Just built a Shuttle system

[solo]

This will be my first ever all Linux system. It's running fine so far.

*Shuttle FN95G5 bare bones system w/ I.C.E. CPU cooler

*AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Winchester chip (my first time using thermal compound... Not bad, eh? ;) )

*2 x 512MB DDR400 RAM

*250GB Maxtor HD w/8MB cache, 7200rpm (went with ATA133 this time, though SATA is available)

*Nvidia FX 5200 w/256MB VRAM

*LG 17" LCD monitor

*ATI TV Wonder Pro tuner card (I've read it works... I'll know more tomorrow)

This thing is small... The cables were the biggest problem with final assembly. I used round ones for better air flow, but I think the ribbon cables would have dressed/folded better inside the case. I started the week by loosing my cat, but this isn't a bad way to end it :D .

[DSwain]

Sorry to hear about that cat, but holy crap that's beefy. How about some pictures of its actual size? I'd like to see what you've got it down to.

[gehidore]

Too bad about your cat, but congrats on the box.

[bs_texas]

Originally posted by solo
I started the week by loosing my cat
Condolences on that. :( (See my avatar over there. That's my cat, Lucky. He's about 10. My other cat is Scaredy Cat. She had to have a tooth extracted yesterday. She doesn't much like me today. ;) )

I'd like to build a Shuttle system. I think I'd go with a different video card, say a 6800 GT, if I could save up the money.

I'm kinda tired of having these big tower cases looming all over the place. A couple of stacks of desktop cases stacked on a shelf or Shuttle size cases would be great, especially since you can now get DVD/CD RW in the same unit, massive single harddrives, onboard sound, ehternet, USB... etc etc... No real need for a giant case anymore, IMHO, (edit) in my home systems. :)

[gehidore]

Originally posted by bs_2003

I'm kinda tired of having these big tower cases looming all over the place. A couple of stacks of desktop cases stacked on a shelf or Shuttle size cases would be great, especially since you can now get DVD/CD RW in the same unit, massive single harddrives, onboard sound, ehternet, USB... etc etc... No real need for a giant case anymore, IMHO.
If only I could find a decent Cost amd 64 shuttle style board that had onboard scsi U160 or U320... I would make my own one then.

[bs_texas]

Originally posted by gehidore
If only I could find a decent Cost amd 64 shuttle style board that had onboard scsi U160 or U320... I would make my own one then.
Hmmm... The shuttle mainboards have a PCI slot. Throw your favorite scsi card in there.. and you're set. :D
But, I wonder if the power supply in a Shuttle would be up to the task with all this stuff??

[gehidore]

Originally posted by bs_2003
Hmmm... The shuttle mainboards have a PCI slot. Throw your favorite scsi card in there.. and you're set. :D
But, I wonder if the power supply in a Shuttle would be up to the task with all this stuff??
well my LVD drives should do fine as I would only use one of them, but the pci adapters are too slow (IMO although I do get 20MB less than the normal on my u160's through a 32bit pci slot...) to spend money on a shuttle and use em....

[soulestream]

the pci adapters are too slow

pci express should be available soon


soule

[EnigmaOne]

Originally posted by bs_2003
No real need for a giant case anymore, IMHO, (edit) in my home systems. :)
>GASP!< :eek: INFIDEL!!!

[solo]

Originally posted by bs_2003
Condolences on that. :( (See my avatar over there. That's my cat, Lucky. He's about 10. My other cat is Scaredy Cat. She had to have a tooth extracted yesterday. She doesn't much like me today. ;) )...

Yeah, been there. Lady cat had turned 10 in August. She developed inflamed colon decease; couldn't digest food after a while. I didn't want her to suffer any longer.

[i]...

I'd like to build a Shuttle system. I think I'd go with a different video card, say a 6800 GT, if I could save up the money.

... [/B]

Yep... I found the prices on those cards prohibitive (for now, anyways). The 6800 will fit in this box though, so that's good. This FX5200 seems fine so far. I'll be trying Doom and some other games with it over the weekend :) . The onboard sound is amazing and the onboard NIC seems to be zooming along too, though I haven't tried the gigabit speed yet.

