Shuttle coming back, maybe?

[porina]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12999/shuttle-shows-off-coffee-lake-barebones-mini-pcs

 

Older people may remember Shuttle PCs. I can't remember the exact date, but I owned a bunch of these in the past. At the least, I had them during the Pentium 4 era, to Athlon X2 era. They were arguably the company to successfully bring smaller form factors to mainstream, instead of desktop or mini-tower cases.

 

I suppose the nearest modern comparison would be a SFF mini-ITX barebones system. You get the case, PSU (usually similar to 1U server models), mobo, and dedicated air cooler. You add to add your own ram, CPU, storage and optionally GPU. My memory is a bit fuzzy given the time, but I think they could take single slot GPUs. This was long enough ago that I don't think GPUs needed power connectors and huge coolers yet.

 

Will be interesting to see where they go in the modern era, but they will be competing with the wider mini-ITX availability now.

[wojtepanik]

those shuttles seems like crap on today's standards, I have couple of the laying around in my work and we use them as monitor stands, they are powered by 2nd or 3rd core i3/i5...

[Radium_Angel]

46 minutes ago, porina said:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12999/shuttle-shows-off-coffee-lake-barebones-mini-pcs

 

Older people may remember Shuttle PCs. I can't remember the exact date, but I owned a bunch of these in the past. At the least, I had them during the Pentium 4 era, to Athlon X2 era. They were arguably the company to successfully bring smaller form factors to mainstream, instead of desktop or mini-tower cases.

 

I suppose the nearest modern comparison would be a SFF mini-ITX barebones system. You get the case, PSU (usually similar to 1U server models), mobo, and dedicated air cooler. You add to add your own ram, CPU, storage and optionally GPU. My memory is a bit fuzzy given the time, but I think they could take single slot GPUs. This was long enough ago that I don't think GPUs needed power connectors and huge coolers yet.

 

Will be interesting to see where they go in the modern era, but they will be competing with the wider mini-ITX availability now.

I loved them back in the day, there was nothing to compare. I still have an C2Q 6600 with dual PCIe slots and a 6pin connector. Not much for hardcore games, but makes for a great firewall box, or streaming box, etc. Glad to see them still around.

[porina]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

I loved them back in the day, there was nothing to compare. I still have an C2Q 6600 with dual PCIe slots and a 6pin connector. Not much for hardcore games, but makes for a great firewall box, or streaming box, etc. Glad to see them still around.

Did they have two slots? I can't remember... only that I had two as main systems for a while, one was a P4 with HT, the other was the Athlon X2. I actually still have a P3 model at home, somewhere, but I lost the lid, the original PSU died and the newer one I found for it doesn't fit, and some of the ram is now bad. Not worth my time restoring.

[Radium_Angel]

3 hours ago, porina said:

Did they have two slots? I can't remember... only that I had two as main systems for a while, one was a P4 with HT, the other was the Athlon X2. I actually still have a P3 model at home, somewhere, but I lost the lid, the original PSU died and the newer one I found for it doesn't fit, and some of the ram is now bad. Not worth my time restoring.

Shuttle made a number of "XPC" systems, from the very tiny K48 to the very large one that I have. The K48 (IIRC) only had a PCI slot, whereas the SX38P2 Pro that I have has dual HD slots, dual PCIe slots, a normal-sized power supply, etc.

I fell in love with the XPC line way back when they came out in the early 00s. Sold a ton of them to very happy clients. Quiet, stylish, and small. Best combination.

 

Yeah, they've been surpassed now, but they will always hold a soft spot in my heart. Never had issues with them.