Shuttle SN25P

“Wicked fast performer, exceptional expansion”.
That’s what Shuttle says about the SN25P barebone. We test and see if it can live up to the statement.

A barebone have up till now been for users who use their computer to for applications like Office-suites and other who doesn’t demand very much performance. Many barebones have probably also acted like an HTPC. For those who like to play alot of games and use the computer for heavier applications, people in this category haven’t had a barebone sitting at the top of their wish list.

These last few years of developing more power consuming hardware, especially video cards would let us to believe that the barebone market still targets the customer who doesn’t require top-notch performance. Shuttle has a barebone in its XPC-series who provides what picky gamers are looking for. We have looked at this barebone.

“Wicked fast performer, exceptional expansion.” Thats what Shuttle themselves say about their SN25P. Shuttle boasts quite a bit about this barebone. On the company’s website they also write the following about their SN25P:

“AMD Athlon 64 enthusiasts have been begging for this implementation and they must be prepared to be blown away by the performance and style of this SFF incarnation.”

Under the last few years the barebone/Small Form Factor market has grown considerably. Shuttle began as early as 1983 with their SFF products and call themselves market leading. Considering this and the company’s declaration of the SN25P, high expectations have risen about the product.

We’ve tested the SN25P and whether we conclude that the product meet the demands will be made clear from the test results on the following pages.

Shuttle SN25P
Processor support	AMD Socket 939 AMD Athlon™ 64, Athlon™ 64 FX Single-Core and AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core and Opteron (BIOS update is needed)
Chipset	NVIDIA nForce™ 4 Ultra
Memory support	2x 184-pin DDR-DIMM DDR 400/333 (200MHz/166MHz) Maximum 2GB
Expansion slots	1x PCI-Express x16 1x PCI-Express x1
Storage	1x Diskdrive 1x Ultra DMA 133 IDE 4x Serial-ATA II (300MB/s, 3Gbit/s), RAID 0/1/JBOD)
Back-panel I/O	1x PS/2 Keyboard 1x PS/2 Mouse 1x IEEE 1394 (Firewire) 1x Serial interface (COM) 1x GigaBit LAN (RJ45) 8-channel sound output (7+1) Line-in 4x USB 2.0 SPDIF: Optical in/out, coaxial out CLR CMOS-button
Front-panel I/O	1x 8-in-1 cardreader 1x Microphone 1x Headphone (line-out) 2x USB 2.0 1x IEEE 1394 (Firewire)
Power supply	350W
Fans/Cooling	Total of six fans (incl CPU and PSU) Active cooling on northbridge
Size	325 x 220 x 210 mm
Weight	4,25kg (9.37lbs) (net)
Other	Support fore wireless LAN (requires extra hardware)
Price	~$380

This barebone is really rich on features, for example it enables us to connect up to four SATA disks which should cover most peoples storage needs.

The box that the SN25P is shipped in is sturdy and is a sight for sore eyes. All specifications are printed on the box.

The contents is neatly packed. You don’t have to search the bottom of the box for small details.

The box is full of contents. Some components functions are at first glance not entirely clear which forces us to open the installation guide to get desired answers. Without this installation guide it would be hard to build your new system (we’ll come to that later in this review).

As you can see there are no cables for harddrive/optical drive included in the box. These are found inside the case itself which makes it easier during the installation.

Let’s have a closer look at the case!

Shuttle SN25P is slightly larger than previous Shuttle barebones. Compared to SN95G5V3 (nForce3 chipset), for example, the SN25P case is a few centimeters larger in both height and depth. The SN25P’s plastic front is a light blue metallic color. At the top of the front are the memory card readers which can handle 8 different memory card types. Below the card readers is the 5.25” slot where the optical drive is concealed. It’s opened and closed with the button visible slightly above it.

On the backside there is a, by many, eagerly awaited feature – a CLR CMOS button. It’s very convenient not having to open the case in order to reset BIOS settings. The fact that the SN25P is equipped with 6 USB ports (4 in the back and 2 in the front) isn’t bad for a barebone, either.

