Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/1049
Shuttle’s SN41G2 & SK41G: Two Athlon Small Form Factor PCs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 6, 2003 2:24 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Shuttle has done astoundingly well with their XPC line of small form factor PCs; comprising well over half of their revenue, XPC sales have been strong and continue to grow. What’s truly impressive is that Shuttle has been able to maintain such incredible sales while producing primarily Intel-only solutions.
When it comes to XPCs outfitted with an AGP slot, the only two entries have been the SS51G and SB51G – both Pentium 4 based solutions. If you ask any XPC vendor however, one of their biggest requests is for an Athlon XP based small form factor (SFF) PC with an AGP slot.
Companies like MSI are already working on SFF designs based around AMD’s Athlon 64, which should boast a noticeably cooler operating temperature. But keeping in mind that 2003 will still be the year of the Athlon XP for AMD, there’s focus and demand for SFF Athlon XP solutions. Waiting a handful of months for Athlon 64 to hit isn’t an appropriate answer, so the market once again turns to Shuttle to do what they’ve done so well lately – build a capable XPC.
We’ve already established that there’s demand out there for Athlon XP based SFF PCs, and we’ve made the point that waiting for Athlon 64 (Hammer) isn’t really an option but one question remains – why does the demand exist?
The biggest factor driving demand for Athlon XP SFF PCs is the idea of delivering a lower cost platform. Athlon XPs are still more cost effective than Pentium 4s, while still able to offer competitive performance. Keeping that in mind, it’s not a surprise that Shuttle’s first AMD based XPC with an AGP slot was based around VIA’s KM266 chipset; a very affordable solution, the SK41G made many happy but Shuttle would not stop there.
NVIDIA’s nForce2 would make a perfect candidate for a Shuttle XPC; a highly integrated chipset, with a powerful integrated GPU and the fastest overall platform for the Athlon XP. Shuttle hasn’t kept their nForce2 based XPC a big secret as we’ve reported on the SN41G2 countless times since the chipset’s official launch. Delays in the shipment of the IGP version of nForce2 put a wrench in Shuttle’s plans but today the SN41G2 is finally ready for public consumption, and we’re here to bring you a look at the most highly anticipated additions to Shuttle’s XPC line since the first AGP enabled XPC.
Because of the close proximity of the two AMD based XPC releases, we’re covering both solutions in this review – the KM266 based SK41G and the new nForce2 based SN41G2.
Two XPCs, One CPU
The two new XPCs from Shuttle are hardly competitors of each other as they target two drastically different Athlon XP market segments. Understanding the differences will help you pick which one is right for you.
Before we open up the tiny boxes and have a look at their motherboards, let’s take a quick look at the specs and what comes in the boxes:
Shuttle SK41G
- Supports 200/266MHz FSB Athlon XP & Duron processors
- Supports DDR200/266 SDRAM – 2 slots
- VIA KM266 chipset
- On-board S3 ProSavage8 video w/ TV-out
- 1 PCI / 1 AGP slot
- Realtek 8100B LAN
- Chrontel 7005SC TV encoder
- VIA VT6306 Firewire controller
- Realtek ALC650 AC’97 codec
Shuttle SN41G2
- Supports 200/266/333MHz FSB Athlon XP & Duron processors
- Supports DDR200/266/333 – 2 slots (DualDDR supported)
- NVIDIA nForce2 IGP chipset
- On-board Integrated GeForce4 MX GPU
- 1 PCI / 1 AGP slot
- Realtek 8201BL LAN (w/ NVIDIA MCP-T MAC)
- Integrated TV encoder
- Realtek 8801 Firewire PHY (w/ NVIDIA MCP-T integrated Firewire MAC)
- Realtek ALC650 AC’97 codec (w/ NVIDIA nForce2 APU)
Both systems come with the same materials in the box:
- IDE cables custom made and sized for the unique space requirements of the XPCs
- Thermal Compound
- Copper Shim for Socket-A CPUs
- Motherboard Manual, Installation Guide & Driver CD
- Installation screws & feet for the case
Unfortunately none of Shuttle’s systems come bundled with a parallel port, although you can buy one from Shuttle’s online store for $8. You cannot use an old AT parallel port as the header on the motherboard uses low profile pins and not the standard AT length header pins. If you have any parallel port devices you’ll be forced to purchase the parallel port in addition to the XPC.
