Small Form Factor shuttle, 939, will my gfx card fit, will the psu be able to cut it?

I have a full sized case which has everything apart from a PSU and motherboard, so today i thought i may go down the shuttle route, I am preferably after soc 939 and pci-e with nf4 , i have seen the sli shuttle but i wont be needing that. i have a 7800gt, so that ideally must fit inside the shuttle, I have 2x200Gb hard drives. Will this perform the same/better than a fully sized system.

i have also seen that Silverstone make just the case, and it has the option to fit any micro atx motherboard to place inside it, not only that, it also has the option to fit a fully sized psu in there.

i need some advice, links to good shuttle motherboards etc? cheers

 

Depends what you want, if you don't see yourself upgrading for a while and want a smaller footprint Shuttle SN25P or similar would probably be a good choice. On the otherhand it may work out more expensive than micro atx.

 

yer cheers, well i dont see myself upgrading for a long time, i just have a few questions i need answering before i purchase the shuttle

will my 7800gt will fit inside a shuttle?
will a sound card be able to go in to?
will the supplied PSU be good enough?

how noisey are we talking?

 

Yes, yes, yes, and quieter than the standard Chieftec/chenming case. Not much, but quieter.

I would suggest to you the Shuttle ST20G5. It's the standard Shuttle single-fan cooling setup, and has PCI-express 16x, and old-school PCI. It's got a two-port onboard SATA controller, but it doesn't look like it can do RAID. The PSU uses a large fan built into the side of the PSU for cooling, so the loudest component in your system will probably be your video card.

 

ah cheers i'll take that into consideration, i have just read some reviews on it, and it dosnt seem to good, firstly its ATI 200 chipset which i dont really want, yes it has a PCI slot, so i could wack a sound card in, but it is right next to the gfx port and having both in could cause interference so i think i'll still go with the sn25p


looking around i have just spotted the scan isotope barbone which looks v intresting

 

I'm using the shuttle ST20G5 for our HTPC section, and I must say I couldn't be happier with it. You can drop in any single-slot cooled video card, plus have a good PCI slot to put anything else into. Not to mention, the onboard sound for the unit is really, really good. May wish to give it a look! It IS radeon 200xpress chipset, though, as opposed to NF4U.

We looked into using the SN25P, but it unfortunately only comes with a 1xPCIe and a 16xPCIe expansion, instead of having a standard PCI and a 16xPCIe. That will screw up any hope you have for a soundcard...and they don't advertise it too much, so you have to be careful.

 

yes true, but they do know that which is why they give you 7.1 creative envy or something, which can support higher res. i shall look into the model you suggested , cheers

 

A 7800gtx will work just fine in the smaller st20g5 (I think it even looks better then the sn25p) If you hold off I bet shuttle will be making something with the newer nforce4 chipset.

 

I have the SN25P and the onboard sound is actually pretty good. Obviously you can't do an A/B test, but it sounds better than the onboard that i was using on my previous board.

 

It's still AC97, like with all NF4s. /shudders

 

Really is a pet hate of yours isn't it?

 

Makes all the right noises so its fine with me

 

Like you cant imagine. AC97 has the audio fidelity of a baby crying whilst someone runs their nails down a blackboard. And it has no Dolby! NO DOLBY!! How can you people live??