Shuttle vs Aspire X-QPack

[paperfist]

Originally http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-sg01.htmposted by: R3MF
i prefer the Silverstone SG01 to the Aspire Q-pack personally.

Nice case, very clean and refined. The lack of a external 3 1/2" bay is a bit of a turn off though

Here's the link to the case if anyone else is interested: http://www.silverstonetek.com/products-sg01.htm

 

[Megamixman]

Yah, that is a nice case. I dont think the Aspire would have any problems with just an A64 Setup, unless you somehow managed to fit 10 drives in there along with it or something as crazy.

 

[imported_vdorta]

The Silverstone is not bad, but I don't think it compares favorably with the Chenming MATX-118's 120mm fan and temperature-controlled PSU fan in terms of cooling and low noise. Unless you don't care about noise, hose small fans would probably be nasty.

 

[NoToRiOuS1]

The Chenming MATX-118 looks pretty good the only thing I would be concerned about is would it be able to handle a the load im gonna throw its way. After having a bad experience with my 9800pro and a crappy little power supply, I tend to stay away from PSU that are below 350 unless its a PS from shuttle or something.
The silverstone SG01 is a very nice case as well, but like paperfist said, the lack of 3 1/2" bay is a bit of a turn off..though its not that much of a problem when I really think about it.

It seems I started off with deciding on a SFF then I moved to the Aspire case and mobo and now I am looking at even bigger cases (SG01).
All I'm looking for in a SFF is 1 pci-e 16x, 1 pci-e 1x, and one pci slot on a NF4 chipset but no system that I know of, offers that setup. If they did, I would buy it in a heartbeat because I would like to have something small. *sigh* I just want room for a pci tv tuner and eventually a pci-e 1x soundcard. I might just have to bite the bullet and get the Shuttle SN25P and forget about a sound card and just get a tv tuner later on....or something like that

 

[Aldoria]

Actually, the 24bit VIA onboard chip is pretty nice. You can set it to high sample rate of 96000 Hz but it is only available to two speakers (24bit / 96000 Hz - DVD Quality, 16bit / 44.1 hz - CD Quality). The SN25P has a decent setup since it has support for 7.1 as well as Digital Out. In another forum, someone used an amp with a set of headphones and he said the sound was spectacular. Unless you are a major audiophile that owns the 700 dollar headphones then I think the SN25P onboard VIA chip won't dissapoint. At least compared to the rest of the nForce4 chipsets, shuttle has the best offering in terms of onboard sound chip.

By the way, you can read about 16bit and 24bit meanings from here: http://www6.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050705/index.html

Ald

 

[NoToRiOuS1]

Originally posted by: Aldoria
Actually, the 24bit VIA onboard chip is pretty nice. You can set it to high sample rate of 96000 Hz but it is only available to two speakers (24bit / 96000 Hz - DVD Quality, 16bit / 44.1 hz - CD Quality). The SN25P has a decent setup since it has support for 7.1 as well as Digital Out. In another forum, someone used an amp with a set of headphones and he said the sound was spectacular. Unless you are a major audiophile that owns the 700 dollar headphones then I think the SN25P onboard VIA chip won't dissapoint. At least compared to the rest of the nForce4 chipsets, shuttle has the best offering in terms of onboard sound chip.

By the way, you can read about 16bit and 24bit meanings from here: http://www6.tomshardware.com/consumer/20050705/index.html

Ald

Well you said that the high sampling rate is only for two speakers. I have the 5.1 Logitech Z-5500 setup so how do you think that will fare against the onboard sound? In my last right I had ASUS K8V SE Deluxe S754 mobo w/ onboard 7.1 sound but there was SO much distortion and static from it it really ruined my whole experience with onboard sound setups. I haven't heard anything bad about the SN25P and its audio but I'm still a bit skeptical. But if its as good as you claim, then I might not need an audigy 2 or anything and I would be set with just having a tv tuner in the extra slot. I'll have to do some more googling about this onboard audio. Ald, would you be able to post the link for the other forum that you were talking about where the guy used the amp with his SN25P? Thanks in advance!

 

[grant2]

The aspire looks ok but those cheezy plastic windows sure turn me off. And is that the stock fan glowing blue?? gimme a break. Well i guess it's what some people like.

If i bought that case i'd spraypaint the windows and bust up that neon.

