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Shuttle SV24 Barebone System


Date
: 11/4/01 – 01:07:41 PM

Author
:

Category
: Systems

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer: Shuttle
Price: $250

Introduction

We all know Shuttle as a manufacturer of motherboards, but recently they entered another sector as well: bare bone systems. The first result of this is the SV24, which is a very small but complete computer solution. When I first saw pictures of this unit on the net, I was amazed by the size of this unit … It is smaller than a shoebox but it carries everything needed to represent a complete system! Now that is something that quite amazes me when I come to think of it. Because I was amazed by it, I contacted the nice folks at Shuttle and to my surprise they went out of their way to get me a review sample as soon as possible. Many manufacturers should take a good look at Shuttle and offer a service as good as these people … it would make the world a better place ;).

A few days after mailing back and forth with Shuttle, my SV24 was delivered at my doorstep. After I removed the wrapping, the SV24 ‘Spacewalker’ box was sitting in front of me … Even while being boxed, the size was already catching my attention … could this be a full featured system? Hmmm …. only one way to check!
After I opened the box, I found three things inside: the SV24, a heatsink for the processor and a box with manuals, wires, cables, bolts, … and other things you might need to install the SV24.

As soon as I removed the protective plastic from the main unit, the SV24 was sitting on my desk being ‘cool’ :). When I say ‘cool’, I really mean awesome, astonishing, mind-raging, … need I say more? This is an excellent product for people who want to brag with their computer … just imagine yourself arriving at a LAN party … all your friends go like … ‘Hey dude … where’s your rig?’ and then you take it out of your plastic bag and you see all the jaws drop to the floor. Apart from LAN-dudes, I reckon that people like doctors, dentists or any user who comes in contact with clients could use this device. Combined with an LCD monitor you have yourself the perfect ‘impress the visitors’ machinery.

Now that I explained how good it looks, I bet you are interested to see how it performs, how stable it is and what the specifications are. You’re totally right … so let’s start with the specs shall we?

Page 2 : Specifications

Specifications

Let’s see what you get when you put your cash down for this unit? I bet you’ll be amazed when you see that all of this is included in such a small box ;).

KEY FEATURES
VIA VT8363A(PL133)
Supports Intel FCPGA Pentium III / Celeron
Two 168-pin PC100/PC133 SDRAM DIMM
Onboard Savage 2D/3D Graphics Engine
Onboard IEEE 1394 / USB interface
Onboard 10/100 Fast Ethernet
Onboard AC97 audio
S-video and composite TV-out terminal
Supports ATA 33/66/100 IDE Interface
Dimensions: (L)270mm x (W) 190mm x (H)160mm
Chassis: All aluminium
Drive bays: 5.25 X 1 / 3.5 X 2
Power Supply: 150W power supply wit UL, CSA, TUV, and CE requirements
Slot: 1 slot
Riser Card: 1 (with 1 PCI slot)

CHIPSET
VIA VT8363A
VIA VT8604 North Bridge
Host interface
Integrated Savage4 2D/3D Graphics Engine
PC 133 SDRAM/VCM interface
PCI interface
ACPI Compliant

VIA VT82C686B South Bridge
UDMA 33/66/100 IDE interface
USB interface
AC97 Controller
Integrated Super I/O controller
Integrated hardware monitoring controller
Power management meet ACPI requirement
RTC

CPU
Socket 370 type CPU
Intel Celeron with 66MHz FSB (100MHz FSB for future CPU)
Intel Pentium III with 100 / 133MHz FSB

FSB
66 / 100 / 133MHz

Form Factor
Flex ATX: 7′ X 7.5′

Memory
DIMM x 2, Up to 1GB of 168-pin PC100 /PC133 SDRAM

Graphics
Built in Savage 4 graphics engine

Audio
VIA audio with AC’97 CODEC

On board 1394 chipset
Lucent FW323
1394a OHCI link and PHY in single package
Complies with 1394 OHCI specification revision 1.0
Provides three fully compliant cable ports
Support 400Mb/s, 200Mb/s, 100Mb/s data transfer rate

Ethernet
On board Realtek 8139C
IEEE 802.3u 100Base-T specifications compliant
10 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s operation
Supports Wake-On-LAN function

Modem (optional)
Proprietary Modem riser Module
V.90 compliant

Expansion Bus
1 x PCI
PCI 2.2 specification compliant

I/O
Built in VIA 686B
Support 1 UART for Complete Serial Ports
Support 1 Multi-mode parallel port
Support 1 Floppy Disk Controller
Support PS2 keyboard and mouse