The SK41G Motherboard
Let’s start off with the KM266 based SK41G; the XPC is based on Shuttle’s FX41 motherboard and by far its biggest limitation is official support for only 200 or 266MHz FSB Socket-A processors. This limitation categorizes the SK41G as a XPC that’s not meant for the highest performance offerings, but rather the more cost effective solutions. Remember that only the absolute highest speed Athlon XPs are only offered in 333MHz FSB flavors, so you’re not losing out on too much but be mindful of the limitation.
Selecting the 200 or 266MHz FSB can be done via JP2 on the motherboard itself or through the BIOS.
The KM266 chipset itself has been around for quite some time, and as you can guess is a derivative of VIA’s older KT266 chipset. The ‘M’ in the name as well as the ProSavageDDR brand indicate the integrated graphics capabilities of the chipset, more specifically the KM266 features a ProSavage8 graphics core. The ProSavage8 is nothing special; a derivative of the now archaic Savage4 core that has been refreshed countless times.
The chipset supports a single 64-bit DDR memory channel, thus memory bandwidth will peak at 2.1GB/s. As you can also guess, DDR333 is not supported - once again, contributing to the value aspect of the SK41G package; this isn’t the XPC for performance nuts.
Just like all other XPCs, Shuttle gave the SK41G Firewire, USB 2.0 and 10/100 Ethernet support. Shuttle relies on Realtek to provide 10/100 Ethernet and Audio controllers and then turns to VIA for Firewire support, which is fairly common given the other XPCs we’ve seen from them.
 |
 |
From a layout perspective, the FX41 does as good of a job as possible given the space constraints of Shuttle’s XPC form factor. The only complaint we had about the layout, other than the expected cramped nature, was the fact that Shuttle went back to placing the clear CMOS jumper behind the AGP slot.
For those of you familiar with the previous XPC designs, Shuttle moved the clear CMOS jumper to a much more accessible place with the SB51G (i845GE) in front of the AGP slot, so that uninstalling your video card wasn’t necessary in order to reset the BIOS. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Shuttle has moved the jumper back to its original position.
Just like their Pentium 4 solutions, Shuttle has outfitted the FX41 with an ATX12V power connector on-board to ensure proper current delivery to the CPU.
The board features Shuttle’s now classic 1 PCI + 1 AGP slot setup, with the AGP slot positioned at the left edge of the motherboard board before the single PCI slot. The downside to this design is that NVIDIA’s forthcoming GeForce FX will not work with any of Shuttle’s current AGP based designs; the reason behind this is that the faster version of the GeForce FX will require an empty slot to the left of the AGP slot, which does not exist in any of the current Shuttle XPC designs. The “slower” version of the GeForce FX at launch is rumored to only take up one slot, so you’ll at least be able to use that. There is also at least one manufacturer working on a single slot version of the faster GeForce FX, but there’s no word on how feasible that design is much less if/when it will be released. The ATI Radeon 9700 Pro and any other presently available AGP cards will work fine in the AGP slot however.
Unlike previous Shuttle XPC motherboards, the FX41 presented us with no real stability issues or any other strange problems. The data loss issues we encountered with the SS51G units we tested not too long ago were thankfully absent from this release and we couldn’t be happier. Stability has been improved, potentially due to the motherboard and tighter QA but also because of other new components in these XPCs – but we’ll get to those later.
The SN41G2 Motherboard
Moving on to the SN41G2, we have NVIDIA’s nForce2 IGP at the heart of the FN41 motherboard. By going with the nForce2 IGP, Shuttle was able to outfit the SN41G2 with two VGA connectors to take advantage of the on-board nView support; this makes the SN41G2 the first XPC from Shuttle with on-board multi-monitor support, a neat feature for those using the box for more than a gaming solution.
