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Page 1 of 1 pages for this article Shuttle Zen ST62K XPC Review – Tranquility at Last? by Article Admin
Published: 01/19/2004
Zen? Spirituality? Tranquility? Relaxation? Buddhism? No, this isn?t Shuttle?s first line of SFF?s for Buddhist monks, but rather their new ultra-slim, quiet, and multi-functional XPC, dubbed the Shuttle Zen. The Zen is also known as the ST62K, a brand new Shuttle XPC featuring the ATI RS300 chipset powered by an Intel Pentium-4 processor.
How?d they do it? By removing the power supply and AGP slot. That?s right folks, the Shuttle Zen is the first modern SFF we?ve seen with a completely external, fanless, power supply unit. And for those familiar with Shuttle XPCs and other SFFs on the market these days, that should mean one thing. Quiet, cool operation. Check out our benchmarks later on in the review for a comparison of the Zen against other SFF?s in environmental as well as performance tests. The Zen has a few more secrets as well including a new internal drive-bay chassis, integrated power and data cabling, and an overall cleaner look with much less cable clutter than prior XPC systems. The Zen also weighs in at a fraction of its older sibling XPCs, primarily due to the lack of internal PSU, as well as a smaller overall frame and chassis. You?ll find the Zen compares well to the Shuttle ST61G4 XPC, featuring the same basic motherboard components, minus a few knick-knacks here and there. We?ll spell out the details a bit later, but for starters, you won?t find Serial-ATA on-board with the Zen. You will however find dual channel DDR400, integrated 100Mbps fast Ethernet, 6 channel audio, and of course, the on-board ATI Radeon 9100IGP video solution. The Zen stacks up surprisingly well against the competition, especially considering its size compared to its ?heavy-weight? brethren. Was the Shuttle Zen designed for you in mind? Will the ST62K provide you the spiritual enlightenment you?ve been yearning for? Hopefully we can help answer at least one of those questions. But before we begin down the path of enlightenment with the Zen, let?s pause to take a look at the overall system specifications:
With a new case design comes new packaging. Notice the Chinese character on the top right of the box, this means? ?Zen?. What a surprise.
You?ll find Shuttle?s standard set of accessories with the Zen including a rather short IDE cable. More on that later.
The Zen?s accessories are shipped in a larger box than prior XPC?s. Here?s the contents of that accessories box. Notice anything different? Looks like the ?Friendly Front Feet? have gone through a name change? We always felt ?Friendly? was an interesting choice of words for feet. Shuttle has now dubbed the front ?stands? to the Zen as ?Flexible Front Feet?. Also an interesting choice of words considering the front feet are made of aluminum and are anything but flexible. Moving on? We?ll start from the outside and work our way in… Let?s begin by assessing the Zen from the exterior? Benchmark ComparisonsBenchmark ComparisonsWith so many small form factor systems hitting the market these days, it?s sometimes hard to tell just which one makes the most sense for your particular application. Let?s take a look at a few comparisons and see how the Zen stacks up against the competition. Only a slight difference in performance, probably within the margin of error of most testing. So far, the ATI RS300 chipset is doing a good job keeping up with the Intel i865 Springdale and i875 Canterwood Pentium-4 chipsets. Perhaps memory performance will help us differentiate these machines a bit more.
Here we begin to see some serious differences. First, as expected, the SB75G2 with its i875 Canterwood chipset outperforms both the i865 Springdale and the Zen?s ATI RS300 Northbridge. What?s interesting though is that in this benchmark, the ATI RS300 chipset?s memory performance is approximately 20% worse than the Intel i865 Springdale. ATI commented that this is an artifact of the memory controller being optimized for graphics performance. Let?s see if Sandra 2003?s memory bandwidth benchmark shows similar results.
Once again, the Intel chipsets trounce the ATI RS300 in raw memory performance. Well, Intel may have ATI beat with its memory controller, but what about on-board graphics performance? This is where the ATI 9100IGP, and therefore the Shuttle Zen really shines. Here?s a comparison with 3DMark 2003 between the Intel i865G chipset with the on-board Intel Extreme 2 Graphics solution and the Zen?s 9100IGP. Note, the Soltek 3401M SFF was used for this test.
That?s almost a 7X boost in performance for the ATI 9100IGP. Clearly, the on-board ATI video solution dominates Intel?s Extreme 2 Graphics. We?d expect two machines built with the same chipset and integrated video to behave quite similarly, but the Zen ST62K and the ST61G4 XPC?s are different enough to warrant a test. We ran both through 3DMark 2003 again with on-board video to see if there was any noticeable difference in performance.
As expected, very little. These machines behave quite similarly with on-board video. What?s all this mean? The Zen?s 9100IGP video solution clearly provides far greater performance than any other Intel on-board video adapter today. For mainstream users, it doesn?t get any better than the 9100IGP for on-board video. However, for the truly top-notch speed that extreme enthusiasts demand, you?ll want to select something akin to the ST61G4 over the Zen, where you can drop in an advanced AGP card solution. Before we come to any conclusions, let?s not forget noise and temperature measurements. Armed with our noise meter, we aimed to put the new tranquility of the Shuttle Zen to the test and compare this system?s noise levels against a host of other SFF?s. See the ?Testbench Setup? page of this review for an understanding of how these measurements were taken. Here?s the data.
We have a new winner folks. Only shortly after naming the Soltek 3401M as the quietest SFF we?ve ever tested, and then quickly crowning the ST61G4, we now have an official new quietest SFF ever, the Shuttle Zen ST62K. In our testing, the Zen is the quietest SFF we?ve ever had in the lab. And let me be the first to tell you that while our testing methods are objective, any casual user will immediately notice a night and day difference between the Zen and most other SFF systems. It?s nearly whisper quiet. At 43dbA, it?s hardly louder than the spec on the main system fan itself. This actually makes sense seeing as the ICE system fan is the only fan within the entire system. Clearly Shuttle has taken a step in the right direction with their new external PSU and updated ICE Cooling System. If you can afford to live with only 180Watts of power, an external fanless PSU really makes an incredible difference. I?d encourage you to visit a local retailer and give it a listen for yourself. Very impressive. Of course, quiet operation usually comes at a cost? temperature.
While not as cool at the ST61G4, the Zen?s loaded CPU temperature of 50 Celsius is very respectable given the extreme small form factor case design. I?d also attribute the lower temperature to the far less cluttered internal cabling within the Zen compared to some other SFF?s. Finally, on the subject of size, how does the Shuttle Zen ST62K compare to the typical Shuttle XPC form factor? Here we sit it down next to the SN85G4 XPC.
As you can see, the Zen is both shorter in height, depth, and width than the standard XPC case design. This of course comes at the cost of the internal, higher wattage PSU, and an integrated AGP slot. So with all that behind us, what?s the bottom line conclusion on the Zen? < previous - (8 of 9) - next > Page 1 of 1 pages for this article Search
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