Shuttle SN25P System for college

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kennedy

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I was thinking about buidling a SFF pc for college and curious as to what people thought of this. thanks in advance

-Shuttle SN25P Socket 939 Barebone
-AMD Athlon 64 3700+ Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 939 Processor
-CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 500 (PC 4000)
Dual Channel Kit System Memory
-BFG Tech Geforce 6800GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card
-2 Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard
Drive
-PLEXTOR SATA DVD Burner
-NEC Display Solutions LCD1935NXM Silver 19" 16ms LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 450:1 0.264mm Pixel Pitch
 
looking good. on a side note how much did your opticle drive cost, and why did you go sata.
 
ok that looks really good but I gotta be honest. I have a SATA DVD drive and its not really noticably faster than a regular one. The price is not worth it. Also, I know NEC makes great monitors but you could get a Samsung Dynaflat which is exactly the same if not better for a lot cheaper. If you do these 2 things you will have some extra money left over and you can bump that graphics card up to a 6800 Ultra or an x850xt pe. Since the P chasis is PCI-E and is facing the other direction you can have dual slot cooling cards.
 
my parents gave me 3grand for either a laptop or sff. i went with this and i wanna get a digital camera for school also. since i got a scholarship they gave me 3g for a pc
*edit* newegg has the drive for 125
 
hey whatever man do what you want but you asked for advice and thats just my 2 pennies.
 
great gaming rig! maybe so good you'll forget about school work?!?!?

cheers!
 
save money and but one larger hard drive. I had 2 Raptor and switched to a Seagate 7800.8 250 gig and I am seeing better loadtimes and such than i did with the Raptors in Raid 0.

Got my drive from NewEgg for like 120 bucks. wish I had just gotten that in the first place and saved myself 250 bucks.
 
Ditch the raid, get a nice 300GB SATA drive. pron takes up alot of HD space.

The plextor SATA burner may not work with the NF4 SATA controller.

Check over at sudhian.com forums to see if anybody has one on that SFF or if there are any issues.

If there are problems, the nec 3520 DL burner, pioneer, or liteon are good.

For the RAM, ditch the corsair PC4000.

Stick with a 2x512 kit of patriot 3200XBL. Its TCCD goodness with brainpower pcb.
 
ok why would i not get pc4000?. i have the money so i can afford it. will it perform better? and im gonna get a large SATA drive like u guys said. thx
 
I suggest a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 SATA drive...I have the 250GB drive and it's ridiculusly fast compared to my IDE drives. They're the fastest 7200 RPM SATA drives out there right now.
 
kennedy said:
I was thinking about buidling a SFF pc for college and curious as to what people thought of this. thanks in advance

-Shuttle SN25P Socket 939 Barebone
-AMD Athlon 64 3700+ Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 939 Processor
-CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 500 (PC 4000)
Dual Channel Kit System Memory
-BFG Tech Geforce 6800GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card
-2 Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard
Drive
-PLEXTOR SATA DVD Burner
-NEC Display Solutions LCD1935NXM Silver 19" 16ms LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 450:1 0.264mm Pixel Pitch
Click to expand...

Go for it, looks good to me. But I do agree get a nice large SATA drive instead of the Raptors. You will want and need that extra space beleive me.
 
I say get a Raptor for the OS / games, and then a second 250+ drive for storage. That's what I have in my older shuttle for college, works nicely.
 
for 3g I say put 2g into the SFF and spend the other 1000 on a cheap laptop...either that or just get a laptop. laptops are great for college.
 
Eh, laptops may be convenient for traveling, however I'm more than satisfied with my shuttle. Most of my friends and myself don't bring laptops to class anyways. And I have to fly home for breaks and such, so I just carryon my shuttle, and have a monitor / keyboard etc. at home. So I would say get one or the other, its really your choice.
 
lozaning said:
looking good. on a side note how much did your opticle drive cost, and why did you go sata.
Click to expand...

vage said:
ok that looks really good but I gotta be honest. I have a SATA DVD drive and its not really noticably faster than a regular one. The price is not worth it. Also, I know NEC makes great monitors but you could get a Samsung Dynaflat which is exactly the same if not better for a lot cheaper. If you do these 2 things you will have some extra money left over and you can bump that graphics card up to a 6800 Ultra or an x850xt pe. Since the P chasis is PCI-E and is facing the other direction you can have dual slot cooling cards.
Click to expand...

the SN25P is very tuned toward SATA...
it only has 1 ATA connector and its harder than hell to route ATA cables in that case....
first thing i noticed when i purchased my SN25P was that they already had SATA Cables & SATA Power cables Routed to most all the different drive instalation spots...
 