Originally posted by bs_2003
...
But, I wonder if the power supply in a Shuttle would be up to the task with all this stuff??

This box comes with a 240W PSU, and I wondered the same thing when I opened the vid card to see that it said a minimum 250W PSU is required :eek: . Shuttle sells a 250W PSU, but if I have to upgrade mine, I'll go higher than that... Even if I have to mod the case to do it.

[mmills]

I built my own custom shuttle box

Shuttle AK39n
AMD XP 1900
512 PC3200
1 120 Gig Maxtor HD
1 100MB zip
1 Floppy
1 CRX225E CDRW
1 9200se 128 Video
Onboard sound, usb, lan

:( isnt a 64 bit processor.

"is a poor man""gets everything at christmas"

[solo]

Originally posted by mmills
...

:( isnt a 64 bit processor.

...

Well; mine will likely be running in 32 bit mode for the most part. The current state of software (Linux or otherwise) hasn't really caught up to take advantage of full 64 bit hardware yet. And I'm not doing any compiling to get there either... I can wait until it's more common among distros :) .
mmills... Yours is a decent box. Shuttle's build quality is very good. Having experienced cases like Lian Li's before; I'd put Shuttle up against them any day of the week.

Now to find the distro that will power this thing on a regular basis. I've had pretty good use with Kanotix, so it gets the first shot. I'm primarily looking at file server and PVR functionalty and I think this little machine can handle that alright.

[BaVinic]

Sounds like a nice system, but the question that is begging to be answered, how are you cooling this monster? one of my concerns about the small cases is cooling.


BaVinic

[bs_texas]

Originally posted by BaVinic
Sounds like a nice system, but the question that is begging to be answered, how are you cooling this monster? one of my concerns about the small cases is cooling.
BaVinic
http://www.us.shuttle.com/sn95g5.asp
Integrated Cooling Engine (ICE) Module

The Integrated Cooling Engine (ICE) included in the SN95G5 improves on previous XPC ICE designs. The ICE module's thermal resistance has been reduced to an amazing 0.16ºC/W. This is more half the thermal resistance of first generation XPCs and almost one-third that of Intel's BTX standard. Further, the heat exchange surface area has been greatly increased. In addition, this model sports a large 92mm cooling fan to quietly push more air out the back of the case.

The Integrated Cooling Engine uses convection (liquid) cooling to transfer heat away from the processor and other critical system components. Copper tubing, coated in nickel and filled with distilled water provides the conduit through which heat is radiated out of the chassis.

Smart Fan

As mentioned, the XPC SN95G5 features a new 92mm Smart Fan, which moves (50CFM) a great volume of air. This fan features a 4-pin header, i.e PWM spec, and be linearly controlled in BIOS, which means that “fan cycling” is a thing of the past.

Airflow
The XPC SN95G5 features more air intake points designed to keep the motherboard cool and stable. The underside edge is lined with intake points. Other intake points are also located on the underside of the machine to improve motherboard cooling. Internally, the NB fan directs air across MOSFETS, providing superior cooling and stability.
:cool:

[mmills]

I run a thermaltake on mine, I have 4 fans + the cpufan, one fan is a second fan built on to the power supply. although I screwed up and bought 1024 meg of pc2100 and not 3200 so I am running at half the speed I would like to, and my small case is a 8 bay.

[bs_texas]

Originally posted by mmills
I run a thermaltake on mine, I have 4 fans + the cpufan, one fan is a second fan built on to the power supply. although I screwed up and bought 1024 meg of pc2100 and not 3200 so I am running at half the speed I would like to, and my small case is a 8 bay.
Man.... we're talking about a tiny Shuttle case in this thread. :cool:
Oh, I see from a previous post that you have a Shuttle system... so I don't understand about the 8 bay case.. I assume it's a different computer.

Edit: Upon further contemplation... I guess you have a Shuttle motherboard in a regular computer case, eh?