 

[NoToRiOuS1]

I was looking into the BIOSTAR iDEQ 330P with the NF4 chipset, 1 pci, 1 mini pci, and 1 pci-e 16x slot. the only thing i was looking at was wether or not it supported X2. I emailed biostar last night and I got a reply from them saying that that model does support X2 and they even emailed me the bios update. The specs for that dont look bad at all. I could throw in a tv tuner in the pci slot and a wireless in the mini pci and a x800xl. that sounds like a solid system right there. the 8 ch realtek alc850 should be enough for my z-5500. hmm....

BIOSTAR iDEQ 330P @ NewEgg

Email excerpt from the Biostar customer support(i emailed them last night around 2-3 in the morning and i got this today around 8pm...not bad at all)

Yes, the unit supports the Dual Core Processor. There is a new bios, it?s not yet up on the site, but it will be soon. I have attached the bios update file to support X2 dual core cpu?s.

The aspire looks ok but those cheezy plastic windows sure turn me off. And is that the stock fan glowing blue?? gimme a break. Well i guess it's what some people like.

Yea I somewhat agree with you. I had a Thermaltake Tsunami Dream case as my last rig. It had the side window and a few LEDs here and there. After a while it didn't hold appeal. Now I'm all about small, sleek and not overly flashy cases. Thats one of the things I like about the shuttle. Even the biostar is a little flashy...but with these systems I'm trying to focus on the functionality a bit more than form. Even with the Aspire, I'm trying not to focus on the 3 windows and stuff because I'm thinking it might've been better than getting a SFF where you cant upgrade a mobo so I'm giving up form for functionality. But to each his own I suppose.

 

[grant2]

apparently you can get the x-qpack in SILVER only with no windows. What a shame, i like blue too.

I'm also kind of looking at the Antec Aria... multimedia reader + optical drive facade are big plusses... i read that it doens't handle the heat so well, but i'm a low-power kinda guy anyways.

 

[ND40oz]

Originally posted by: R3MF
i prefer the Silverstone SG01 to the Aspire Q-pack personally.

I agree, nice Fragbox II from the OEM without all the fragbox graphics. Anyone know where to buy it yet and at what price? I have my Jetway RS480 sitting in a spare ATX case as I ponder what matx case will look as good as my SB75S.

 

[Aldoria]

From personally experience, I hear no noise or distortion whatsoever when my headphone is plugged in. However, I can compare to my work computer (Dell 2.8 Ghz) and I can hear a lot of distortion. When I simply move my mouse, the sound sometimes hisses, but it is absolutely silent on the SN25P and I'm an semi-audiophile (200 dollar headphones ouchhhh ). Anyways, regarding the site, here you go. They go back and forth talking about the onboard SN25P VIA chip so you can get some insight on what people thinks of it.

http://forums.sudhian.com/messageview.aspx?catid=43&threadid=79845&enterthread=y

Ald

 

[NoToRiOuS1]

awesome, thanks ald

 

[agogley]

The Aspire dimensions in inches are 13.8"Dx11.2"Wx9"H.
The Shuttle SN95P is listed in mm but I did the conversion to inches: 12.6"Lx8.3"Wx8.6"H

I too am having trouble deciding. Foxconn offers a pentium D solution with a PCI 16 slot (945Gexpress) but Shuttles new offering the SD31P does not offer an graphics expansion slot. Although I don't need any heavy duty graphics capabilities today I certainly would like to be able to upgrade in the future should I so desire. I am just not convinced that onboard graphics is the way to go even for as little as I use my computer for. Shuttle is scheduled to release a 955X unit sometime but I don't know when that will be (I suspect Q4).

A laptop is also very tempting. The new Dells XPS looks awfully damn good...if not expensive.

 

[NoToRiOuS1]

Originally posted by: agogley
The Aspire dimensions in inches are 13.8"Dx11.2"Wx9"H.
The Shuttle SN95P is listed in mm but I did the conversion to inches: 12.6"Lx8.3"Wx8.6"H

I too am having trouble deciding. Foxconn offers a pentium D solution with a PCI 16 slot (945Gexpress) but Shuttles new offering the SD31P does not offer an graphics expansion slot. Although I don't need any heavy duty graphics capabilities today I certainly would like to be able to upgrade in the future should I so desire. I am just not convinced that onboard graphics is the way to go even for as little as I use my computer for. Shuttle is scheduled to release a 955X unit sometime but I don't know when that will be (I suspect Q4).

A laptop is also very tempting. The new Dells XPS looks awfully damn good...if not expensive.

I dont mean to sound like a fanboy but if you're gonna go the dual core route, you might be better of going with the AMD offerings. If they are too expensive when compared to the Pentium D then wait for a few months and AMD will introduce some cheaper Athlon X2. But yea, its always important to have the choice to upgrade from your current hardware, specially when it comes to something like a video card. Right now with the integrated ati graphics, you might be able to run doom3 and battlefield 2 on low res, but what about games that come out 6-10 months down the road. You'll be lucky if you can get 20 FPS on those games with that graphic card.

