Introduction

Shuttle has came a long way in small form factors, from research and development all the way to manufacturing, Shuttle has never slowed down in pace, never failing to deliver quality along with performance. Today, we will be taking a look at the Shuttle SD31P, the 945G Express Chipset based Small Form with support for Intel’s latest Dual Core Processors. Apart from that, The SD31P comes with other useful features such as an external SATA-II port, Creative 7.1 Audio onboard and Firewire etc. This small form is the sucessor to the SB81P, it's Intel 915G predecessor.Before we continue, let’s take a look at the specifications of this little wonder.

Model	SD31P
CPU Support	Intel LGA775 based Pentium 4, Pentium D and Celeron Processors
Memory Support	2 slots, DDR-II, 2GB max
Northbridge	Intel 945G Express Chipset
Expansion Slots	One PCIe x16 One PCIe x1
Onboard VGA	Intel GMA950
Audio	Creative Soundblaster Live 24bit 7.1
IDE	1 * ATA133
SATA	3+1(external)
Networking	Broadcom BCM5789 Netlink Gigabit
RAID	SATA RAID 0,1,5,10
Firewire	Firewire 400 via VIA VT6307
Southbridge	ICH7R
Expansion Bays	3x 3.5" 1x 5.25"
Powersupply	SilenX 350W
Card Reader	8 in 1 Card Reader
Chassis Dimensions	220mm(W)x210mm(H)x325mm(l)

Initial Impressions

The most significant change that Shuttle has made in their latest line of Intel Small Forms is the onboard sound. Shuttle has chose to use Creative's Soundblaster hardware solution over the Intel Azalia HD Audio, in which the innate within ICH7. With that, the PCI slot was also removed to make way for a PCI-E x1 slot, sounding support for future PCI-E expansion devices like soundcards and such. That also means that users will be able to experience slightly higher frame rates with their games as the Creative Soundchip will be able to handle audio processing, unlike The HD Audio where processing is still dependent on the processor, like all others AC97 sound solutions.

I am quite happy with some of the improvements that Shuttle did to the P chassis, I will go into details regarding this later in the review.

SD31P Exteriors

An overview of the case, with the usual "Shuttle" emblem and the ventilation holes towards the bottom of the side panel.

The usual front panel connectors provided by Shuttle; Audio-in, Audio-out, 2 USB 2.0 Ports and 1 6 pin Firewire port.

2 70mm fans behind as exhaust. These 2 fans will not turn upon startup, and will only do so when system temperatures starts to climb.

The rear IO connectors, jammed packed with ports of different sorts, You'll even find an external SATA-II port that will be used with external SATA devices, do look out for them in the near future. Do note that an external SATA-II connector is different from the conventional one, so it is not possible for you to route an internal drive out, as you'll require a different SATA cable type.

Shuttle did not forget including their External clear CMOS button, it was ported to the top beside the exhaust because there's simply no space left on the rear I/o.

Same for the firewire 6 pin connector, it was ported upwards due to the lack of space on the rear I/O.

SD31P Interiors

A bird eye's view of the mainboard from the top.

Shuttle used passive cooling solutions for both the northbridge and southbridge, so as to ensure quiet operation. This will also ensure that there will be no chipset fans to replace due to failure.

The PCI-E x16 and x1 expansion slot. A pity that Shuttle included an x1 slot instead of a conventional 32bit PCI slot, as PCI-E expansion devices are simply still unavailable widely as of press date.

The Broadcom BCM5789 Netlink Gigabit PCI-Express controller.

The Creative CA0106 SB Live 24bit 7.1 hardware audio processor.

The VIA VT6037 IEEE1394a firewire solution

The 3 SATA-II ports found on onboard, the 4th one ported out to the rear I/O as mentioned in the previous page

The fan shround, heatsink with its two fans.

the 60mm fan found on the heatsink front.

the 80mm fan found on the heatsink rear. Both fans are relatively quiet in day to day operations when processor has low load.

SD31P Interiors continued...

The new Shuttle SilenX 350, the third revision that Shuttle has come up to date now comes with a PCI-Express connector for graphic cards.

The Shuttle was unable to fit a 7800GTX card properly as illustrated in the picture above with the Fan shroud installed.

We could only install it successfully with the fan shroud removed.

Users will not be able to install a maximum of 1 IDE hard drive in the SD31P, below the optical drive as the top 3.5" bays only have openings for a SATA hard drive as shown in the picture above.

Shuttle has improvised the top bay clipping mechanism on the P chassis. Instead of having 2 long clips to secure the bay, Shuttle now utilises the top bay 3.5" holders to hold the bay down.

BIOS Options

The RAM timing options available on the SD31P. Once again, Shuttle has missed out including the CMD rate in the BIOS.

Up to a maximum of 1.5875V Vcore.

Up to 2.1V VDIMM for the DDR2 found onboard

Chipset Voltages adjustments

CPU Fan adjustments.

System fan adjustments.

LED Brightness adjustments.

Review Setup

Testbed

• Intel Pentium D Dual Core 2.8Ghz
• Shuttle SD31P
• Cosair XMS 5400UL Dual Channel 1GB Kit@ 3-2-2-8
• Inno3D Geforce 7800GTX 256MB
• Seagate 7200.7 80GB SATA
• Sony CRX300E Combo Drive
• Silverstone ST65ZF

Boards tested against

• Gigabyte i955X Royale
• Asus P5LD2-E
• Abit AW8-Max

Benchmarks used

• Sisoft SANDRA Lite 2005 SR2a (CPU Arithmetic, Memory Bandwidth)
• Futuremark 3DMark 2001 SE (Version 3.30)
• Futuremark 3DMark 03 (Version 3.60)
• Futuremark 3DMark 05 (Version 1.20)
• Super Pi v1.4 Mod, 1M Test
• WinRAR (Version 3.50)
• Doom III Inbuilt Time Demo (Version 1.00) (Mid Quality)
• Far Cry (via Hardware OC FC Bench Version 1.41) (Maximum Quality)

Benchmarks

Performance delivered in Futuremark's gaming benchmarks is slightly below average compared to the 945P and 955X offerings from other mainboard manufacturers.

In the workstation segment, the Shuttle failed to impress, delivering below average performance as compared to 945/955 offerings from other manufacturers.

Similarly in gaming, the Shuttle SD31P did not perform as well as expected.

 

 

Conclusion

The SD31P impressed me in terms of feature set, but failed to in the performance factor. Relatively speaking, the SD31P is still a worthy buy if you're looking at buying a Dual Core workstation, the performance is very decent. A small form factor with the near perfect onboard sound, gigabit lan, firewire, a PCI-E x1 expansion slot, quiet during normal operation, and most importantly, with Dual Core processor support. What more can you ask for? It'd have gotten full VR marks if excelled in the performance factor.