The Anthracite gray case is made of Aluminum, which gives a positive effect on weight as well as heat dissipation. In the sides of the SN25P there are a large number of ventilation holes, to create a good flow of air through the case and thereby keep the temperature down inside of it.

In the picture to the right we see the PCI-express slot which is going to house the video card. At a glance this space seems slightly cramped, seeing as most modern video cards are quite large.

In the left picture above is the active northbridge cooler. It has a well-dimensioned heatsink, which is a good thing.

To the right is the power supply unit, and the fact that it delivers 350W is nice with today’s power hungry video cards and processors in mind. One thing that we noticed is that the molex cables used to power the video card are a bit too short to be connected properly. As we had anticipated, this caused a bit of trouble during installation.

To the left we can see the Shuttle I.C.E (Integrated Cooling Engine) which handles the CPU cooling. It utilizes thumbscrews and according to Shuttle it’s possible to assemble the SN25P without using tools. However, we would say that it’s impossible to tighten the screws securing the I.C.E. using only your hands. You simply can’t fit your fingers, making it impossible to turn the screws. Nothing to do but resort to using a regular screwdriver.

We take a look on what the SN25P BIOS might offer.

We don’t expect the BIOS to have as many options as a DFI Lanparty NF4 for example. Just as expected, that’s the way it is, and that is easily recognized on the bus speed. The maximum value is only 300MHz. The HTT multiplier is settable between 1 to 5 and auto, like it should.

To the left we see the memory settings. Earlier BIOS versions didn’t have nearly as many settings but Shuttle has listened to their customers and equipped the latter BIOS versions with options for 1T Command Rate for example. The speeds available to set are: 100MHz, 133Mhz, 166MHz, 200MHz, 216MHz, 233MHz and 250MHz.

The section "PC Health Status" in the BIOS displays temperatures, currents and fan speeds and it is possible to set the sensitivity of the CPU fan in several steps. For this review the setting "Smart Fan" has been enabled throughout all the tests. One fun feature is that you’re able to set the intensity of the LED in the power on button. It might well be that you want to lower the intensity or even shut it down completely if you were to use the SN25P as a HTPC.

The CPU multiplier is adjustable between 4x to 25x and "Auto".

CPU voltage is adjustable between 0,8V up to 1,7V in increments of 0,025V and of course there’s an option of letting it be handled automatically by choosing the setting "Auto".
As for the memories, the can be fed with "Auto", 2,7V, 2,8V and 2,9V. The current to the chipset is also adjustable with the following: Auto, 1,60V, 1,65V and 1,70V. To sum it up, the BIOS in SN25P has generous options for setting voltages that well might appeal to an overclocker.

With a hope of not needing to look in the enclosed installation guide, we started assembling it all. It didn’t take many minutes before we realised that it wasn’t as easy as a “normal” computer assembly. It turned out that the installation guide was really necessary. Without it, it would’ve taken long time to figure out how harddrives were going to be attached and that the CPU fan should be folded before removal, for example.

The first part to be disassemble from the chassie is the holder for harddrive, floppy and optical units. On it, the pre-mounted memory card reader is located. 8 different types can be read.

The image above, to the right, shows a detail we like: S-ATA cable contacts which are easy to get a proper hold of.

Cooling of the CPU is done by Shuttle I.C.E. which is an advanced construction with copper base and heatpipes which at a first glance seem to fill their function. SN25P has a total of six fans installed, which of course is good for cooling purposes, but comes of course with more noise and may be a bit worrying for those who need a silent computer.

There are two available PCI-Express expansion slots in SN25P. The first one is a x16 which of course will be seated with a video card, the other one is a x1. A rapid check for available PCI-E expansion cards doesn’t give much of a result. What we found was a RAID controller card, which doesn’t feel that attractive to fit into SN25P as it already comes with RAID support built in. Shortly, more products for PCI-E will probably show up. Something that could fill that expansion slot is a sound card, if you wish for higher sound quality than todays built-in solutions provide. If the video card you intend to use takes up two slots in case of a big cooler, the PCI-E x1 slot is totally worthless.

