Shuttle XPC SN21G5 review

Shuttle's AMD Socket 939-based XPC SN21G5 has the familiar look and feel of the company's other barebones cases.

While some of the previous models we've reviewed haven't felt very tough, the XPC SN21G5 is well built. Its hinged panels, which hide the external 3" drive bay and front-mounted USB2 and audio ports, clip firmly in place. The optical drive eject button is smooth and tough, and a huge improvement over the spongy, unresponsive buttons of previous models.

The build quality is also excellent inside. The internal cage, which houses your drives, is easier to remove and refit than on other Shuttles. It houses one optical drive and there are two 3" drive bays, so you can fit two hard disks, or one hard disk and either a floppy drive or memory card reader. It's just a shame that Shuttle hasn't provided its usual excellent memory card reader as part of the package. You still get the excellent assembly instructions and all the cables, screws and thermal paste you need to complete your new PC, so it is very easy to assemble.

The SN21G5 uses an Nvidia nForce 410 chipset and onboard GeForce 6100 graphics. While these onboard graphics give the option of a DVI output, Shuttle has opted for an analogue D-sub instead. If you want to run a monitor via a digital input, you'll need to upgrade to a dedicated graphics card.

The SN21G5 supports the full range of AMD Socket 939 processors and has two DDR memory slots, which support dual-channel memory for faster performance. The processor is cooled by a heat pipe that leads to an extractor fan on the rear of the case. However, this fan is quite loud. If you plan to use this case in a quiet room, you'll probably want to fit a quieter fan. It's a 100mm fan, an unusual size, as most PCs take 60mm, 80mm or 120mm fans. But it's the regular depth and not one of the slim fans Shuttle has used on previous XPCs.

Performance was very good for standard Windows applications, with the SN21G5 comfortably beating our reference PC. However, graphics performance using the GeForce 6100 was poor. There's a PCI-E x16 slot, so you can upgrade the graphics, but there's no PCI-E power adaptor, so you'll need to buy a converter if you want to use a graphics card that requires external power. When fitted with our reference Point of View GeForce 7800 GT graphics, the SN21G5 achieved a better frame rate in our Doom 3 test than our reference PC. The only other expansion slot is PCI, so you can add a TV tuner or wireless card to your PC.

There's a fair range of ports on the front and rear, including Gigabit Ethernet, FireWire and co-axial S/PDIF. More USB2 ports would have been good, as the two rear and two front ports will soon be taken.

Shuttle's SN21G5 is a well-built and well-priced barebones case that would be ideal for anyone who wants to build a small and simple Athlon 64 PC.

Author: David Ludlow