The feature set of the nForce2 chipset is what provides the SN41G2 with all it needs and more. Shuttle went with the more expensive MCP-T solution in order to provide on-board Firewire, without resorting to an external chip. This highly integrated MCP also offers integrated USB 2.0, 10/100 Ethernet using NVIDIA’s MAC (a 3Com MAC is also present but unused in Shuttle’s FN41 design) and nForce2 audio with Dolby Digital Encoding support. The major benefit of going with the MCP-T is that it clears up a good deal of space on the FN41 motherboard itself, that would normally be occupied by additional chips providing things like Firewire support. Simplifying layout is quite important as it not only makes producing the board easier, but it also means ensuring stability isn’t as daunting of a task for Shuttle. For information on the strengths of the nForce2 we’d strongly suggest you take a look at our nForce2 review as well as our most recent 6-way nForce2 motherboard shootout.
 |
 |
The SN41G2 is clearly much more performance oriented than the SK41G, especially considering that the nForce2 is the highest performing Athlon XP chipset available and the KM266 is based on a two year old design. With this obviously comes a higher price tag, but also a much more desirable XPC capable of giving even Shuttle’s P4 line a run for its money.
One of the major features of the nForce2 chipset is its dual channel DDR memory architecture, which is obviously supported by the FN41 motherboard. There are only two DIMM slots on the board, so by populating both you’re taking advantage of a full 128-bit wide memory bus. The integrated GeForce4 MX GPU benefits the most from this wider memory bus, but as we’ve shown in benchmarks there are other applications and scenarios not involving the integrated GPU that benefit from the DualDDR architecture. It doesn’t cost significantly more to go with two DIMMs instead of one, so there really no reason not to take advantage of this feature.
Although simplified, the FN41 motherboard layout suffers from the same problem that the FX41 did – a hard to reach clear CMOS jumper. And the same AGP/GeForce FX limitation exists as well, although any other single slot graphics card should work fine in the XPC.
SK41G Chassis – Tried and True
Moving on from the motherboard, we can start by looking at the outside of the SK41G, which is clearly reminiscent of previous Shuttle XPC designs. The removable face plate has a small amount of green thrown in, probably a reference to the Athlon XP support, but other than that looks just like the more recent Pentium 4 XPCs from Shuttle.
As usual, Shuttle has done a great job with making sure that all ports are easily accessible on the SK41G. Whatever ports are present at the front of the chassis are also at the rear, and having front facing mic/headphone outputs are very useful for those that have speakers without a headphone jack.
The mic/headphone out 1/8” jacks make up two of the 6 ports on the front of the SB51G. There’s the obligatory optical out port, which we also saw on Shuttle’s earlier design. The usefulness of having single cable 6-channel speaker output on the front of the XPC is debatable but it’s not hard to include and increases the “cool” factor of the machine, so why not. The true benefit of this port is more easily realized with the nForce2 version – the SN41G2.
To the right of all of the audio jacks we have two front facing USB 2.0 ports and a powered Firewire port (IEEE-1394). There’s nothing special about the two USB ports but there is something special (or expected?) about the Firewire port. After our testing of the Pentium 4/SiS 651 based SS51G we mentioned that we would continue to stress the system to figure out if it was a viable solution for power users. One problem we uncovered during our long term testing of the machine was that none of the Firewire ports on the system were powered. The difference between a powered and an non-powered Firewire port is, as you can probably guess, that a powered port can supply power to devices connected to it while non-powered ports will require that the device have another power source (e.g. batteries, external AC adapter, etc…). In normal situations, all 6-pin Firewire connectors are powered while the smaller 4-pin connectors are non-powered. But for some reason, the SS51G’s 6-pin ports were non-powered. The non-powered ports became an issue for a number of reasons, one example was when we tried to use the SS51G to transfer MP3s to an iPod. The iPod has a built in battery so it could work just fine while connected, however because of the intense file transfers and the fact that the SS51G wasn’t recharging the iPod while copying MP3s, the iPod’s battery would wear down very quickly. The only solution for someone in this case would be to populate the only PCI slot with a Firewire card in order to have powered ports, obviously not the best solution.