[BaVinic]

Originally posted by bs_2003
http://www.us.shuttle.com/sn95g5.asp
Integrated Cooling Engine (ICE) Module
:cool:

Well... I guess that answers my questsion rather nicely :)

thank you,

BaVinic

[bs_texas]

Originally posted by solo
Just built a Shuttle system

How's it going with your shuttle? Any power or heat or space issues? Got any images of it hiding behind a couple of beer cans? ;)

Also, where did you buy the thing?

Thanks...

[solo]

Originally posted by bs_2003
How's it going with your shuttle? Any power or heat or space issues? Got any images of it hiding behind a couple of beer cans? ;)

Also, where did you buy the thing?

Thanks...

It's going just great thanks. I took some pictures... Just need to get them loaded to my gallery. I just took a look at the temperature readings in the BIOS yesterday. After leaving the system on for about 12 hours, the CPU is hovering around 30C, and the system temp is about 50C. I figure if I tie off the cables, I may be able to improve those numbers a bit. From what I've been reading; keeping the CPU temp below 50C is key, so it'll probably be fine if I leave it the way it is.

The space issues were evident as soon as I tried to stuff the drive carriage into place at final assembly (just before putting the case cover back on). A strategic manuver, at best ;) . I was able to view the basic cable channels with Xawtv, but with no sound. I need to read the docs for my tuner card to find out where (if?) I can connect a sound cable to the mobo, which will hopefully solve the problem. I'm burning CD's with the Plextor drive and kbIII, listening to audio CD's with Xmms (though Juk has been giving me some trouble), My HP Deskjet printer is working, and my USB flash memory card readers are working just fine :D . Viewing Flash web sites was a problem until I used a Knoppix live CD to set up FlashPlayer, which (somehow) fixed the the problem in my Kanotix HD install.

Stuff still left to do:

*This installation of KDE isn't saving the previous session's settings... Gotta fix that.

*Need to give DVD's a try

*Need to try scanning

*Need to get either NFS or SAMBA running so I can do the file server thing .

Music and video streaming was on the list for this box as well, but those are advanced subjects that will wait a bit until I can study up on them. Same for setting up a VPN.

Oh... I bought the Shuttle 'bare bones' system and most of the other components at Zip Zoom Fly. I made the (almost) mistake of buying one stick of memory and the Plextor drive from Amazon, who sourced the purchase through Tiger Direct. <unsolicited advice> Don't ever buy anything from Tiger Direct :mad: . My experience is that their shipping and back order reporting sucks big time, you never know when you'll get your parts. </advice>

[PNash]

Just wanted to touch on the Power Supply issue you guys were talking about earlier in this topic, if your going to run any of the newer video cards in your machine your going to need at least a 500W power supply to be on the safe side. I originally had a P4 3ghz machine with a GB of PC PC4000, one hard drive, one cd-rw, and a radeon 9800 pro, after 2 days with no overclocking the machine wouldnt turn on anymore, so after some troubleshooting it was the brand new 400W power supply went bad. I thought maybe it was just a bad power supply from the factory until my friend bought a 6800GT and it fried his 400W (different manufacturer power supply) power supply.

We both went and got one of those Xconnect 500W power supplies and now my machine has 2x 120gb SATA's in a Raid 0, 3ghz P4 @ 3.6ghz, GB of PC4000 Kingston Hyper X, DVD-RW, CD-RW, with a radeon 9800 Pro @9800XT Speeds, a Koolance case with water cooling, and it all works with no problems.

So if you do throw a 6800GT or better in that case, be prepared for alot more heat and a dead power supply.

[solo]

Originally posted by PNash
...
So if you do throw a 6800GT or better in that case, be prepared for alot more heat and a dead power supply.

Ok, I'll keep that in mind. After some research, it looks like I may have to put the guts into a different case, if I have to upgrade the PSU. Anyone other than Shuttle doesn't make a PSU of the physical size that will remotely fit into my case. There is quite a bit of harm air coming out of the back (from the I.C.E. cooler), which is why I ran the the 'PC health' option in the BIOS to see what was up. The FX 5200 vid card is fine for my needs right now though.