Like everyone else, I'm going to reccomend the DM10 300GB drive instead. If you are dying to spend the money, get a 74GB raptor for OS/APPS and then put everything else on the DM10. Also, I may be incorrect on this... but from reading AMD forums info, it seems like theres really no difference with using slower ram and running a divider since A64 is special like that. Personally I'm looking at TwinMOS since Ecplise suggested it. The SATA DVD might not be worht it either.

Besides that, looks exactly like the setup i'm going to be buying for college next year. I was gonna go SN25P as well, but decided it didn't fit in with my modding/watercooling wishes.

Where are you goin to college?
 
kennedy said:
ok why would i not get pc4000?. i have the money so i can afford it. will it perform better? and im gonna get a large SATA drive like u guys said. thx
Click to expand...


Because the PC4000 you are looking at is Hynix chips. The Patriot XBL PC3200 is Samsung TCCD. Also don't let the PC3200 fool you. It is rated for PC3200 at 2-2-2-5 and PC5300 at 3-4-4-8, or something similar.

Typically RAM with Samsung TCCD chipsets is the best RAM for A64 and NF4 chipset in particular.

Hynix chips might work just fine but if I were spending the money I would get The Patriot XBL.
 
Have fun! I'm sticking with the pack on the Diamond Max 10 250/300gb drive and possibly and Raptor for apps/OS. Checkout www.storagereview.com they discuss Raptor performance on desktops at length and basically show (in benchmarks) that although the raptors are faster the difference in negligable and running that running RAID with them is actually slower for many tasks as it uses more overhead. Definitely go with the faster videocard instead, you won't regret having a blazing fast card in 2 years when you're broke and stuck in the dorms playing games while procrastinating doing an essay/lab report/programming for another class. :)
 
alright and for the flatscreen? also upgrade my VC to an ultra? im also buying a FujiFilm FinePix Z1 so that will be 350 off fof the 3g. im probably not gonna spend all 3g on the pc. again i need to do my work heh. **edit** and the ram i have the money patriot ram is much cheaper than the pc4000 corsair xms. i have the money so im not sure. also will a sound blaster audigy ZS fit in here?
 
true [H] uses a mean ass video card that it needs a big cooler and it doesnt leave enough room for a sound card in a sn25p
 
you may not need one. but if you jack up all the eye candy it'll make the card work harder and get hotter and the fan will spin faster anf get louder. but if you go with an Arctic Cooler Silencer or a Zalman, it'll be much much much quieter because it cools better at much lower fan speeds, and faster speeds dont really increase noise output much at all. I have my AC Silencer on 100% all the time just for the hell of it and its still damn near silent. and I would recommend the AC Silencer of the Zalman because the Silencer expells the hot air from not only the card but also from inside the case out the back of the case. it does take some modifying of the drive cage, in that you have to hack a small chunk off the 3.5 section that would hold the floppy drive. but if you dont plan on using a floppy drive, it wont matter. but it will also stop you from using 3 hard drives, as thats where the 3rd HD would go. But you should be more than fine with 2 HDs. hope that helped.
 
kennedy said:
I was thinking about buidling a SFF pc for college and curious as to what people thought of this. thanks in advance

-Shuttle SN25P Socket 939 Barebone
-AMD Athlon 64 3700+ Integrated into Chip FSB Socket 939 Processor
-CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Unbuffered DDR 500 (PC 4000)
Dual Channel Kit System Memory
-BFG Tech Geforce 6800GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card
-2 Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard
Drive
-PLEXTOR SATA DVD Burner
-NEC Display Solutions LCD1935NXM Silver 19" 16ms LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 450:1 0.264mm Pixel Pitch
Click to expand...

