In a bold apartment block that stood tall and was visible to each and every eye that gazed upon the nights sky there was a very impatient man his name I do not remember. This man travelled far and wide across the world for his work which involved computers and technology. In those lonely hotel nights he lay on his bed staring into the bare beige ceiling pondering over what he could do with his time. He had no interest in watching the television because he wasn't able to understand most of the languages of the countries he was in. The time moved incredibly slow as he try to discover something to occupy his time before he had to work. Sleeping wasn't able to occupy his time till work as he had serious jetlag problems and had trouble sleeping. The laptop his company loaned to him was no help either as it was of very low specification. The man longed for a viable solution to his favourite past time of computer gaming. Shards of glass that reflected scenes of Doom 3, toca race driver 2 and Fifa engrave into his mind and then suddenly an idea had occured to him as if the cleaner turned the desk light on. Alas it was the cleaner but never the less his creativity shone and he thought to himself that should buy a laptop computer for himself.
As he scoured the streets of London in search of the laptop that
suited him, he realised one important factor of the purchasing of the laptop. The man realised he only had £200 on his debit card. So the man feeling disappointed returned home in his rather miniscule Ford Focus and proceeded in surfing away his troubles. The man surfed and surfed but it wasn't the water type surf, it was internet surfing. The man reluctantly stumbled a site called www.overclock.co.uk and saw a great deal that suited his needs. His needs of recreation during off hours at work abroad, he gazed for ten minutes at his options and decided that the opportunity cost of no purchase was greater than the opportunity cost of purchase. The man was looking at a computer, but it was no ordinary computer, it was not a laptop either it was a Shuttle Small Form Factor barebone personal computer.
Now I hear you cry "what is a shuttle?" well a shuttle is the name of a computer case that is 1 third of the size of a normal computer case. Computer cases are usually distinguised by type. The type of computer case you have is decided by the size of it and the size of it isn't usually in dimensions, it is often stated in terms like atx which is the average size of a computer case. The term atx is the size of the motherboard which is around 40cm in length and 25-30 in height. So a shuttle would allow a computer user to sacrifice their big tower for 2/3 more space. Now back in the day a few years ago this would be a space sacrifice aswell as a power sacrifice. But seeing as technology is contiually advancing this is certainly not the case anymore as they can compete with the best atx computers on the market if they use the same components. The shuttle is also a good companion to have if you're travelling and prefer to not use a laptop to play games. This means that on places like trains it is not possible to play games but in hotel rooms or homes abroad you will be able to plug it into the tv if your graphics card features tv out capabilities. This means you can watch your divx collection abroad when you return to the hotel room drunk or play a little fifa with your drunken buddy who is just about to vomit all over the sheets that the attractive maid brought in the morning prior.
The reason I purchased the shuttle was purely for more room and to make it easy to take with me to lan parties (local area network parties which involve friends bringing computers, connecting them so they're networked together and gaming to their hearts content). I purchased the shuttle from the site www.overclock.co.uk for £175 not including postage and packaging. The price included the initial shuttle and a free carry case for it so it is safer when in transit.
Basically a shuttle is a small case with a motherboard, power supply unit and a central processing unit (cpu) heatsink and fan inside. This means that if you intend to build a new computer from scratch it would mean that if you get a shuttle you would not need to purchase a motherboard, power supply and a retail cpu. Why not buy a retail cpu? simply because the shuttle has its own fan and a retail cpu is just the cpu with the fan whereas you are entitled to another option which is an OEM cpu which is just the cpu without a fan. Now many advanced pc users will say "how does the shuttle not overheat" well it works very intelligently. The heatsink of the shuttle is placed on top of the cpu which screws onto the motherboard. The heatsink is attached to four pipes which are called heat pipes which lead to a fan to the outside of the case to the atmosphere. When the cpu is turned on the heatsink will dissipate the heat to the pipes which makes the heat travel to the fan which cools down the case. This is considerably better than a usual computer fan which is basically a heatsink with a fan attached to the top which can make the inside of the case rather hot.
The installation of the shuttle is quite easy to a person who has built a computer before. The inside of the shuttle is neatly organised so that the building of it is made easier for the end user. Things like cables being attached to the side of the case instead of being let lose and possibly tangle contribute to this. The installation process is similar to one of a usual computer and it was pretty easy for me to build. In my first attempt at building this I read the quick read panflet in about 2 minutes then i proceeded in building my new computer. The buidling of the computer took around 10 minutes after working everything out.
The components I installed into my Shuttle were : AMD Athlon XP 2600+ 512MB DDR PC2700 RAM Western Digital 7200rpm 80GB Hard Drive Toshiba 4x DVD-RW ATI Radeon 9500
I found everything fit quite nicely and I was surprised at how much room I still had left which cleared my mind of any overheating doubts. When the moment came to turn on the computer I relished it and immediately proceeded to press the button. What I realised when i first turned it on was how loud the fan was on initial startup but the volume decreased dramatically as I was installing windows. The bios on the shuttle is a usual phoenix award winning bios which i am very used to using as my old motherboard used it. After I had installed windows I immediately tried my games and found that in some cases they worked alot better than on my old motherboard.
The only bad points about this product are the fact that it is hard to have more than 1 hard drive due to the length of the ide cables and there is no on board graphics because not everybody will have a graphics card.
I feel if you are looking for a computer case that gives you more space than a usual computer and allows you the ability to travel with it then I would consider this because it is small, has great cooling system, no slowdown and shuttle is the market leader in producing small form factor computers. The only things I have against buying this are the disibility to have more than 2 hard drives and the lack of an on board graphics capability.
This product now usually retails at around £140. Shop around for the best prices, ebuyer currently do it for £139.80
Pictures of Shuttle SN 45G
shuttle in action
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Advantages: This little beauty has everything you need in a pc, all jam packed into one simple little case ! Disadvantages: The only thing that I can really really knock is the fact that CD copying has to be done via the image route, no on the fly !
Andrew81 15.03.2004 (15.03.2004)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Shuttle SN 45G
Advantages: This little beauty has everything you need in a pc, all jam packed into one simple little case ! Disadvantages: The only thing that I can really really knock is the fact that CD copying has to be done via the image route, no on the fly !
Andrew81 15.03.2004 (15.03.2004)
·
Read review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Shuttle SN 45G
exceptional by (8%):
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