H/W Monitor
Built in VIA686B
Voltage, Temperature, Fan Speed Monitor

IDE
Ultra DMA 33/66/100 mode
PIO mode 4
2 IDE ports

Power Management
APM 1.2
ACPI 1.0

BIOS
Award PnP BIOS
DMI 2.3
2Mb flash memory

Back Panel Ports and Connectors
1 x PS/2 Keyboard
1 x PS/2 Mouse
1 x VGA port
1 x Serial Port
1 x Parallel port, supports SPP, ECP, and EPP mode
2 x 1394 ports
1 x S connector
1 x Composite connector
2 x USB ports
1 x RJ45 port
1 x line-in connector
1 x line-out connector

Other connectors and jumpers
2 x fan connectors
2 x Front Panel USB Connector Header
Front side line-out and mic-In Header
CD Audio in connector
Clear CMOS
1 x ATX power connector

Others Feature
CPU Voltage Auto Detecting (CPU PnP)
Support Suspend to Ram
Power on by Ring
Wake-On-LAN

The SV24 is housed into a high quality aluminium case finished with chrome buttons and thumbscrews in order to make it easy to add or remove computers parts. Besides the easy to handle part, the aluminium makes sure that this already light computer system becomes even lighter :p. No reason to complain heh?



The heart of the SV24 is based upon the FV24, which is a mini-ATX motherboard with several onboard solutions: LAN, video, sound, USB, FireWire, … you name it. This motherboard is not the best choice when you only care about performance because it shares a lot of resources in order to put everything onboard, but performance was not Shuttle’s number one priority when they designed the SV24. Size and mobility are the most important features of the SV24, and up to my knowledge no other bare bone system can compete with the SV24 at this moment (although I expect copy-cats to turn up soon …).



The FV24 has many onboard features, but some parts will have to be installed separately, namely the processor and the memory. The SV24 supports both Intel’s Celeron and Pentium III cpu’s, using a front side bus of 66MHz, 100MHz or even 133MHz. There are two 168-pin memory slots onboard as well, supporting a total of 1GB PC100/133 memory. As I mentioned already, Shuttle includes a heatsink with the SV24, because not all heatsinks will fit (due to the limited space). This is good because you don’t want to lay down $$$ to find out you have to buy another heatsink as well …






The graphics part is handled by the onboard Savage4 Pro video card. This isn?t the best video solution out there, but it is more than powerful enough to run any office application. Heck, a DiVX will run fine on it as well … Just don’t expect to play Q3A at 1600x1200x32-bit because something tells me that it won’t run very fluently … maybe that’s because the Savage is using the RAM as video memory. You can adjust the video memory size in the BIOS to 4MB, 8MB or even 16MB. I ran mine at 8MB since that’s more than enough for business software. What I did notice is that the ramdac of the onboard video card isn?t all that powerful. Resolutions above 1024×768 are not as sharp as I would like them to be … so I suggest you stick to 1024×768 as optimal resolution. If you really want higher resolutions or a better framerate in games, I suggest that you add a PCI GeForce2 MX or something alike.
The SV24 comes with an additional PCI expansion slot and a PCI card riser that lets you install the card horizontally (it won’t fit in the normal position). Good thinking Shuttle … Of course you can also use the PCI slot for other cards … just use it at your own needs.



I told you about the onboard video, but that’s not all the SV24 has to offer … It also comes with onboard sound (with connections at the front and at the back to make it easy to plug-in a set of headphones or a microphone). The onboard is based upon the AC97 unit, embedded into the VIA chipset. Don’t expect crystal clear sound with Dolby Surround options as you will be disappointed … What can you expect? Occasional mp3s, movies, windows sounds, … will work fine. Just don’t compare it to the higher quality cards (and higher priced too) like the Creative Audigy card.



Next onboard feature I want to discuss: Ethernet! Indeed, the SV24 is using the VIA Ethernet solution to offer you a 100Mbit LAN option. I have been using it in order to connect to my home network and it works just as good as a separate NIC.

Since you are not getting much expansion room on the inside, the engineers made sure that you have a truckload of expansion options on the outside! The ‘Spacewalker’ has 4 USB ports (two in the front, two in the back) and two FireWire ports at the back. This means you can hook up webcams, joysticks, cd-rewriters, ZIP-drives and even hard drives to your computer … Of course you also get the default ports: serial, parallel, VGA, PS/2 (both keyboard and mouse), line-in and line-out for the soundcard, …

For those of you who use their computer as a DVD player, I have some good news for you: the SV24 has a TV-out feature that  let’s you connect your computer to your TV so you can play DVD movies on your big screen TV without having to buy an additional standalone DVD player. Since the SV24 is so small and silent, it can be integrated in your living room without much hassle and it looks good in there as well ;).