Thankfully the SK41G did not have these problems as both the front and rear Firewire ports were fully powered and worked with all devices we threw at them. We’ve attributed the powered ports to a combination of the motherboard and the new power supply that ships with the SK41G. We have a feeling that the ports were specifically not routed the additional power lines on the SS51G’s motherboard because of inadequacies of the older power supply. Regardless, the problem is fixed with this and all other recent Shuttle XPCs.
At the rear of the SK41G we have two 9-pin serial ports, one VGA port (driven by the on-board ProSavage8 video), one S-Video port for TV out, two powered Firewire ports, two USB 2.0 ports, one 10/100 Ethernet port, PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, and a standard set of three 1/8” jacks for audio. The three 1/8” jacks can be remapped in software to provide 6-channel analog out, with the mic and headphone jacks duplicated on the front of the chassis as we mentioned earlier. It’s worth noting that the inclusion of the S-Video port forced Shuttle to get rid of the duplicate optical out on the rear of the SK41G, which depending on whether or not you were planning on using it may be an inconvenience.
One fairly major thing left out from the SK41G shipping configuration (and all other Shuttle XPCs for that matter) is that the system comes with no parallel port by default. Shuttle’s reasoning is that USB should be the printer interface of choice for today’s PCs, but along those same lines you can argue that serial and PS/2 ports are unnecessary as well.
There is a cutout for a parallel port at the top of the chassis but the connector on the motherboard for the parallel port is not the standard AT connector, but rather lower profile pins. This means you can’t use one of your older AT parallel port brackets, you’ll have to order the $8 cable from Shuttle instead.
SN41G2 – Shuttle’s Latest Design
With the SN41G2 Shuttle is not only using a brand new chipset, but a new look for their chassis as well. Set to be available in both silver and black, the SN41G2 chassis will obviously not work with replacement faceplates for any of the other Shuttle XPCs. The SN41G2 design is arguably more elegant than the previous XPC solutions, but its beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder – if you like it then great, otherwise you’re going to have to accept the fact that the nForce2 version will not be made available in the older chassis design.
The port layout of the SN41G2 is identical to the SK41G; the front still has the same set of 1/8” jacks, an optical out, two USB 2.0 ports and a Firewire port. Just like the SK41G, all of the Firewire ports on the SN41G2 are powered.
The rear ports are almost identical to the SK41G except that there is only one serial port in order to make room for the two VGA ports provided by the integrated nView support. Once again, the S-Video out takes the place of a potentially useful rear optical out port.
Different XPCs but Indentical Internals
Although the two XPCs look fairly different from the outside, unscrewing the four thumbscrews and delving into the cases reveals a very similar set of internals.
Both XPCs implement Shuttle’s slightly redesigned cooling system, including holes at the bottom of the chassis in order to help draw in cool air from the front of the XPC to help cool the drive bay – a problem in older models.
These holes bring in cool air for the drives
While looking at the bottom of the two AMD based XPCs you can see the four mounting holes for the cooling setup, which we will look at later.
Taking off the cover of the XPC is as simple as possible; four rear mounted thumbscrews must be undone and then the cover can be pulled off, revealing the cramped but manageable interior.
Removing the drive bay is the next step in getting access to the rest of the XPC, and it is once again accomplished without much effort. Two screws hold the drive bay in place, removing them lets the bay slide out where you can install a hard drive, floppy and CD/DVD drive easily. Shuttle has still yet to deliver on their promise to work with drive makers to produce drives that match the exterior of their XPCs and although it would be an understandably difficult task, we’d still like to see it happen.
