Just like brushed Aluminium was last year’s black, the mini-barebones is this year’s super-trendy accessory of geekdom.
Just like brushed Aluminium was last year’s black, the mini-barebones is this year’s super-trendy accessory of geekdom. It’s as though every company to ever make a motherboard is shrinking the PCB and throwing it into an Aluminium shoebox. Shuttle pioneered this concept with the XPC range, and is now selling a heck of a lot of these units as it continues to tweak its design and introduce the latest chipsets into its range.
The SB61G2 is based around Intel’s newly released i865G chipset. While this chipset is slightly slower than the bleeding edge i875P, it supports the latest 800MHz FSB Pentium 4 CPUs, packs dual-channel DDR support (with only two RAM slots due to the space restrictions), and also debuts Serial ATA support for the XPC, with two SATA ports sitting next to the two Parallel ATA ones. It doesn’t make use of Intel’s new CSA Gigabit Ethernet technology, and instead relies on a tried and true integrated 10/100 port.
It also includes decent overclocking functions, however we recommend that the XPC be used fairly stock, as heat management can become an issue in the tight confines of the box. Unlike other manufacturers, Shuttle uses a custom-built heat pipe to cool the CPU and keep the noise and congestion inside the box down.
As usual we recommend that you bypass the integrated graphics and head straight for a separate AGP card. Like Shuttle’s nForce2 unit, the SN41G2, the SB61G2 is free from the heat problems we used to see when using AGP cards inside the XPC. Pack in a RADEON 9800 PRO (unfortunately the dual height layout of NVIDIA’s new cards precludes them from being used inside the XPC) and you have a box that can keep pace with some of the fastest desktop units around.
This is another great unit from Shuttle; however the SN41G2 is still our favourite thanks to the comprehensive features, decent integrated graphics performance and audio quality of nForce2, which makes it a great box for any occasion. If you want the finest mini-barebones system for the Pentium 4, however, the SB61G2 is the one.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012