A friend is trying to persuade me to buy a Shuttle bare-bones system and build the rest of it. He thinks they are the bees-knees, what are they like. After reading reviews on them they seem pretty high-powered, yet expensive. (Well, £200 odd for the barebones, then you shove everything else in). Also, on the downside of these Shuttle PCs, is there are very few expansion slots. 1 PCI, 1 AGP, and 1 5.25 bay, and that's about your lot. Where as your (ATX) Midi (or even a Mini) will be big enough, has far more expansion slots (usually 3-4 5.25" and a couple for floppys.

Anyone had (has) experience with Shuttles?

Cheers
Alex

I have been wanting one for yonks :D

So small, yet so powerful. Brilliant for portability and yet stylish

I gather from your post that you are looking for something functionable and upgradeable to a fair few more things. So maybe this isn't the option for you.

I have one in the dining room, it's quiet, was easy to build and is fairly powerful.
Make sure it's appropriate for what you want though, as you said, it's not very expandable, and you do pay a bit of a premium for it being small (although you can still build a full system for around 3 or 4 hundred).

Oh MAN !! ... I want one of those !!

Go for it Alex ... and let me know how you get on !!

Good luck :clap:

It all depends on how you want to use it. If you want it as a simple media centre for playing DVDs, CDs, DivX videos and MP3s it's great. Its when you start to want to play games that you're going to have problems.

You can always upgrade the memory, HDD and DVD drive as technology progresses, but with all other major components are on the board.


Don't forget that there are other brands beside Shuttle now. Asus, Aopen, MSI and Biostar all do systems.

www.microdirect.co.uk has some good pictures and prices to get you started.

If you fancy something different to the 'cube' style take a look at this (http://www.microdirect.co.uk/ProductInfo.aspx?ProductID=6087&GroupID=85)

Overclockers (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/) is a great site to look at for barebones systems, they've been reliable when I've used them in the past too.

this months computer shopper has a several page article dedicated to them.

they are alright, lack of expandability though makes me dislike the a bit. interesting design, decent construction, but they just dont have the wow factor of something like a dell optiplex SFF but that again suffers from lack of expansion options.

sod it, stick with the great tower, you never know when you might need those other 5 drive bays and 4 pci slot :rolleyes:

Thanks for the info, everyone. I think I could well be sticking with the tower, however, it's a possibility for the future.

Alex

If your mate thinks there so great tell him to get one himself!

Originally posted by mr craig
If your mate thinks there so great tell him to get one himself!

He will do in 6 mths. apparently, it'll have "PCI Xpress" slots on it too. He can't wait (he has the older one now). When I asked a question he said, "oh sorry I only deal in Shuttle's" (lol).

Then he proceeds to tell me that my RAM is dead as I was touching it at the edges, and my favourite of that convo was:

"Well, how do you hold the sticks then"?
"I dunno"
I also call Network cards NICs (Network Interface Cards"
"Oooh no, they're not called that anymore".

Alex

Originally posted by amhudson119
Then he proceeds to tell me that my RAM is dead as I was touching it at the edges, and my favourite of that convo was:

"Well, how do you hold the sticks then"?
"I dunno"
I also call Network cards NICs (Network Interface Cards"
"Oooh no, they're not called that anymore".


Sounds a laugh a minute!!! :P :thumbsup:

Originally posted by amhudson119
Then he proceeds to tell me that my RAM is dead as I was touching it at the edges,

I found this statement quite amusing, are you supposed to levitate it into its slot :)

Originally posted by amhudson119

Then he proceeds to tell me that my RAM is dead as I was touching it at the edges, and my favourite of that convo was:

"Well, how do you hold the sticks then"?
"I dunno"



Well the opposite is true, the edges are the safest place to handle memory sticks. The part not to touch is the edge connector. There is always grease on your fingers which if it gets on the connector could introduce a film of insulation where it's least desirable....applies to PC cards as well.

But always take anti-static precautions. A wrist strap isn't essential if you have a switched mains socket, - just have the unit plugged in via the the mains lead and switched off at the socket - that way you have a continuous path to earth and touching the bare metal chassis will ground you.

Having said that I have frequently installed cpu/heatsink and memory into a mainboard outside the case without wrist strap or mishap. ;)