Those who read the previous paragraph may have noticed I said the SV24 is silent … well it is. The unit is power by a 150W power supply and that one doesn’t make any disturbing noises. The case cooling is handled by a 60mm fan and although you can hear it run, it is not what I would call loud. Any movie or mp3 song would easily mask it.



Because the unit is so small, you need custom made IDE and floppy cables (very short ones). Luckily Shuttle includes those because a normal IDE cable would block a lot of space in such a small casing. What grabbed my attention is that the IDE cables only offer connections for one IDE device … the motherboard does support two devices per channel, but there is no room for more than one device per channel anyway, so why install more connectors on the cable?



The hard drive is installed onto a removable tray, which makes it dead-easy to add/remove the drive. Of course the tray is put in place with sweet thumbscrews … as expected.



That covers the specifications of the SV24 … let’s see how easy it is to install it.

Page 3 : Installation

Installation

This part won’t be too complicated … Here goes …

After you open the box, take out the SV24 Spacewalker. Remove the plastic wrapping that protects it from scratches, dust, sticky fingers and more ;). After that hard task is completed, you remove the three thumbscrews to release the case cover. Now install the cpu into the socket, apply to included paste and install the heatsink (again included in the package).






Once you processor is in place, you can install the memory sticks. Afterwards, connect the IDE cables to the motherboard that will be hooked up to the dvd-rom and the floppy drive. Since I already bolted the hard drive to the removable tray, I just had to slide it in and connect all the cables.



Almost done now … the only thing left to do is hook up all the devices to the power supply. There is one molex connector that sits in a 90 degree position because otherwise the cable would be blocking the case cover … these guys thought of everything didn’t they?



That concludes the installation part for me … now you just have to power the unit up and install Windows and you’re all set. The SV24 comes with a cd that has all the software, drivers and more you might need to get the system up and running.



The main question is … how does it perform? Some factors need to be taken in mind while discussing this …

Page 4 : Performace

Performance

As expected the SV24 isn?t a speed devil … but that was to be expected with all this onboard hardware. Speed is not the main goal of the SV24 either because what they wanted to achieve with this unit is a small, compact system that can be integrated into an office, living room, … without taking up 5 feet space and generating 150dB of noise … and in my humble opinion Shuttle succeeded at that goal.

It would be silly to compare the SV24 to our test systems because all those systems use 1.4GHz cpu’s or even faster. Also they are equipped with GeForce 3 cards and most of them use DDR memory or RDRAM as well … It would be like comparing apples to oranges … unfair and unrelated to each other.

The SV24 is very capable of running any office applications like Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, Outlook, Photoshop but also multimedia applications like WinAmp, Media Player. I played some DiVX movies and some mp3′s with the setup and all went fine without hick-up’s. Games are another section … 3D shooters like Quake 3 are not what you want to use this rig for … but more static games like Red Alert, Starcraft and other games that don’t require high-end video cards will work just fine.

When I ran Sisoft memory benchmarks, I got results of 140MB/s throughput … when we know that a good DDR system reaches 800-900MB/s with ease, you can understand that a one-on-one comparison would be silly. The SV24 is no match for those powerful setups …



To conclude the performance talk, I can say this: the SV24 will perform good to run Windows stuff, but in 3D gaming environments it will fall behind the power monsters currently available. For the audience to who it is targeted, the Shuttle SV24 will perform as needed, so all in all I can say that I am satisfied with the performance. Those of you who thought about overclocking this unit, forget it … first of all the motherboard doesn’t support it, and you can’t install high performance heatsinks anyway. Add to that a 150W PSU and it is clear that the SV24 is not overclockers minded (again it is not intended to be overclocked either …).

Page 5 : Conclusion

Conclusion

The Shuttle SV24 ‘Spacewalker’ has fulfilled all my expectations as it offers a very high quality finishing and it is more than powerful enough for office applications and even for some occasional gaming and movie watching. If you are buying it as a replacement for your 1.3GHz AMD system with a GeForce2 GTS, you will be disappointed for sure, but if you buy it to be used as an internet machine that will also be used for word-processing or to manage a database in an office or something alike, you will appreciate the size and also the looks of this unit. What I would like to see in the future is a system like this that can take AMD processors, as the Intel P3 and Celeron cpu’s are not the most powerful processors out there … add to that DDR ram support and the nForce chipset from nVidia and maybe you can use it as a full force gaming machine with the size of a shoebox :). Only time will tell if we can expect a ‘Spacewalker 2′ …

Good

- Compact
- Aluminium case
- Onboard LAN, FireWire, USB, Video, Audio, …
- Great for use in the living room, doctor practice, …

Bad

- 3D performance
- No AMD version