Product Reviews

Shuttle has been instrumental in making small PCs the next big thing and, while others such as EPoX and Soltek have followed suit with bare-bones systems of their own, the XPC is still king. However, the problem with being top dog is that greatness is expected from each new product - so can Shuttle's new SB52G2 live up to expectations?

If we were to go on looks alone, the SB52G2 would be the clear winner, even compared with the stunning nForce2-based SN41G2. The silver fascia and matte-black casing look the business and would suit either office or home.

However, unlike recent fully featured XPCs, Shuttle is targeting the SB52G2 more at the SoHo fileserver market. Adding weight to Shuttle's argument are two Intel Ethernet MACs, one of which supports Gigabit Ethernet, providing high-performance network capabilities. Dual Ethernet MACs also makes the SB52G2 suitable for use as a broadband gateway.

The core of the system is based around Intel's ageing but established 845GV chipset, which accepts Pentium 4 CPUs with 400MHz or 533MHz FSBs and supports Hyper-Threading. Two DIMM sockets support up to 2GB of PC2100 memory, which is dynamically shared with the on-board

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Intel Extreme graphics.

Storage is a precious commodity for a fileserver, and the XPC's two Ultra ATA/100 channels and tiny dimensions realistically restrict the total number of hard disks to two. That said, recent IDE disks such as Maxtor's DiamondMax Plus 9 support capacities of 200GB or more, which still allows for a reasonably large data store. And if you need more performance, Shuttle suggests using the two free PCI slots to install SCSI or Fibre Channel adaptors to provide a more powerful storage system.

Additional features are fairly minimal, with just four USB 2 ports, six 3.5mm jacks for the Realtek ALC650 audio plus an optical S/PDIF out. There's no FireWire or TV-out, but these are hardly essential given the SB52G2's intended role.

Cooling is another important consideration for a fileserver and Shuttle again uses its excellent ICE CPU cooling system. Two large side-panel vents provide some additional cooling, and our review model was happy being left on constantly.

Another key aspect is performance, and unfortunately this is where the XPC falters, scoring just 1.35 in our 2D benchmarks. This is poor considering the test system, which included a 3.06GHz Pentium 4 (Hyper-Threading on), 512MB of PC2100 memory, a 180GB IBM Deskstar 180GXP hard disk and Windows XP. The Extreme graphics is also distinctly un-extreme, managing just 1,355 in 3DMark2001 SE at the default settings, although gaming again isn't a focus.

The SB52G2 is another well-designed, stylish bare-bones system from Shuttle that will work well as a broadband gateway or a mail server/fileserver for small businesses. However, it isn't a great performer and doesn't offer considerably more than an existing XPC with the addition of PCI Gigabit Ethernet card.