SK41G Profile w/ Drive Bay Removed
SN41G2 Profile
With the drive bay still installed you can actually easily install or remove expansion cards.
Two screws holds a bracket in place that will eventually hold your card(s) once installed. Unscrewing the braket and flipping it up will allow you to install up to one PCI and one AGP card in the system, but obviously you’ll have to install the PCI card first as the slot is behind the AGP slot.
New Cooling – Ready for the Athlon XP 3200+
One of the more differentiating factors between Shuttle and other SFF PC manufacturers has always been Shuttle’s extremely quiet cooling system. Using a combination of a low profile heatsink with heatpipes and a temperature controlled fan, Shuttle is able to provide adequately cooling to the system with only a single fan.
Unfortunately, the Athlon XP platform doesn’t have as easy to implement cooling system as the Pentium 4. The lack of any sort of retention bracket meant that Shuttle would have to find some other way of securing their large heatsink without making its installation dangerous to the health of the core.
Shuttle’s solution worked surprisingly well; the heatsink screws into the four mounting holes and strong springs prevent you from overtightening the screws while giving you the appropriate amount of pressure on the Athlon XP core beneath the heatsink.
In order to ensure that you won’t accidentally crush your core, Shuttle ships both Athlon XPCs with a copper shim to provide a contact surface even with the height of the core. The copper shim Shuttle provides can be used with all Socket-A CPUs, whether Thunderbird, Palomino or Thoroughbred core.
The SK41G and SN41G2 use identical heatsinks, although our samples had different mounting screws – with the ones on the SK41G being slightly easier to use (see lower left). Other than that one minor difference, the two cooling setups were identical.
 |
 |
Just as with Shuttle’s Pentium 4 solutions, these two XPCs cool the heatsink and its heatpipes with a temperature controlled fan. You can select what temperature you want the fan to kick into high speed from the BIOS, by default it is set to 48C. As the temperature drops below that point the fan will spin at the lower of its two speed settings, thus decreasing overall system noise by a noticeable amount. This brings up an interesting point about supporting faster CPUs; Shuttle has already said that the cooler is designed with support for the Athlon XP 3200+ in mind, but in theory putting an even faster CPU in either of these XPCs wouldn’t be a problem. What this will mean however is that the temperature controlled fan would end up running at the higher speed more often than not because of the warmer running CPU, thus increasing overall system noise. It’s a tradeoff that you’ll want to take into consideration when picking out a CPU to pair with your XPC.
While the SK41G has a total of two fans in the system (main fan + PSU fan), the SN41G2 has one additional fan used to cool the North Bridge.
Although Shuttle originally told us they were working on a fanless North Bridge design for the nForce2 XPC, it appears that they have not been able to accomplish their goals with it. The fan on the North Bridge does contribute to a louder overall system and it does provide yet another point of failure for the SN41G2, but it appears that Shuttle couldn’t have done it any other way. It will be interesting to see if future revisions also have the fan on the North Bridge. The SK41G uses a passive heatsink on the North Bridge and nothing more.
A New Power Supply
With the SB51G (i845GE) XPC, Shuttle introduced a new power supply made by Achme, the same folks that provided the power supplies for previous XPC designs. The new power supply is also used in the SK41G and SN41G2, and thus comes outfitted with the same ATX12V connector.
One downside to all of these XPCs using the same power supply is that the hard drive 12V-only connector is still around. Before the SB51G, Shuttle didn’t have a standard ATX12V connector on their XPC motherboards, and instead just used a standard hard drive power connector but without the 5V line.
The 12V only connector can be distinguished from a regular hard drive connector
by its lack of any red wires and only 3 connectors
Now that this connector is no longer necessary, you have a useless power connector that carries no 5V line. Shuttle hasn’t done much to distinguish the connector from other hard drive connectors, although if you look at it you’ll notice that it’s missing the 5V wire. The connector is useless for powering any devices as they will most likely not work, thanks to the lack of proper 5V on the cable. The sooner Shuttle gets rid of this connector the better as it will undoubtedly save them some tech support calls; but we’re proud to believe that AnandTech readers will quickly recognize and set the 12V connector aside when setting up their XPCs.
