Shuttle SG33G5: Black Beauty or Black Sheep?
by Matt Campbell on December 13, 2007 12:02 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Final Thoughts
The Shuttle SG33G5 is a nice overall package, and follows in the footsteps of previous systems. It's small, attractive, and displays good stability over the range of testing performed. Shuttle also does a great job with the photo-rich quick guides, and "user experience" out of the box is quite good. The "ICE" cooling system did its job consistently, and noise under most conditions is acceptable.
However, it does seem as if the SG33G5 is a bit of a misfit. If you're in the market for a home theater PC, the SG33G5M has the additional functionality of a front panel display and a remote control for only $70 more (MSRP). If a small form factor gaming rig is more your speed, then the integrated video of the G33 is useless, and performance will be limited unless the power supply is increased and BIOS options expanded.
The additional downside here is that, as a proprietary power supply, replacement is costly. Should your supply fail, or if you wish to upgrade to a larger model, you're stuck with the OEM replacement parts. At the time of writing, the PC40 (250W) is $62 at Newegg, plus shipping. The PC50 (300W) is a whopping $93, and still doesn't have a 6-pin power cable - you'll have to step up to the PC55 for that, a 450W supply for $99.99. At these prices, one of the more enthusiast-geared systems might be better - the SP35P2 Pro or the new SX38P2 Pro are worth a look.
The SG33G5 is a solid system and may have some niche applications, but in general, there are better options available within the same product line. The real question is whether you should even look at an SFF system. They're nice looking, but long-term stability is something that definitely concerns us, based on past experience - reliability beyond the 18 month mark is spotty at best. Shuttle offers a one-year warranty, but that's hardly sufficient for a case/PSU/mobo combo that costs $300 (or more on higher spec units).
A 3-year extended warranty is available, but that appears to only cover one (yes - one!) repair and/or replacement. Many motherboards come with 3-year manufacturer warranties, and we'd like to see the same for relatively expensive SFFs. As far as long-term reliability, that's unfortunately something we can't easily review. Some designs do better than others, but a longer warranty would at least offer a solution for those designs that might have higher than normal failure rates.
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complectus - Thursday, December 13, 2007 - link
What is the point of showing graphs of performance figures without anything to compare them to? Are we supposed to have committed to memory a range of Cinebench results so we know where this product stands?JonathanYoung - Thursday, December 13, 2007 - link
I, too, have had negative experiences with Shuttle. One of the worst offenders was their KM400 model. On paper, it supported 333MHz FSB Athlon XPs, but I never found one that could. It was obviously a Shuttle problem because 1) regular ATX KM400 boards supported 333MHz AXPs and 2) there were tons of other users who had the same problem (there was a huge thread over at Sudhian for awhile).To sum it up, Shuttles look nice and appealing, but their QC leaves a little to be desired.
Flunk - Saturday, December 15, 2007 - link
I have a shuttle with a KM400 chipset too and it is currently working just fine with a barton 2500+ processor. One thing though, the board has a physical jumper on the board that you must set to change the FSB, it is listed in the manual. Perhaps you have a similar issue?retrospooty - Thursday, December 13, 2007 - link
I have a shuttle sk43g with K400M chipset. I bought it used, and built it for my son, and it has been working for well, overclocked on the 333mhz bus for over 3 years... In the Arizona heat. Never an issue, never a problem with it at all, and he is often on all day and 1/2 the night. Maybe you just had a bad one.Frumious1 - Thursday, December 13, 2007 - link
My experience with Shuttle SFFs has been ... poor would be a kind way of putting it. We sold these at the computer shop I work at for a while. All was fine for about six months, and then the stupid things started coming back! I bet more than half of them came in for repairs within the two years. Needless to say, we don't carry SFFs anymore.These were the socket 939 models (SN95G5), so maybe the newer ones are better, but they appear to use the same old power supplies. Oh, and these 939 units somehow didn't work with X2 chips when those came out. Anyway, the PSUs were the point of failure most of the time.
I'll stick with regular PCs, thanks. Cheaper, quieter, AND more reliable! Three strikes, Shuttle. You're out.
sprockkets - Friday, December 14, 2007 - link
Out of curiosity, did those systems have the Shuttle branded power supplies or HiPRO? All the OEMs seem to like HiPRO now for simple reasons: They are complete crap and cost less.But hey, I make $60-$240 labor having to replace the power supply which killed the motherboard which then usually requires a OS reinstall, so I guess Dell, HP, Shuttle and others can keep using them.
No pictures of the inside? WTF?