The video card used in this review is a XFX 7800GT which wants juice from two molex connectors. Shuttle SN25P has only one molex to spare after you’ve installed the DVD burner. We haven’t received any adapter to split one molex into two connectors, which means that the video card has to simply settle with one. But this should’nt cause any trouble and it’s actually quite few cards that require two molex connectors.

When the video card is fitted in its slot, we realise we’re lucky. There aren’t many millimeters left to the duct that transports the heat away from the processor. The minimal space between the video card and the duct is marked on the image above.

All cables in SN25P are very exactly customised. This gives us a whole lot of trouble while installing the extra 12V from the molex to the video card. To this particular video card a extension cable is bundled. Even when this is used, the molex connector doesn’t reach all the way. We are forced to use the extension cable bundled with the Shuttle, which is meant for the floppy. The problem was therefore solved, but you’d expect more extension cables to such an expensive product. All modern video cards meant for use in these kinds of cases require extra 12V-input which is done by one or two molex connectors.

As the image above to the left shows, there’s not much space for cables in SN25P. The image above to the right shows what it looks like with two extra harddrives in SN25P.

After spending more time than usual on assembling a computer, we finally get to press the power on button. Something we instantly get overwhelmed by, is the relatively high level of noise the SN25P delivers. It’s a noise level that just isn’t acceptable for the one who wish to have the computer near their display/keyboard/mouse. But when the fans finally assume their final revs, the noise level descends to something fully acceptable for a computer standing beside your display. Further on, you’ll get more exact values for noise levels in the system.

Our earlier concern of the fact that only one molex connector to the 12V input of the video card was luckily nothing to worry about, as it worked just fine. This enables us to get going with the performance tests, but first we’ll take a look on what our test setup looks like.

Test system
Hardware
Motherboard	Shuttle SN25P (nForce4) DFI Lanparty SLI-D (nForce4)
Processor	AMD Athlon FX-55 (2600MHz)
Memory	Corsair XMS 3200XL DDR (2x512MB) 2-2-2-5-1T
Video card	nVidia GeForce 7800GT XFX Extreme
Harddrive	Western Digital SATA 250GB 8MB cache
Software
Operating system	Windows XP (SP2)
Drivers	nVidia nForce4 6.70 nVidia Forceware 81.98
Test programs	SiSoft Sandra 2005 SR3 SuperPi AutoGK 3DMark05 1.2.0 3DMark06 1.0.2 PCMark05 1.1.0 AquaMark3 Far Cry 1.33 UT2004 DOOM3 Battlefield2 1.12
Other test	Noise

As reference motherboard, we’ve chosen one based on the same chipset (nForce4), a DFI Lanparty SLI-D

First up is the memory and the CPU.

The first test is SiSoft Sandra, where we chose to run three of the many tests available.

As expected, there’s no big difference between the two systems. With all BIOS settings set to default, the CPU speed ends up at 2,61GHz, a very small overclock.

Next Sandra test is the memory bandwidth.

In this test, Shuttle trails a bit, not very much, but noticably.

Shuttle runs SuperPI 1M decimals one second slower than the DFI motherboard.

When it comes to converting one 141MB big MPEG-2 file to AVI format (50% quality, 320×240 resolution) the DFI motherboard is a few seconds faster.

Futuremark’s 3DMark series and PCMark 05 accompanied by Aquamark3 is what is up next in our tests.

Not all too surprisingly, the two systems performing almost the same. Keeping in mind that they’re based on the same chipset. It ended with a just a few points advantage for the DFI system. We’d like to call the 3DMark05/06 scores drawn.

The difference in PCMark 05 is as big as in 3DMark, almost none, but still a few points advantage for DFI.

Here’s a bigger difference between the systems, even if it’s still very small (<2%). The DFI motherboard beats Shuttle once again.

