7 2.13 Ghz CPU, 10K RPM Raptor X. Score: 24 2.47 Ghz OC'd CPU, 10K RPM Raptor X. Score: 26.1 Multimedia Winstone 2004 2.13 Ghz CPU, 7200 RPM hard drive. Score: 28.5 2.13 Ghz CPU, 10K RPM Raptor. Score: 29.4 2.13 Ghz CPU, 10K RPM Raptor X. Score: 29.8 2.46 Ghz OC'd CPU, 10K RPM Raptor X. Score: 33.7 The quick analysis? The fastest CPU still makes the biggest difference in these benchmarks. The Raptor X hard drive made less difference than I thought it would. It would have been interesting to see how a Core Duo CPU would have benchmarked under the same scenario. I also used <a href="http://www.sisoftware.net/">SiSoft Sandra 2005</a> to measure hard drive speed in the SD11G5 with three drives I had on hand. The results were interesting: 160GB Western Digital 7200 RPM: 42MB/s 74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM: 55 MB/s 150GB Western Digital Raptor X 10,000 RPM: 72 MB/s This shows that although the 74GB Raptor was 13MB/s faster (31%) than a normal 7200RPM drive, the Raptor X kicks it up another notch and is a massive 30MB/s faster – that's 71%. It's not like your programs will start 71% faster, but in large file copy functions, the Raptor X will get the job done quicker. SiSoft Sandra 2005 also had a multimedia benchmark. I ran it and compared the numbers to other CPUs in the database, and it showed that the Pentium M CPU measures very favourably against other Intel CPUs on a per Mhz basis. It also shows how potent AMD CPUs are. The numbers below are "pure" benchmarks, meaning they are only valid in comparison to each other. Pentium M CPU 1.86 Ghz: 17,694 Integer / 19,496 Floating Point Pentium M CPU 2.13 Ghz: 20,431 Integer / 22,509 Floating Point Pentium M CPU OC'd 2.5 Ghz: 23,950 Integer / 26,392 Floating Point Pentium 4 CPU 3.2 Ghz: 24,459 Integer / 32,341 Floating Point AMD 64 X2 4800+ CPU: 45,955 Integer / 49,481 Floating Point A side benefit of using these benchmarks is that I was able to test how far I could push the overclocking on this CPU. I tend to do the type of overclocking that doesn't take real guts: I'll overclock the CPU bus speed, but I won't juice the CPU with extra voltage - it's just too risky with an expensive CPU that I paid for. The benchmarks were a good tool for system stability because they push the CPU and most sub-systems very hard. The system was stable under SiSoft Sandra at 2.5 Ghz, 2.47 Ghz with the Multimedia Windstone 2004, and ultimately in day to day use I have it overclocked to a stable 2.38 Ghz. <PAGEBREAK> Day to Day Usage I've been using the Shuttle as my main workstation for a little over a week as of this writing, and I'm extremely impressed. Prior to this unit, my workstation was a Shuttle SB95P2, which is Shuttle's high-end powerhouse machine, but also one of their noisiest products. Inside the SB95P2 I had an NVIDIA 6800GT video card, a 3.4 Ghz Pentium 4 CPU, two 74GB Western Digital Raptor drives in RAID0, a 16x DVD burner, and 2 GB of RAM. It was a high-performance beast, but it was frustratingly loud. It had a power supply fan, a fan at the front, and the video card had a fan. It wasn't as loud as some machines are, but it was far too loud for my tastes. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-20.jpg" /> Figure 20: Sitting atop its perch, happy (and silently) working away. I wish I didn't need to have that memory card reader beside it. The SD11G5 is, for me, the perfect blend of performance and silence. The overclocked Pentium M CPU is very zippy, and when combined with the Raptor X hard drive and 2 GB of Kingston RAM, I find that my workstation feels faster than the previous Shuttle XPC I was using. Combine that with the low noise factor, and you have my ideal machine: one that allows me to work hard and fast, but doesn't make any noise. I've had zero issues with the SD11G5 in day to day, and I expect it to stay that way. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/JASONDUNN-SHUTTLE-SD11G5-21.jpg" /> Figure 21: My workstation. Already Outdated? In some ways, the SD11G5's days are already numbered because it's incompatible with the new Core Duo processors from Intel. Yes, that's right, Intel requires a totally new chipset to utilize the Core Duo CPUs, which means Shuttle will undoubtedly release a new version of this unit to work with the Core Duo. You've got to hand it to Intel – they can't seem to make any chipset that lasts for more than four months, and that's impressively hard to do when you compare them to how nicely AMD handled the move from single-core to dual-core CPUs. These CPUs are currently shipping in laptops from Toshiba, Dell, Apple, and others. They're also in the new Mac Mini. At the time of this writing, New Egg has <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819111178">a listing for the Core Duo T2500</a> - it's a 2.0 Ghz CPU with two cores selling for $417 USD. The Pentium M is a great CPU with an excellent power/performance ratio, but the Core Duo is even better and would give an across the board boost in almost every scenario, especially in digital media editing/encoding. Summing it All Up The SD11G5, like all Shuttle XPC units, represent excellent value for the money, but you do pay a premium for the miniaturization technology in these little boxes. The SD11G5 is not the computer for someone on a budget – Pentium M CPUs are not cheap, so if cheap is what you want, look elsewhere. That said, if you have another PC that you'd like to transplant into the SD11G5, all you need to buy is the CPU. I expect to get great use out of the SD11G5 and have no qualms recommending it to others, with one exception: depending on the type of optical drive they have, they may have trouble with it. I'd dearly like to see Shuttle come up with a better optical drive bay door solution, because having to buy a new optical drive and hoping that it works is a poor solution. Shuttle has clever engineers working for them, so I'm sure they can come up with a clever solution if they try. Beyond that, and the obvious limitations of having the SD11G5 only ship in white and with on DVI port, the SD11G5 is a superb computer. Jason Dunn owns and operates <a href="http://www.thoughtsmedia.com">Thoughts Media Inc.</a>, a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Alberta, Canada.