Review: Shuttle XPC SN25P SFF Barebones Computer

The Shuttle SN25P is a toaster-sized bare bones system that supports AMD's superb Socket 939 64-bit processors, including the dual-core X2 CPU's. With a 350 watt power supply, it has plenty of power for the three internal drive bays as well. With the availability of budget single core and fast dual core socket 939 processors, the SN25P can be mid priced and fast or high priced and very, very, fast.

The Shuttle SN25P is a stylish, yet reasonably priced way to run the AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ dual-core 64-bit processor. Even without multithreaded software, the AMD 64 will still let you run a heavy background process while still having a complete processor core dedicated to your foreground activities. The addition of an X2 CPU turns this little box into the next best thing to your own portable supercomputer.

Speed for your desktop apps and throughput as a server don't adequately describe a dual-core AMD 64. Responsiveness is always having two CPU cores for your next request to choose from. On the other hand, perhaps running a server and a desktop is the perfect niche for this box, when equipped with the X2.

This system is fairly quiet, lightweight, and fits almost anywhere. It's weak point is probably I/O expansion; it has a single PCI Express x16 slot. When you add that hot new video adapter, your slots are full. But the single slot is reasonable -- they had to sacrifice something to fit all those drives into this tiny box and still leave room to install the components. All in all, it's a good tradeoff.

While there is adequate room to work inside this toolless case, you'll be better off if you buy the smallest parts you can find. You don't want an extra inch in your DVD-RW drive, for example. Nor will you want to stick a giant heat sink in it.

With the three internal 3.5" drive bays and onboard RAID, this is a box that begs to be a server in its spare time. The controller supports RAID-1 and RAID-0. Further boosting its server credentials, gigabit ethernet is built-in.

Better still, it uses off-the-shelf components, meaning you can modify it as you wish. Of course, that is much of the point of a bare bones system.

In summary, this is a high-end desktop, when mated with the right CPU, in a fraction of the space of a full-size machine. Configured with an X2 dual core processor, it's not particularly cheap, but then there is little to complain about. And, you certainly won't be embarrassed taking it to LAN parties.

Alternatively, and considerably cheaper, is the Athlon 64 3000+ CPU. It's fast, cool, and also quite overclockable.