The 200W power supply found in the SK41G and SN41G2 provides a much cleaner signal than the previous unit which debuted with the SS51G. The end result is that stability is improved and the powered Firewire issues have been resolved as well. All in all, not a bad upgrade.
The Test
For this review we ran benchmarks using two CPUs: an Athlon XP 2000+ running a 266MHz FSB and DualDDR266 as well as an Athlon XP 2600+ running a 333MHz FSB and DualDDR333. Since the KM266 doesn't support 333MHz FSB CPUs we ran it with a 266MHz CPU and included 333MHz FSB numbers for the nForce2 platform to be better compared to other nForce2 setups.
|
Performance Test Configuration |
||
| Processor(s): |
AMD
Athlon XP 2000+ (266MHz FSB)
AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (333MHz FSB) |
|
| RAM: |
2 x
256MB Corsair DDR400 CAS2.0 Modules
|
|
| Hard Drive(s): |
Western Digital 120GB 7200 RPM
Special Edition (8MB Buffer)
|
|
| Bus Master Drivers: |
NVIDIA nForce v2.00
VIA 4in1 v4.43 |
|
| Video Card(s): |
ASUS
V8460 Ultra NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600
|
|
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA
Detonator 40.72 (WHQL Certified)
|
|
| Operation System(s): |
Windows
XP Professional SP1
|
|
| Motherboards: |
ABIT NF7-S (nForce2) Shuttle SN41G2 (nForce2) |
|
Content Creation & General Usage Performance
|
228
224
200
|
275
|
|
Gaming Performance
|
|
|
|
Gaming Performance (continued)
|
|
|
|
High End Workstation Performance
|
|
|
|
High End Workstation Performance (continued)
|
|
|
|
High End Workstation Performance (continued)
|
|
|
|
Integrated Graphics Performance
|
|
|
|
|
|
As you can see, the nForce2 IGP completely dominates the SK41's ProSavage8 in all of the gaming tests. It's also worth noting that the nForce2 IGP doesn't reduce 2D performance in business and content creation applications whereas the ProSavage8 reduces 2D application performance by at least 10%.
Final Words
Shuttle has indeed come a long way with their XPC line, the SK41G and SN41G2 being well made extensions of their already very successful product list.
Now that stability and usability concerns have been addressed with these latest, most mature XPCs we can finally bring ourselves to recommend them as more than just a neat product to look at.
While most power users won’t find the SK41G too attractive, the SN41G2 can very capably replace a desktop nForce2 system and hold its own with ease. Although the FN41 is clearly the slowest nForce2 motherboard we’ve ever tested, the SN41G2 is still quite competitive with just about any Athlon XP system you could build yourself.
The benefit of the SN41G2 is that you get everything you could possibly want in a desktop but in a package that’s probably not even 25% the size of what you’re used to having underneath your desk. The system is also relatively quiet; much quieter than most desktops, although not nearly as silent as we’d like it to be. Pair it up with a Radeon 9700 Pro and you’ve got just as fast of a gaming machine as you can build with an Athlon XP processor. Be warned through, you won’t be able to upgrade to the fastest GeForce FX unless one of NVIDIA’s partners finds away around the extreme cooling requirements.
Even if you’re not going to use these machines for heavy gaming platforms, they are just as flexible as any desktop you could put together – just smaller, lighter and quieter. Their excellent design is also quite attractive, definitely more so than many of today’s desktop cases.
Shuttle’s bread and butter has shifted from motherboards to building these XPC systems, and with this latest series of Athlon XPCs it’s clear that Shuttle’s bet has paid off. The hard work and extensive focus on design can be seen in how polished the SN41G2 comes across. This year Shuttle is planning on introducing even more XPCs and with new CPUs due out from both AMD and Intel, you had better believe that there will be some interesting designs in the pipeline…
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
