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Printed On: | May 13, 2008, 10:24 pm |
| Category: | Barebones & SFF | |
| Type: | Reviews | |
| Posted By: | Firefox | |
| Date Posted: | December 14, 2007, 8:00 am |
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Its the little things in life that matter.
Shuttle is a name that is synonymous with Small Form-Factor (SFF) computers. Since the introduction of the Shuttle SV24 XPC in 2000, many users have had a love-hate relationship with the brand. Enthusiasts cringed at the thought of having so little space to work around with whilst others simply fell in love with the small footprint of their XPC's. Certainly, Shuttle has gone a long way since the days of the XPC. Rather than focusing purely on shrinking computers, they've also worked on the aesthetics of their XPC's. After all, how many times have we been delighted with the opportunity to build the next monster computing rig only to have all hopes dashed by significant others point at an XPC and say "That's so cute!" or "I'm not going to have a monster in the bedroom, I think that's just what we need." And what of those times when a buddy calls up and says he wants to buy that new Shuttle DVD player thingy?
The unassuming package that arrive in our lair is no exception to that. Unlike the previous incarnations that most people would associate with the brand, this unit does not offer integrated graphics nor is it as limited as that Acer drink can in terms of expansion and connectivity. This, is the Shuttle SP35P2 Pro falling under the new Prima series from Shuttle.
Whilst XPC's have traditionally been viewed as computers meant for home theater and office applications, the Prima series is Shuttle's attempt to break out of the stereotype. Whilst the elegant facade remains, gone are the integrated graphics and high internal temperatures. What the SP35P2 offers instead is Intel's P35 Express chipset and heatpipe cooling that has proven to be very popular on performance motherboards.
Indeed, the Prima series from Shuttle is touted as a performance XPC line catering to enthusiasts who more often than not, have found themselves arm-twisted into buying what would have been a lesser machine. Amongst other features, a Marvell gigabit ethernet controller rather than a cheapish Realtek 10/ 100 unit or wireless lan offers high speed networking capabilities for those times that you feel bloodthirsty at the lan party or when you need to do some *ahem* leeching *ahem*.
If squeezing 3 harddisk drives into the unit isn't enough, the Shuttle offers 2 e-Sata ports integrated into the rear I/O shield for storage expansion as well. Less I bore you with the new features all at once, lets stop here and take a look at the Basic Specifications before we move on to the pictures bearing more of the features that come with this unit. After all, didn't someone say that a picture speaks a thousand words?
| FORM FACTOR | Shuttle Form Factor (G Chassis) |
| PROCESSOR | Intel Core 2 Quad / Core 2 Duo series with 1066MHz FSB Intel Core 2 Quad / Core 2 Duo series with 1333MHz FSB |
| CHIPSET | Intel P35 + ICH9R |
| MEMORY | 4 x 240 pin DDR2 DIMM slots,2GB per DIMM (Max 8GB) Dual Channel DDR2 667/800MHz |
| AUDIO | Realtek ALC888DD 7.1 channel High Definition Audio support Dolby Digital Live! and DTS |
| ETHERNET | Marvell 88E8056 IEEE 802.3u 100Base-T specification revision 1.0 100Mb/s and 1Gb/s operation Support Wake-On-LAN function |
| IEEE1394 (firewire) | TI TSB43AB22A Complise with 1394 OHCI specification revision 1.0 Support 400Mb/s,200Mb/s,100Mb/s transfer rate |
| Storage Interface | (4) on board 3.0Gb/s bandwidth SATAII (2) 3.0Gb/s bandwidth eSATA in back panel (1) UltraDMA 100 channel master from JMicron JMB368 (1) Floppy |
| Onboard Connectors | (4) Serial ATA connectors (1) ATA100 bus master IDE connector (1) Mini card slot (support Intel mobile turbo memory ) (2) 2x5 pin USB 2.0 header (1) Floppy connector (3) 4pin fan connectors (1) 3pin fan connectors (1) 3pin fan connector (1) 12V for main power connector (1) 12V for standby power connector (1) PS/2 keyboard/mouse header |
| Front Panel | (2) USB 2.0 ports (1) Mini IEEE1394 (1) Microphone-In (1) Fingerprint sensor Power-On button Reset button Speed-Link button Power LED HDD LED |
| Back Panel | (1) PCI-E x16 slot (1) PCI slot (6) USB 2.0 ports (1) IEEE 1394 (1) Gigabyte Ethernet port (2) eSATA port (1) S/PDIF Coaxial out (1) S/PDIF Optical in (1) S/PDIF Optical out |
| Expansion Bay | (2) Internal 3.5' bay (1) External 3.5' bay (1) External 5.25' bay |
| Dimensions | 325(L) x 210(W) x 220(H) mm |
| Power | 400W Input:100 - 240V AC Support 80 PLUS DIMENSIONS:85(W) x 83(H) x150(D) mm |
| Accessories | XPC Multi-Language User Guide XPC CD Driver (Vista / XP 32 bit and FingerPrint Driver) Bonus CD (PC-Cillin2007 and Acrobat Reader 8.1) I.C.E Technology CPU heat-pipe Cables: (2) SATA cable (pre-install) (1) IDE CD-ROM cable (pre-install) (1) Floppy cable (1) Power cord Others: Screws Heatsink Compound |
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Show me the goods!
