A great deal of effort has been put into making computer cases look impressive over the last few years, thanks to changing customer demands.
Gamers now want their cases to look cool so they can show them off at LANs, while owners of Media Centre PCs want their machines to look nothing like the standard “beige box” office PC in order to better fit their living-room aesthetic.
As a well-informed ITWeb reader, you fall into the latter category, and if you've already experimented with your own Media Centre PC, you might know that while you can get a great looking case that looks fantastic in your living room, it takes up quite a bit of space.
In summary:
I say: A little expensive, but ultimately offers a satisfying Media Centre PC experience with potential to even work as a gaming PC
Plus: Very small, looks fantastic, Intel's X48 chipset
Minus: Cost, might get a little hot with a powerful graphics card inside
Contact: Sonic Informed, (011) 314-5800
Price: R5 199
Specifications:
* Chipset: Intel X48 Express
* Memory: 4x 240-pin Dual Channel DDR2 667/800mHz DIMM slots
* HDD: 4x SATA-II & 1x ATA100
* Graphics: 2 x PCIe x16 v2.0
* Ports: 8x USB 2.0, Esata
* CPU Support: Intel 45NM 1066/1333/1600mHz Core 2 Extreme/Quad/ Duo
* Dimensions: 325(L) x 220(W) x 210(H) mm
* Ethernet: Gigabit LAN
Shuttle, a Taiwan-based company, cottoned on to this fact years ago, and has since brought out a line of barebones Mini-PCs that have done a good job of catering to a wide range of aesthetic and functional requirements.
The one they provided for us to review was the Shuttle XPC SX48P2 E. This is a beautiful, compact little chassis, designed specifically to go with the slick, clean, hi-tech design of most modern home entertainment systems.
It will look brilliant on display alongside your Blu-ray player, big screen TV and HD PVR, and it has serious advantages that can only be provided by a full-on PC. These include its storage capacity of however much space you can afford (it will cost you around R1.50 per GB), versatility as a gaming platform too, should you so desire to kit it out as one, and its integrated sound capabilities.
Since the SX48P2 E is a barebones machine, what you're getting for your R5 200 may seem a little lacking. Basically, you're paying for Shuttle's design genius: the SX48P2 E is tiny, with a Mini-ITX motherboard sporting Intel's X48 Express chipset (no AMD support at this time), an extremely compact yet respectable 450W power supply and pre-routed cables that allow you to install your hard drives and optical drives easily. The CPU is passively cooled using copper heat-pipe technology, so noise levels are reduced and space requirements are further shrunk.
The only real concerns here are the price and the heat that you can potentially generate should you choose hot components like high-end graphics cards (which the SX48P 2 can accommodate). On the price front, you need to consider that you still need a processor, RAM, hard drive, optical drive and operating system with Media Centre support, like Windows XP Media Centre Edition or Windows Vista Ultimate. It's a somewhat steep price to pay for what is essentially a pretty, petite PC for your lounge, but having seen it in operation, we would do so in a heartbeat.
Share
