Shuttle’s SN41G2 & SK41G: Two Athlon Small Form Factor PCs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 6, 2003 2:24 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
From a layout perspective, the FX41 does as good of a job as possible given the space constraints of Shuttle’s XPC form factor. The only complaint we had about the layout, other than the expected cramped nature, was the fact that Shuttle went back to placing the clear CMOS jumper behind the AGP slot.
For those of you familiar with the previous XPC designs, Shuttle moved the clear CMOS jumper to a much more accessible place with the SB51G (i845GE) in front of the AGP slot, so that uninstalling your video card wasn’t necessary in order to reset the BIOS. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Shuttle has moved the jumper back to its original position.
Just like their Pentium 4 solutions, Shuttle has outfitted the FX41 with an ATX12V power connector on-board to ensure proper current delivery to the CPU.
The board features Shuttle’s now classic 1 PCI + 1 AGP slot setup, with the AGP slot positioned at the left edge of the motherboard board before the single PCI slot. The downside to this design is that NVIDIA’s forthcoming GeForce FX will not work with any of Shuttle’s current AGP based designs; the reason behind this is that the faster version of the GeForce FX will require an empty slot to the left of the AGP slot, which does not exist in any of the current Shuttle XPC designs. The “slower” version of the GeForce FX at launch is rumored to only take up one slot, so you’ll at least be able to use that. There is also at least one manufacturer working on a single slot version of the faster GeForce FX, but there’s no word on how feasible that design is much less if/when it will be released. The ATI Radeon 9700 Pro and any other presently available AGP cards will work fine in the AGP slot however.
Unlike previous Shuttle XPC motherboards, the FX41 presented us with no real stability issues or any other strange problems. The data loss issues we encountered with the SS51G units we tested not too long ago were thankfully absent from this release and we couldn’t be happier. Stability has been improved, potentially due to the motherboard and tighter QA but also because of other new components in these XPCs – but we’ll get to those later.
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jbratton - Tuesday, September 16, 2003 - link
My advice a a Shuttle Customer... DO NOT RISK IT !There are lots of other vendors with integrity out there. The jokers I've delt with at Shuttle in the US void any warranty they claim ! Im my experience with them I can count on an unneeded flashing bios.. If thats the problem.. than your ok.. ortherwize.. you're on your own.. after a couple of attempts..forget it.. your warrantys expired !! - A Joke they play on us !