Exterior
No more plastic "brushed aluminium" surface, this is the real stuff.
Glossy plastic trims and shiny buttons adorn the facade of the unit. Beware of the magpies!
Plenty of ventilation holes ensure that your spanking new graphics card and Quad-core processor won't cooked inside.
Pop the cover and the 3.5" bay is exposed to the world. Put your favourite card reader or *gasp* floppy disk drive in there if you wish.
From left to right, we have the Biometric sensor, mic-in, headphones-out, 2 USB ports, 4-pin Firewire port and a button that says Speed-Link.
Fingerprint sensor & Speed-Link
As you may have noticed, the Prima series XPC comes with a Biometric sensor on the front panel. This would certainly come in useful when there is a need to protect important documents from wandering eyes or maybe those naughty-naughty home videos you took some time back. hrmm....
Speed-Link on the other hand, does the reverse. It is an interesting feature coming from Shuttle to enable ease of file-sharing between computers. By enabling Speed-Link, one can connect a USB cable from the associated USB port to another computer for file sharing.
The included software utility allows you to set specific folders to share and depending on whether you wish to allow the files to be modified, it will show up as a USB CDROM or Portable HDD.
Performance computing is provided for by the inclusion of a pair e-SATA ports on the rear I/O plate removing the bandwidth bottlenecks of USB.
For those times when overclocking fails, a clear CMOS button is conveniently located on the rear.
Opening the chassis to clear the CMOS is a thing of the past with the Prima series XPC.
Let us move on to the interior where the driving force of the unit comes from.
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Touring the innards
Power
A 400W power supply ensures that you'd have enough juice for a Quad core and a high-end graphics card!
6-phase voltage regulation and all Solid Polymer caps provide juice good enough for any processor you can lay your paws on.
High performance graphics demands more power and Shuttle provides a 6-pin PCI-e connector for the card.
Expansion Options
4 DIMM slots instead of the usual 2 allows for 8GB of memory madness!
4 internal SATA-II ports allow for 3 HDD's and a SATA optical drive to be installed. For those who insist on keeping legacy equipment, Floppy and IDE connectors are provided as well. The PCI slot allows for a soundcard to be installed in addition to the graphics card.
A pair of drive caddys placed at the top allow for 2 internal disk drives to be installed.
The 92mm fan forms part of the thermal design of the case and directly exhausts hot-air from the CPU HSF.
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Keeping the heat under control
Thermal considerations
Hot air rises and so a pair of 60mm fans are mounted on the rear at the top to exhaust the hot air in the chassis.
We took the liberty to extract the heatpipe cooling solution for a better look. Left to right: Southbridge, Northbridge & Mosfet coolers.
The board used in the SP35P2 Pro for those who must know what it looks like.
Pictures can only say that much, lets head on to the benchmarking and see how it performs.