For the gaming tests, we’ve chosen to run four different games with varying preferences and ages. Unreal Tournament 2004 gets to represent the older game, which is not that demanding. Far Cry, Doom 3 and Battlefield 2 are the newer games, that require a whole lot of go from CPU, memory and video cards.

The tests shows that it’s a very close battle once again between the two systems, and it’s only in UT2004 a difference worth mentioning shows up.

But how does the Shuttle handle overclocking, what are the temperatures and exactly how noisy is it?

To the part that many consider more interesting – overclocking.

In earlier BIOS-versions for the SN25P, the maximum HTT bus frequency was 250MHz. But todays AMD64 CPU’s does that with ease. With this BIOS version we’ve used in SN25P, FN25S01Y, the maximum frequency is 300MHz which always comes in handy while overclocking. But does the SN25P handle that kind of speed?

It requires a small increase in voltage on the CPU to get it stable in 300MHz. It’s a really nice overclock, bearing in mind that it really is a Shuttle SFF.

So, how noisy was it then? In order to produce a fair test of the noise levels, a decibel meter has been used. A reference measurement has been made, so we have something to compare against. It has been performed in the room where the Shuttle is, with any computers off.

The noise level was measured 50 cm away from the case, in the same height. This is a probable distance you’re away from your barebone standing on your desk. As you see, it is quite noisy during boot, when the fans are all running on maximum revs. That noise gradually disappears when the fans start spinning more slowly, and we are quite impressed by the low noise it generates while running idle. The “load” is defined by the CPU working hard, a SuperPi 32M run, for example. Any tests of the video card’s fan while it’s running at full rpm hasn’t been measured, since the sound generated is not the SN25P’s own.

Nobody believes that a Shuttle is the optimal choice if you’re looking for a cold computer, and that’s true. The small case and the lack of real space comes with its downsides. It becomes really hot inside the case. But during the days that Shuttle SN25P has acted as normal computer to meet our demands, no crash whatsoever has occurred. It has been acting a Battlefield 2 gaming rig and even Battlefield 2 server for several hours, something it has done without any problems.

So, how has the Shuttle SN25P been performing? It’s time to conclude.

Does the SN25P live up to the sentence “Wicked fast performer, exceptional expansion.”?

Based on the results the SN25P has shown compared to the reference motherboard, we agree that Shuttle is a barebone that delivers truly high performance. And that is exactly what it should do, bearing the chipset it’s based on in mind.

That SN25P has grown a few cm’s higher, wider and deeper in comparison to its predecessors is something that doesn’t drag down the final score, since it has great expansion capacity, for being a barebone. For example, it swallows a full four internal harddrives, which enables it to store a whole lot.

So we won’t argue with Shuttle there. Shuttle SN25P isn’t just a well-performing barebone, but it is able to keep up with the best performing ATX motherboards on the market.

As todays components dissipate a lot of heat, it requires lots of cooling. The SN25P is air-cooled and bearing in mind the small space inside the SN25P, it’s no wonder that the temperatures has been uncomparable to bigger cases. Although it has been relatively hot, an important fact is that the SN25P has never been unstable.

Noise levels are for a barebone really important. SN25P is equipped with intelligent fan control, which makes the noise level go down when BIOS has been passed during a boot session.

Something worth mentioning is the installation guide, which is bundled, really helped the procedure of assembling this barebone.

If our video card would’ve been a few millimeters longer, there would have been big trouble installing it. That and the too short cables for molex connectors the SN25P is equipped with drags down the final grade from being a top-notch grade.

Shuttle SN25P

Pros: + Performance + Level of noise + Manuals + Supports four harddrives + Design Cons: – Heat Dissipation – Wiring – Space for video card

Shuttle SN25P is a barebone that is able to deliver impressive performance and there’s room for expansion, and we think it look’s good as well. There’s just not many downsides with this barebone, which gladly enables us to recommend it to most users.

We thank Shuttle for supplying a Shuttle SN25P for testing purposes.