Talk to me about Shuttles...

[rusty]

after reading this thread.....damn its taking u a long time, and shit ur picky. u know what the best solution is, so go for it.

 

[CRaZYMoFo]

after reading this thread.....damn its taking u a long time, and shit ur picky. u know what the best solution is, so go for it.

Been trying hard to be polite and not make a post like this lol

 

[lopoetve]

after reading this thread.....damn its taking u a long time, and shit ur picky. u know what the best solution is, so go for it.

I'm making sure. I like to build and then not upgrade for 1.5 years or so. This last one has been a disaster, I shouldn't have jumped to Socket 939 when I did (winchester, worst cpu EVER), and have had mobo problems like crazy forever (Abit AN8, Gigabyte K8NS). Hell, I STILL can't run dual channel. I want to make sure this is what I want and is stable and reliable, then I'll upgrade and stick with it for a good long time.

 

[msny]

You can do that with most s939 sff's, minus the 2nd optical drive. However, if you get 2 slim optical drives you could swing it. My ideq has room for 2 hdds, though I'm only running 1 atm. It is actually very quiet until the vid card fan spins up (under 3d, but I usually have headphones on or the sound on when that happens), in normal operation you only hear the hard drive spinning. The bad things: You won't be able to run a 2 slot vid card, and the single slot card hsf sits close to other things so the cooling isn't optimal. The other bad thing is that it has splitters for all of the power connections, so it makes me nervous power wise, though no problems yet. I am planning to add another hard drive in the near future, so that should put that portion to the test. I'm not sure if a 7800gt uses any more power than an x800xt, but so far I haven't had any problems.

I'm thinking that the door and space for the optical(s) might cut one of them off slightly.
Also you would need 2 snap in rails (or double stick tape) but there is only one. Not to mention the absence of power plugs, better get some extensions with more molex's.

 

[viperg]

go with a asus microatx mobo. go 939, get a opteron. 148 or 150 if your a gamer.

you wont be able to oc good, unless you get a dfi board, or gigabyte, or the new winfast motherboards (whatever they are called can't remember)

 

[bobzdar]

I'm thinking that the door and space for the optical(s) might cut one of them off slightly.
Also you would need 2 snap in rails (or double stick tape) but there is only one. Not to mention the absence of power plugs, better get some extensions with more molex's.

Not sure I get what you're saying there, but there are 2 hard drive caddies in my case. Also, 2 drive power molexes and an sata splitter (2 sata power cords off of on hd molex) so you can plug in the optical drive and 2 (sata) hard drives with the supplied cables and no routing issues. Then just run the pcie power splitter (which came with my vid card) off of the optical drive molex. Like I said, with an optical drive, hard drive and x800 (using the pcie power) I have no power related problems. All voltage rails are stable, except for one strange instance. When I raise my memory voltage my cpu voltage goes down, but I'm pretty sure that's not related at all to the power supply, and I can just bump the cpu voltage by .05 in the bios to get it back where it was without affecting the ram voltage. In any case, my ram works fine at stock voltage, just found that small problem when playing around with the system. I am planning to add another hard drive (sata). The way the power cables are routed, you can just plug in the sata power connectors and not have any worries about cables reaching where they need to go. The optical drive is right above the video card so the pcie splitter was more than long enough to easily reach the vid card. The only issue I can see is if you decided to run 2 ide hard drives along with the ide optical drive. Then you'd need to run another ide cable and get a one into 2 molex splitter, but things are not cramped to the point that would be a problem imo.

 

[Rash]

Check the sig and the picture! External audigy 2 ZS Video THX if money is no object, creative are just a bit slower at getting the new drivers out so we can have full advancedHD in quake 4 and FEAR. The sig is very quiet for what it is running.

 

[[LYL]Homer]

after reading this thread.....damn its taking u a long time, and shit ur picky. u know what the best solution is, so go for it.

qft

lopoetve,
Your best solution would be one of the following:

1. Shuttle SN25P, build per this guide , get an external Audigy setup.

2. Just get over your system building queasiness and the "I want it all without having to turn a screw or update a BIOS" feeling. A high performance system to last 5 years will take some knowledge, tweaking, and fussing to be 'perfect'.

3. Pay through the nose for a Monarch Hornet or Falcon NW Fragbox.


Edit: very cool setup Rash!

 

[lopoetve]

qft

lopoetve,
Your best solution would be one of the following:

1. Shuttle SN25P, build per this guide , get an external Audigy setup.

2. Just get over your system building queasiness and the "I want it all without having to turn a screw or update a BIOS" feeling. A high performance system to last 5 years will take some knowledge, tweaking, and fussing to be 'perfect'.

3. Pay through the nose for a Monarch Hornet or Falcon NW Fragbox.


Edit: very cool setup Rash!

Oh, I know it takes tweaking and work, I've been building my own since the Pentium 90 days. Doesn't mean that sometimes I really don't have the time, or the creative energy to do it... This is one of those. I've been fighting my current build for a year now, and it's still not stable. I forgot about the external Audigy, how well do those really work?

I'm really leaning towards the X-Qpack, now that I can get it in black. It doesn't look goofy in black

 

[Rash]

Oh, I know it takes tweaking and work, I've been building my own since the Pentium 90 days. Doesn't mean that sometimes I really don't have the time, or the creative energy to do it... This is one of those. I've been fighting my current build for a year now, and it's still not stable. I forgot about the external Audigy, how well do those really work?

I'm really leaning towards the X-Qpack, now that I can get it in black. It doesn't look goofy in black

The external Audigy ZS is excellent all roundjust as good as the pci equivalent on sound output apart from no open AL support on a few games yet like Quake 4 and FEAR but a new driver is in the works, when that driver comes out im not so sure anymore. You can also plug just about anything into the audigy video aswell, the conversion quality of my holiday videos has been excellent.it also acts as a usb 2 hub, its basically like the zs platinum series.

I think you can also get different colour front panels for the shuttles, dont quote me on that though.

Good luck in whatever you decide!