Thoughts and rating
The SB61G2 is Shuttle's vision of a truly high-performance small-form-factor PC. By borrowing heavily from the new Springdale chipset, the SB61G2 is able to amalgamate some of the more desirable features into the cute little package. The most notable of these, in our opinion, is the inclusion of direct S-ATA support stemming from the ICH5 SouthBridge. The lack of space in the SB61G2 is almost perfect for the thin, slinky S-ATA cables. Additionally, great care has been taken with the placement of various headers and ports. Shuttle have learned how to make a decent SFF PC via trial and error, and we feel as the present iteration are pretty damn good with respect to design.
A wealth of features help keep the XPCs high on the specification list. We expected the usual gamut of USB2.0, Firewire and S/PDIF support, simply because we'd seen it before in previous XPC models. Now with Intel's new 82865G graphics on-board, we'd have hoped for some kind of video-out connectivity. It's almost criminal to waste the portability nature of the XPC without some form of external video output. Without wishing to carry on a one-man tirade, but the Intel Extreme 2's 2D ability is not what we'd happily settle for on a regular basis. Do yourself a favour and get a dedicated AGP card. The slot is there, you might as well use it.
Performance-wise, the SB61G2 didn't disappoint with a discrete Radeon 9800 Pro hogging the AGP port. Performance was just where we'd have put it beforehand, that is, sandwiched between the Canterwood and i845PE (200FSB) chipsets. The very fact that such performance can be attained from such a little package is a bewildering thought. You can add whatever extra the cube doesn't feature by utilising the single PCI slot.
The Shuttle XPC series carry on their aim of providing desktop performance in a designer cube. Pretty much everything you could wish for is in place (bar the video-out). The performance bar has been put up a notch with the dual channel Springdale chipset providing the real driving oomph. Shuttle have listened to their prospective buyers by giving the user some flexibility in core voltages. All that's needed now is a super-quiet PSU fan, video-out as standard and a better form of on-board graphics, both in 2D and 3D terms. One downside of a new XPC is price. We'd expect it to retail near the £300 initially.
Highs
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The fastest Shuttle XPC yet
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Sleek looks, great construction
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Features ahoy
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Voltage adjustment
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The ultimate LAN box. Serves a multitude of uses
Lows
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2D quality is poor
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No video-out option as standard
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PSU fan is rather annoying during full load
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More expensive than a standard setup
