SUMMARY: After running around for most of the morning chasing ATI Crossfire benchmarks and writing our initial article, we also managed to visit some company booths. Our Day 1 coverage looks at ThermalTake, Shuttle, Gigabyte, ABIT and DFI, most of which had some very interesting products to show us.
Shuttle had a number of interesting small form factor (SFF) PCs on display, including one that supports dual-core CPUs and another that supports SLI. Firstly, the XPC SD35P2 (pictured below) is based around the i955X chipset, supports dual-core processors and features an external hot-swappable SATA port as well as an 8-in-1 card-reader and a SoundBlaster Live! 24-bit onboard audio chip.
The other dual-core SFF on display from Shuttle was the XPC SD31P, which is very similar to the SD35P2 except its got onboard graphics.
The XPC SB83G5M revolves around a media centre design. It’s based on the i915G chipset, and as you can see features a versatile front panel display (VFD) – capable of displaying things like the names of the multimedia files you’re viewing, temperature information, and fan speed. This will be controlled by Shuttle’s upcoming ‘XPC Tools’ software, but unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any photos of this in action since the final design hasn’t yet been reached.
Next up was the most interesting SFF on display at Shuttle, the XPC SN26P. Shuttle has dubbed this “the first SLI enabled SFF computer”, arguing that Iwill’s unit won’t make it to market so Shuttle has the right to claim to be the first. An interesting comment to say the least! The unit looked quite cramped, but whether or not it’s got overheating problems is left to be seen.
Shuttle offers a number of accessories for its XPC systems, but we found the most interesting one was the PN18 802.11b/g wireless LAN module. Shuttle claims a range of up to 400M, and the unit will clip onto any XPC using the ‘P’ chassis.
There’s also the PC50 300W PSU, which may be a requirement given the recent announcement of power guzzling SLI units.
Shuttle seems to be moving into the LCD monitor market, with its 20” XP20 FPD being the latest offering. The monitor seems to be great for gaming, as it boasts a 16:10 widescreen aspect ratio and an 8ms response time.
Finally, Shuttle showed us their latest lounge room PC, which comes with a remote control, wireless keyboard, and a living room friendly chassis that mirrors the design of many DVD players. They’ve also got an SFF that’s capable of running four monitors simultaneous, called the XPC G5 2000.