HOWEVER, having said that, take a look at this link:
http://indigo.intel.com/mbsg/details.aspx?compID=2524

From what the information say under Slot/Connector, they mention the presence of a 16x PCI-e slot which is used for a video card. PCI-e is the sucessor of AGP. I'm sorry if I'm just repeating information you already know, but I know some people get confused with pci and pci-e. And the fact that you thought SD31P didn't have anything for graphic expansion, made me think you either were misinformed or just didn't know about PCI-e.

Dell XPS does look pretty good, but since its their flagship laptop for gamers, it carries a premium. You might be better of going with the 9300 laptop. It offers the same video card options last I checked (6800 from nvidia) and a pentium-m proc.

Welcome to the forums btw!
If you have any questions about anymore of this stuff, feel free to post away or even PM me, Id be more than happy to help you out with whatever I can.

 

[R3MF]

Originally posted by: faboloso112
The Chenming MATX-118 looks pretty good the only thing I would be concerned about is would it be able to handle a the load im gonna throw its way. After having a bad experience with my 9800pro and a crappy little power supply, I tend to stay away from PSU that are below 350 unless its a PS from shuttle or something.
The silverstone SG01 is a very nice case as well, but like paperfist said, the lack of 3 1/2" bay is a bit of a turn off..though its not that much of a problem when I really think about it.

It seems I started off with deciding on a SFF then I moved to the Aspire case and mobo and now I am looking at even bigger cases (SG01).
All I'm looking for in a SFF is 1 pci-e 16x, 1 pci-e 1x, and one pci slot on a NF4 chipset but no system that I know of, offers that setup. If they did, I would buy it in a heartbeat because I would like to have something small. *sigh* I just want room for a pci tv tuner and eventually a pci-e 1x soundcard. I might just have to bite the bullet and get the Shuttle SN25P and forget about a sound card and just get a tv tuner later on....or something like that

the sound quality of my SN25P is excellent on my altec lansing 5100 speakers.

OT - best mATX board i have seen is a foxconn NF4 board with PCI-E and PCI.

 

[agogley]

Fabuloso:

I know about PCI-e, it's just that Shuttle's website did not list a x16 slot on the specifications fo the SD31P. http://global.shuttle.com/Product/Barebone/SD31P.asp. Obviously one of the websites is in error. I am going to e-mail shuttle.

I am open to AMD options as well. I have never worked with AMD chips in the past. Even my friends who have built AMD machines have warned me of potential conflicts...but I can't deny that the AMD benchmarks are quite impressive. But of course, now the dualies are quite expensive too.

I currently am using my PEntium III 700 machine that I put together a few years ago. It works very well but I am having some limitations with USB compatibility and internet speed (my internet d/ls faster that my computer can process it). So I want to upgrade. I don't really play computer games on my computer anymore since getting the X-Box, but I'd like to have the option in the future to transfer videos, pictures, editing, etc. I am really tossed up between what I want and what I probably need. A laptop sounds good...it theoretically gets rid of a lot of cords. But the idea of carrying anything worth $2-$3K is somewhat intimidating (that's a lot of dough if you drop the sucker). Furthermore, what you buy is what you get...and the best is a PEntium M processor. One of my friends told me to go with an SFF...so I have been researching. I have narrowed down to a Shuttle or to the new Aspire with a foxconn mobo. I simply cannot decide now between the The laptop, Pentium D or Athlon X2. Personally, I might consider the X2 more heavily if they were a bit less expensive.

 

[Aldoria]

Hiya Agogley,

I'm currently running a 4400+ X2 in the SN25P and I'm loving it! One feature I love the most is the Cool N' Quiet which is a great idea (conserve power, minimize heat and clocks cpu speed in regards to usage). Of course, this is not new technology and it is common on laptop processors however in the desktop market, I believe only AMD offers this (correct me I'm wrong). And regarding to the pricing of the X2's, I agree, they are very steep however, the performance is worth it's cost. Also note, a few days ago, AnAndTech posted a snippet of news saying that AMD will release lower priced X2's so this might be something to look forward to as well. As a personal opinion, Prescott (and all Prescott based architecture) is a horrible core compared to the AMD counterparts. Though, it is a good move on Intel's part to move back and take a look at their Pentium III as well as their mobile cores as they are much superior.

Here is the news snippet in case you missed it.

http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.aspx?i=24520

Ald