Shuttle SN25P - great
A64 3700+ - great
Corsair + great
6800GT + great
1 - 74GB raptor, or if you need more space just get a WD 250Gb
get this 8-in-1 card reader / floppy combo - it will really come in handy, you never know when you might want to grab some files off someone else's camera (any memory card) or when you might get a file from a friend on a floppy, b/c he's old school.
get a Lite-on 16x burner and save like $70 to spend on beer. no reason for SATA at all
19" flat is fine, though there might be better options out there.
 
chrisf6969 said:
Shuttle SN25P - great
A64 3700+ - great
Corsair + great
6800GT + great
1 - 74GB raptor, or if you need more space just get a WD 250Gb
get this 8-in-1 card reader / floppy combo - it will really come in handy, you never know when you might want to grab some files off someone else's camera (any memory card) or when you might get a file from a friend on a floppy, b/c he's old school.
get a Lite-on 16x burner and save like $70 to spend on beer. no reason for SATA at all
19" flat is fine, though there might be better options out there.
Click to expand...


the SN25p comes with a built in card reader. Mine arrives today :) fedex already shows delivered, woot

edit: why are all of you getting chumped to pay for alcohol? never pay for alcohol unless its a nice big bottle to host your own parties. ;)
 
ya. i got a fuji too. annoyed me at first about the card reader, but i just plug in the USB cord, actually easier than fumbling with the camera to get the card out
 
aranaxon said:
the SN25p comes with a built in card reader. Mine arrives today :) fedex already shows delivered, woot

edit: why are all of you getting chumped to pay for alcohol? never pay for alcohol unless its a nice big bottle to host your own parties. ;)
Click to expand...
people will notice eventually, and they you can't drink there.. or when you are older, you will wind up buying a lot of alcohol and all the freshman will drink it for free.. eitehr way you pay for it in the end.. each semester i was at college, i really didn't drink more. but spent more..


but this doens't have anyhting to do with the OP..

shuttles are nice.. i haven't seen an 25p.. but i have thought about getting one a few times.. and keep deciding that i have a good enough computer and don't "need' to upgrade.. i know.. i am just not [H].... i am waiting for the "mobile barton" equivalent of the a64.. haha..

in general.. if you paren't are just going to buy you $3000 worth of shit.. then i guess get expensive stuff.. but really.. if they jsut give you $3000.. i would only spend half.. $3k for a computer is overkill.. spend $1500 now, and $1500 in 1.5 years.. and you will have a kickass comptuer the whole time.. instead of 3 years from now having something that is just old.. and was way too expensive at th etime...
 
Well in fact he will not spend 1500$ in 1.5 years, but he will also get interest on this.... hm... guess that was too much "controlling" yesterday.
 
scottatwittenberg said:
in general.. if you paren't are just going to buy you $3000 worth of shit.. then i guess get expensive stuff.. but really.. if they jsut give you $3000.. i would only spend half.. $3k for a computer is overkill.. spend $1500 now, and $1500 in 1.5 years.. and you will have a kickass comptuer the whole time.. instead of 3 years from now having something that is just old.. and was way too expensive at th etime...
Click to expand...

Good advice. Hold off on some of the $, so you can upgrade your videocard and go to dual core in about a year or so.
 
I'm looking at basically the same system for college but I'm wondering how loud these shuttles are. In pc-magazine, read it in the doctors office, I read it was extremely loud and that is a huge turn off for me. So does anyone have experience with these? Are they really really loud?
 
Not with the SN25P, but with the SB65G2 Intel 865 based version.

I have a 2.8C (overclocked to 3.0) in it, with a 6800nu (softmodded to 16x6)

I use the smart fan setting, and set it to one of its lowest settings.... which means it speeds up very easily. Anyway, when its not being used, the harddrive powers down, and the fans slow down and its VERY quiet. When its being used for normal activity sometimes the fan speeds up a little, but its still not loud or bothersome. However, when gaming the videocard and main fan speed up to a noticeable level. I also have it on a shelf high up so the noise is probably a lot more noticeable than if it was under a desk.

Anyway, I could easily see a Prescott based Shuttle being loud b/c the fan would probably need to run fast most of the time.

But I would think a Northwood based or A64 would be quiet.
 
my sn41g2v2 is quiet.. i cut out the rear grill and it got louder.. that kinda pissed me off.. oh well.. i cna't speak for an sn25
 
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