Setting a new standard once again, Shuttle has released the SFF industry?s first NVIDIA nForce4 based system, the SN25P. With support for AMD?s Athlon 64/FX Socket 939 CPUs, this represents the latest and most advanced AMD SFF system released to date. Although similar systems from other SFF manufacturers are in the pipeline, Shuttle has once again beaten them to the punch with the launch of the SN25P.

The P style case continues the evolution of Shuttle?s product line toward a slightly larger chassis with multiple fans (as also seen in the SB81P and the SB95P). This new style incorporates stealthed drives with an integrated 8-in-1 media card reader.

The merits of the AMD Socket 939 have been covered well in previous articles, and therefore we?ll focus primarily on the SN25P itself. In short, the price-to-performance ratio of the AMD 64-bit microprocessors has made it the enthusiast?s CPU of choice. Will Shuttle?s newest SFF push the processor to it?s potential?

The SN25P is a literal showcase of the latest chipset, cooling, and styling to hit the mainstream computing market. The move toward PCI Express (PCI-E) has finally come to the world of AMD based SFF?s, and is seen here with one PCI-E 16x slot and one PCI-E 1x slot. Naturally, Shuttle has paired this with a 1 GHz front side bus (FSB) with HyperTransport, dual-channel DDR 400 capable of supporting 2 GB of ram, integrated gigabit LAN, firewire 400, 8 channel audio and a hardware firewall. The chassis is sufficiently spacious to allow three 3.5-inch hard drives plus a full-sized optical drive. Integrated RAID is also present.

Let?s begin with the overall system specifications:

Processor	AMD Athlon64 with 200MHz x 5 FSB clock on 939 pins SMT Socket
Chipset	NVIDIA nForce4
Memory	2 x 184 pin DDR SDRAM at 166/200 Dual channel DDR support up to 2GB
Audio	Envy24 including 96 KHz SPDIF-IN/OUT function, 8 channel of DCA support 16/20 24-bit PCM format for 7.1 audio solution
LAN	Marvell 88E1111 Gigabit LAN Netwrok Controller 10/100/1000Gbps
PSU	SilentX 350W 110/230V AC
Dimensions:	325mm(L) x 210mm(W) x 220mm(H)
Parallel ATA	One UDMA-133
Serial ATA	nForce Serial-ATA Controller Supporting Two Ports With Raid 0/1/0+1/JBOD
On-Board Video	None
PCI Express	1 x X16, 1 x X1
AGP	None

Front Panel Connections

2 x USB 2.0 1 x Firewire 1394a (6-Pin) 1 x Mic In 1 x Headphone Out 1 x Power Button/LED 1 x Reset Button 1 x IDE Activity LED 1 x Power LED

Rear Panel Connections

4 x USB 1 x PS/2 Mouse 1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x Firewire 1394a (6-Pin) 1 x Audio Front Out 1 x Audio Rear Out 1 x Audio Center/Bass Out 1 x Audio Line In 1 x SPDIF In 1 x SPDIF Out 1 x Coaxial Audio Out 1 x RJ45 LAN 1 x Serial (9-Pin) 1 x Clear CMOS Button 1 x PCI-E x1 1 x PCI-E x16

A standard compliment of accessories is provided with the SN25P.

The retail box contains an extra Serial ATA cable (two are already pre-installed within the system). Since all power leads are pre-connected, you will not need any Molex to Serial-ATA power converter cables. A Molex y-adapter power cable is included for the high-end video cards that can expect to find a home here. NVIDIA RAID drivers are provided on a 3.5” floppy disk, accompanied by the NVIDIA RAID User?s Manual. All of the mainboard drivers, utilities and manuals are contained on a CD plus a glossy paper manual, motherboard guide and quick start sheet. The remainder of the accessories include a floppy cable, IDE cable, power cable, hard drive rails, four rubber vibration dampers (if you choose to install the hard drive in the drive cage), and case feet. A small amount of generic thermal compound is also included. Shuttle provides complimentary copies of Trend Micro PC-Cillin 2004 and Muvee autoProducer 3.1.

This is only Shuttle?s third P-series chassis release (not counting version changes). Combining it with the latest AMD 64-bit CPU, PCI-E and Serial-ATA appears, on paper, to be a recipe for success.? But can the system live up to the hype?

next >

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• External Design - Part I (1 of 9)
• External Design - Part II (2 of 9)
• Internal Design (3 of 9)
• Cooling (4 of 9)
• Socket & Chipset (5 of 9)
• BIOS (6 of 9)
• Testbench Setup (7 of 9)
• Benchmarks & Overclocking (8 of 9)
• Conclusion (9 of 9)