A Shuttle Boxer?

[ThatIrishGuy]

First off, hello MBers, I've been lerking the forums for awhile now, and well, my 2 PCs cant even cut one wow a pop. So im thinking about getting a new rig, I was thinking either another regular/full tower or a shuttle system. The specs and the price is nearly the same. Im going to be going to college in a few months(i hope 2) but id be going to a software dev school, and well... in a school of geeks, I'd get laughted at XD. I was also worried about the heat it would cause, so input on that as well would be helpful.

Video ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130336')
CPU ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115043')
Mem ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231173')
Shuttle ('http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231173')

Mobo ('http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813131255')


BTW my current specs:rig 1 Pentium4 2.8ghz, 1.24gb ram, ati radion hd 2400
rig 2:amd athlon 1.13ghz, 1.25gb ram, ati radion 9550 both xp sp2

[Otlecs]

I have two Shuttles at home and they each run 4 WoWs with no problem at all (though they only run one most of the time). They cost me about €1000 each over here in Germany.

The most recent is a quad core system with only 2Gb of RAM that my wife uses to two box on two screens:


1 Shuttle SG33G6 DeLuxe
1 Vista Home Premium (SP1) 32bit engl.
1 Corsair 2048MB CL4 DHX
1 MSI NX8800GT 512MB
1 Intel Q6600
1 500GB Samsung 16MB SATA2
1 DVD-RW Samsung SH-52030 DIE

With both instances running in "maximised window" mode with full graphical effects, she barely clocks up any CPU at all.

In other words, Shuttles are perfectly adequate boxing rigs. I have one dual-booting into Linux too, which may be worth considering if you're going for a dev course.

However... watch out for upgradeability. You can't run a Shuttle in SLI configuration, for example, because there's physically not enough space inside the case to take two monster cards. I suspect there would be PSU issues too.

I started buying Shuttles because I have limited space in my Frankfurt pad where I spend most of my time at the moment. If space isn't a huge concern, I'd probably favour a small tower system with a more respectable PSU and more space to plug things in!

[Gadaí]

Failte a chara ;) Hrm - debated trying to continue that as Gaelige and figured I was far too rusty to even attempt it :P I'm using a Shuttle rig (amongst others) as part of my multiboxing set up and it's fine. I have that and a Sharkoon Tower box sitting on a shelf built into the wall beside my monitor and the biggest issue I hit is dust build up on the in-takes and (in the Shuttle) on the fan on the graphics card. The heat pipe cooling on the CPU in the Shuttle seems more then sufficient to keep it going without heat issues for days at a time if I'm feeling lazy. Despite it being quite an old box (I think I originally bought it in 2005) it runs two copies of WoW comfortably with the following spec:

AMD x64 4200+ processor
4 GB Kingston 677 DDR II RAM
nVidia 7600GT 256MB graphics card
Maxtor 160GB Hard drive

If there's anything else I can help let me know -

Gad

[Qlimax]

I've heard good reviews from both the Intel formfactor boxes (i.e. shuttle) and also the AMD built or barebone systems. I can currently run 5 instances of WoW, main screen at about 24 fps and the rest around 19 (havent locked theirs up), and my setup is 4 gigs DDR2, AMD 6400+ Black Edition (I hadnt suspected it wouldve been so hot, hence the reason I wished to overclock with the BE), and 1 8800 Ultra (very very hot). There are some great graphics cards out there that produce little or no heat, along with processors, with the new nm engineering. I highly recomend this route as it does not take up space when you want to upgrade your network in a whole, but keep in mind, individually upgrading the box will be more difficult and space weary.

Qlimax

[ThatIrishGuy]

I have one dual-booting into Linux too, which may be worth considering if you're going for a dev course.

how is the linux box? how much improvement have you found over windows? do you play wow on it as well?

Thank you all for your imput, its really helped, i like the shuttle cuz i could take it to lan parties rather easly(but it wouldnt be a problem to have a full size either...), but i didnt want to sacrifice performance.

[Nairi]

is there a reason why you picked the 780i board oO?

[Otlecs]

how is the linux box? how much improvement have you found over windows? do you play wow on it as well?
Apples and Oranges :)

Most of my machines dual-boot into Linux because I use them all for network development projects too. I've no incentive to play WoW under Linux (and am more than happy to have Windows as my default desktop environment), but I know quite a few folks around here have done exactly that.

[ThatIrishGuy]

which distro are you using, ive used a bunch. tike slackware, ubuntu, and kubuntu.
im super happy, i got my 2 comps to finally box together... lol. i think im going to duel lock, but idk...