Shuttle's push on the small form factor market has seen the PC finally migrate from the bedroom to become an integral part of the lounge room and entertainment set up. Capable of a number of varied roles, these include file servers, HDTV receiving boxes and media streaming machines.
Undoubtedly the single easiest barebones system we have built to date, we were sceptical as to whether or not our hardware would fit into such a tiny chassis - it not only fit, but it was incredibly easy to manipulate individual pieces of hardware without the need to disassemble the entire unit. A big plus in our and any system builder's eyes. Shuttle has made great use of space, with a sliding track hard disk bay able to be entirely removed and reinstalled without hassle. Housing size has been kept so small by removing the power supply from the case, opting to go with an external power supply contained in a black plastic case. Not only is the Zen smaller, it's cooler and quieter than previous models, almost entirely silent whilst operating care of the Silent X technology with more noise being produced by our optical drive than the CPU cooler.
Shuttle have again maintained the airflow required for such a small housing by mounting the cooler internally on the well ventilated rear back panel, stopping from inhibiting general air circulation for other hardware and helping to expel heat from the rear of the case via the copper heatsink and cooler piping - no stock P4 cooler to be found here.
Moving away from their established Intel i865 and i875 range of chipsets, Shuttle have this time focused on making use of ATI's RS300 chipset and the associated RADEON 9100 IGP integrated graphics, an alternative to the rather lacklustre performing Intel Extreme Graphics we've all come to know. While the 9100 32MB of shared memory is quite reasonable, it is clear that it's primarily designed for GUI display and basic 3D graphics usage. Default 1,024 x 768 resolution gaming will be playable at above 30fps, but bumping the resolution or anti-aliasing up much higher will impact your video performance noticeably, 1,600 x 1,200 3Dmark01SE results returned fewer than 1,000 marks. Sacrificing the large form housing also limits the use of an additional AGP graphics card, as there's no provision for an AGP device compared to Shuttle's larger brothers such as the SB65G2 featured in our barebones Labs roundup (Issue 73 page 74). So unfortunately there's no video expansion possible here unless you'd like to go the PCI upgrade route.
The ZEN ST62K supports Pentium 4 socket 478 processors in 400/533 and 800MHz front side busses and a pair of DDR400 DIMMs, clearly no slouch when it comes to crunching the numbers associated with the encoding and decoding of media this machine was designed for - this unit even outputs video in both PAL and NTSC modes. Shuttle's strange placement of the CMOS reset had us scratching our heads, obscured by two IDE ports and cables, we thought Shuttle had dropped the ball until we found the manual CMOS reset on the rear of the unit, recessed so as not to reset if rubbing against a wall or other piece of equipment. Basic, but so very logical.
It also features the most clockable BIOS we've seen to date, offering adjustments of CPU voltage, DRAM and CPU overclock of up to 15MHz each, perfect for the users looking to tweak the most from their hardware. A pair of DIMMs is easily installed, even with the optical and HDD bay installed, fundamental but this model is one of the first we've seen to address this adequately, RAM is easily pushed in without tilting or risking damage.
Shuttle's proprietary Silent X technology allows the unit to operate and stay cool and quiet through a venting system using the air pressure within the unit to stay cool. This bucks the existing mentality of systems operating at lower temperatures with the case off or with larger or numerous fans. Shuttle turns this on its head by revealing that operating the unit without drive bays filled, covers inserted or housing on will reduce the effective cooling during operation.
The unit does have a niggling fault, due to a known issue with ATI's older southbridge revision, certain devices when either cold booting or restarting the machine with USB 2.0 devices plugged in may fail or need to be reinstalled. The only known work around is to unplug the products and re-plug devices once the system restarts. This bug may be corrected with subsequent batches should ATI revise the southbridge again.
Wrapped in a brushed aluminium finish, the housing will have a tendency to get scuffed and damaged if it's roughly handled, so treat this case gently. On the up side, Shuttle does offer both front panel and single piece housing in several other colours as optional accessories, mix and match to your heart's content. Also available is an additional 802.11b wireless module, unlike MSI's integrated module on their MEGAPC 180 Deluxe (see page 48).
Granted, this unit will not be for everyone, it is crippled by the USB bug and lack of AGP support if you look at it from a gaming or extreme performance point of view. However, given Shuttle's focus on fairly non-strenuous operating, this is an excellent system with plenty of potential for anyone with a separate gaming system, or for users looking to check email and basic office productivity. Its ease of assembly is unsurpassed by anything currently in the marketplace, whilst its quietness and features make this model a must see for anyone looking to go the way of small form factor.