Final thoughts
Final thoughtsThere's a lot to like about the Shuttle SD11G5. It's subjectively pretty, small, powerful, yet extremely quiet, thanks, in main, to the use of Intel's excellent S479 CPUs. In fact, running a Pentium M 770 with the 92mm exhaust fan spinning at 800RPM and using only onboard graphics, it's virtually silent; you'd need to put your ear right next to the unit to confirm that it was operational. This near-silent running is achieved by the lower-power nature of Pentium M CPUs and, in consequence, Shuttle locating a passive 220W PSU 'brick' externally. What's also pleasing is the fact that you can run any discrete single-slot PCI-Express card of your choice. That includes, for example, NVIDIA's GeForce 7800 GTX, making the SD11G5 a fine base for a gaming machine.
Further goodness is to be found in the number of display options present on the SD11G5. VGA, DVI (digital), and S-Video are all present, and taking in the quiet-ish nature of the XPC unit when run with onboard graphics and sound outputted through the Creative SoundBlaster chip, it's well-suited to home-theater usage.
One stumbling block Shuttle faces in marketing the SD11G5 is price. A search of online retailers shows it to retail at around the £340 mark. That's a lot of wedge to pay for a motherboard, case (albeit a stylish one), and cooler. There's also the lack of relative gaming performance from the onboard graphics. Playing any modern game is an absolute no-no, as far as we're concerned. Shuttle, though, is aiming the SD11G5 at style gurus and those interested in an ultra-quiet, powerful machine. In that respect and if you can put up with the price, it succeeds well.
Shuttle is intent on architecting a line of ultra-quiet XPCs, so this may well be the first of many. The thought of a virtually silent dual core Yonah-powered SFF is enough to whet anyone's appetite.
