LAN box?

[Paddy]

I got a LAN party in a week or so and I hate lugging my f'ing huge Lian Li PC75 case and Sony G400 monitor about.

Now I am not about to buy a new monitor, but i was thinking about halving my hardware and building a LAN machine.

Something small and portable... You can see what hardware i have in my sig.

I have a spare 80GB Cuda 'IV which i could use...
I would have to move my AIW 8500DV and RAM from box to box as i cannot afford to replace them at the moment.

I have a single XP1800 which would go into the new box and i then might be tempted to get some MP chips for my A7M266-D

What do you think?

Is there a good shuttle machine with onboard 5.1 sound, LAN etc??? I don’t know much about them, but i would want to make it as *future proof* as reasonably possible...

So, I am looking for a LAN gaming / multimedia box.

Any suggestions?

[Cobos]

The Shuttle nforce thing looks like just the thing you need... It has a Geforce 4 MX of sorts included so if you can live with that you wouldn't have to change graphics cards either.... It's SN41G2 or something. The hardest bit is the futureproof part, you can supposedly change motherboards to new shuttle boards, but then you need shuttle to maintain the same formfactor...

Cobos

[Paddy]

What's the GF4 MX like in comparrison to my 8500?

[Jammrock]

I believe you are looking for this:

http://us.shuttle.com/specs2.asp?pro_id=163

All you need is a CPU and hard drive and everything else is built right in. US prices have been around $350 USD for it.

Jammrock

[Paddy]

Are there other non-shuttle machines???

Can anyone remind me what performance i should expect from a GF4 MX. I would need TV out for DVD and good gaming performance - it is a LAN box after all!

[mmp121]

Paddy,

There are non-shuttle systems out there, but IMHO they aren't as good as the Shuttle in terms of compactness and overall quality.

Anand has a review of the 2 latest AMD Shuttle barebone systems that are out there.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1764

On page 22 of the review he shows you what kind of performance the built-in video cards give.

I think that the SN41G2 might be exactly what you are looking for.

Good Luck with it. I'm very happy with my little shuttle (see sig)

[GT98]

I put in another vote for the Shuttle XPC systems. I love my SS51G box.

[agallag]

I love the idea of the Shuttle boxes, and I'll probably be building an HTPC box out of one eventually, but I have just one big beef with the design.

Why, WHY, did they put the spdif IN on the back, and the spdif OUT on the front? Why? If I'm going to be connecting it to my receiver via the spdif out, it'll have a cable permanently sticking out of the front and wrapping around to the back of the receiver! Gah!

Oh well, other than that, they're great little boxes. Hopefully by the time I'm ready to build the box, they'll have a new version out that corrects this weird design decision.

[Paddy]

Cheers, Its a nice review!

So the SS51G is an older intel solution?
How hot do the drives get?

Is nView any good, or would i be better with a secondary video card?

[Chris B]

Originally posted by mmp121
..... I'm very happy with my little shuttle (see sig)

mmp121... How is the noise level on that thing?

I've read tons of reviews lately on the Shuttle barebones, and all seem to agree that it's a great system. The only thing keeeping me from getting one, is a review I read on Toms Hardware. They said they found them to be very noisy.... and if there is one thing I won't accept from my PC, it's noise (to an extend ofcourse )

[GT98]

Originally posted by Chris B
mmp121... How is the noise level on that thing?

I've read tons of reviews lately on the Shuttle barebones, and all seem to agree that it's a great system. The only thing keeeping me from getting one, is a review I read on Toms Hardware. They said they found them to be very noisy.... and if there is one thing I won't accept from my PC, it's noise (to an extend ofcourse )

my Shuttle box is about 1/2 to 3/4 "quiter" then my AMD box

[Paddy]

At what distance does the noise become inaudiable?

[mmp121]

Chris B,

A Friend of mine has the SS51G (SiS) Chipset Shuttle SFF and he says his is kinda loud. I have no idea how loud it is, but my SB51G (Intel) Chipset Shuttle SFF is very quiet. I have a hard time hearing it over my P3 system that's about 10 feet away from it.

The only time it even gets "loud" is when its HOT (high CPU usage) and when it reboots for about 3 seconds. That's when the fan kicks it up to high speed.

Otherwise, I love my mini and would definately buy another (Springdale) based in the near future. If there is a springdale based one in the works.

[TnT]

Lian-Li makes a couple of small aluminum cases, ones that are home theater style and ones that look kinda like Shuttle's. Then you'd have to get a small powersupply, both Antec and PC Power & Cooling make ones that'll fit. Although some cases only accept low-profile cards.

The hardest part is the mobo. I was looking around at manufacturer websites for microatx mobos that have on-board LAN, USB 2.0 and not using a VIA chipset and it is slim pickings. Sometimes I'd find a board that looked good, but then realized it didn't have an agp slot (but has a AMR/CNR instead!) or that it didn't use DDR RAM. Furthermore when I'd find one that had everything I needed, trying to find a retailer with the board got hard too.

[MPR]

I vote for the Shuttle as well. My SS51G is great and so much quieter than my AMD XP tower. I do agree with the SPDIF output in the front being extremely annoying. Also, due to the acrylic front, not just any optical cable will fit.