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Benchmarking Setup
Testbed
- Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
- Shuttle SP35P2 Pro
- 4 x 512MB A-Data Vitesta Extreme Edition @ 800MHz 5-5-5-15
- PowerColor Radeon HD3850 Extreme PCS Edition
- Seagate 7200.7 80GB SATA
- Sony CRX300E Combo Drive
- Enermax Galaxy 1kW
Board tested against
- Intel DP35DPM
Benchmarks used
- Sisoft SANDRA Lite 2005 SR2a
- Futuremark 3DMark 2001 SE
- Futuremark 3DMark 06
- LightsMark 2007
- WinRAR
- Crysis (CPU & GPU)
- Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
- World in Conflict
- Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
- Unreal Tournament 3
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Synthetic Benchmarks
First up, the ever popular benchmarks from FutureMark which have been shown to be sensitive to CPU and system performance.
We can see the Shuttle just edge out the Intel P35 based board in 3DMark01 whereas both are tied in 3DMark06.
A new player in the benchmarking scene, LightsMark uses Realtime Global Illumination to test the system performance.
Both platforms are tied in LightsMark 2007.
The difference in WinRAR compression performance is negligible.
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Continued..
Sisoft Sandra was one of the first benchmarking suites on the market for consumers and remains a popular tool for pitting system performance.
In the Sisoft CPU tests, the Shuttle SP35P2 Pro very barely edges out the Intel DP35DPM board.
Once again, the Shuttle wins by a miniscule margin in the Memory Bandwidth Tests.
Lets move on to the Gaming Benchmarks that matter more to our readers.
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Gaming Benchmarks
Anyone looking to buy a PC for gaming would not be playing yesterday's games on it. Hence, we've lined up some of the most anticipated games that have been launched this year to see how the Shuttle lines up against the competition.
The performance differences in the gaming benchmarks show little differences between the 2 platforms.
It is apparent that during the shrink, the SP35P2 hasn't lost any computing power even when compared to a full-sized ATX board.
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Overclocking
Overclocking Options
- CPU Clock Ratio Adjustment
- CPU FSB up to 600MHz
- PCI-e Clock Adjustment
- Vcore adjustments: +0.010v to +0.500v in 10mv steps
- DRAM Voltage: 1.825v to 2.5v
- FSB Termination Voltage: 1.25v, 1.30v, 1.35v
- NB Voltage: 1.30v, 1.35v, 1.40v
- SB Voltage (1.5v): 1.55v, 1.60v, 1.65v
- SB Voltage (1.05v): 1.1v, 1.15v, 1.2v
Shuttle wouldn't be able to call their SP35P2 a Hardcore Platform if the unit isn't able to overclock. Fortunately for them, the SP35P2 proved to be very capable when it came to overclocking. Where most systems would have issues with 4 sticks of memory whilst scaling the clockspeed ladder, the Prima XPC didn't disappoint at all. We managed to take the C2D E6550 from 2.33GHz all the way to 3.15GHz just by raising the FSB to 450MHz.
We ran 3DMark06 and SuperPi 8M to see what kind of difference the clockspeed translates into.
The additional 819MHz of clockspeed translates into a 876 points difference in 3DMark06!
25% faster timing in SuperPi 8M from the overclock!
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Conclusion
Conclusion
With the new Prima series comes a new tagline from Shuttle, "Revolution of Hardcore Platform". Having been able to squeeze so many features found only full fledge ATX motherboards such as e-SATA and external clear CMOS buttons into something so diminuative, the SP35P2 Pro is certainly hardcore in its own way. With the Pro version, we also see other features not commonly found. They are, namely, the Biometric Sensor to deliver enhanced computer security and the Speed-Link. Whilst we've seen USB bridges in the early days of USB meant to replace the old LAPLINK and Serial connection file sharing, not before this have we seen such a feature being directly implemented in computer systems. The innovative Quick file sharing with the ability to enforce read/ write permissions is something that only Shuttle has thought of. Coupled with the vastly improved thermal design consisting of strategically placed fans and the heatpipe heatsink design used on the motherboard, Shuttle certainly has brought many options to bear for enthusiasts. In addition, the overclocking capabilities of the SP35P2 is impressive for an SFF. The Prima series of XPC's would certainly have no issues finding their way into LAN Parties or the online gaming realm whilst many other of their breathen would be feeling quite lonely in the living room rolling out TV serials, season after season. Its capabilities and the Wife-Acceptance-Factor of the unit places it in a segment of the market few computers save for laptops have ever ventured into before. If you're looking for a new performance computer without the risk of being booted out of the bedroom during the Christmas Season, give the SP35P2 Pro a shot and you might be pleasantly surprised.
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