Shuttle XPC SN85G4 V3 SFF Socket 754 Barebones Computer Review

The Shuttle XPC SN85G4V3 system is a roughly cube-shaped small form factor computer with built-in motherboard, power supply, sound, and LAN. It's easy to set up; all you need to do is add a Socket 754 CPU, a stick or two of DDR memory, an AGP video card, and disk drives. It's a quiet and economical way to own a portable, yet very powerful, LAN party-capable, 64-bit AMD system.

The Socket 754 platform is AMD's inexpensive entry point into their line of 64-bit, high performance processors. If you want to save money on an Athlon 64 or Sempron 64 system, the Socket 754 is the place to start.

A good foundation for the Socket 754 is the Shuttle XPC SN85G4V3 barebones system. This little Shuttle box is fast and easy to build. The cables are all pre-routed and labeled and the drive cage is removable, further simplifying the process. Even a first-time system builder should have little trouble setting up this well-designed system. It has a pretty smooth interior so you probaby won't even cut yourself, unlike some systems.

With its Nforce3 250 based motherboard and separate 8x AGP video slot, this small computer is a match for most any desktop system. Note that you should make sure the video card you buy for this box only requires a single slot!

Like most modern systems, this box supports SATA drives and SATA RAID in addition to traditional IDE drives. RAID levels supported are 0 (striping) and 1 (mirroring). Unfortunately, to use RAID, you'll have to remove the memory card reader to make room for the second drive. Forget about RAID in this system.

The SN85G4's liquid cooling system, 'Integrated Cooling Engine (ICE)', built into the XPC is reasonably quiet and effective. It uses a heat pipe to transfer heat from the CPU. Copper tubing filled with distilled water then transfers the heat to a radiator. A speed controlled 92mm fan then cools the radiator. This fan also provides the case with a hot air exhaust system.

The 'Smart Fan' system lets you select temperature thresholds at which the system will turn up the fan speed, when necessary. This is a decent tradeoff between proper cooling and minimal noise. The BIOS also gives you access to plenty of overclocking controls, including CPU core voltage.

The system comes with a 240 watt power supply. If you stay away from the ultra high-power video cards, then there's surely enough power for this tiny box with it's two I/O slots, two memory slots, and two drive bays. (A 3.5" hard drive bay and a 5.25" optical drive bay.)

The box comes packed with the usual manuals, driver CD, screws, power cord, an IDE cable, a SATA cable, and some thermal paste. Basically, everything is included that you'll need (except for CPU, memory, video card, and drives) to make a complete system.

With it's sleek design, light weight aluminum case, diminutive size, and excellent performance, the Shuttle SN85G4V3 will be as much at home at a LAN party as it will be at, well, home. You'll have no trouble finding a snug place to put this impressive little box.