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Shuttle XPC ST20G5 (Socket-939)

By Vincent Chang - 8 Jul 2005

ST20G5 Interior

ST20G5 Interior

Compared to the larger volume of Shuttle's P series of chassis, the interior of the ST20G5 may seem rather cramped. This can both be a drawback or an advantage, depending on what you use the SFF for. The slightly smaller footprint of the ST20G5 could see it ensconced in an unobtrusive corner of the living room while those who regularly bring their systems for LAN parties will appreciate the lesser burden. Obviously, one immediate drawback of the smaller chassis is that the ST20G5 can only fit one 5.25-inch optical drive and up to a maximum of two 3.5-inch drives. Also, unlike the P series, there is no built-in card reader so that could be another minus. Finally, while installing a floppy drive may seem like a waste of space, especially considering the constraints of the G5 chassis, those who intend to use a SATA hard drive may just have to do that since the included SATA drivers comes in a diskette.

Aligning the eject button of the optical drive to its chassis counterpart shown here was a hit and miss affair. We recommend that you test it out before closing the casing and calling it a day.

Here we have a fully loaded drive cage, which is detachable from the main chassis for easy installation. The cage has enough screw holes for a variety of drives but this again calls for trial and error, as your drive may be longer or shorter and the wrong option will not fit. Unfortunately, we were only successful on our 2nd attempt during our installation as we chose the wrong one.

The height allowance for the DIMM sockets (dual channel, max of 2GB, DDR400) is quite limited due to the placement of the 240W power supply and users should note that before getting those fancy heat spreader RAMs or fancy ones with coolers and such.

The ST20G5 comes with 1 PCIe x16 for graphics and a PCI slot. Do take note on the orientation of the PCIe x16 slot, which limits the discrete graphics card choices strictly to single slot design. While the Radeon Xpress chipset has integrated graphics, it is equivalent to the low-end Radeon X300. Users are allowed to choose which graphics (onboard or discrete) to use in the BIOS. However, why not use both? With a discrete ATI graphics card, users can enable ATI's SurroundView, and combine the outputs of both onboard and external graphics to power multiple displays. The frame buffer size (maximum of 1GB) and the core frequency (either 300 or 350MHz) for the integrated graphics can also be set in the BIOS.

The core of the ICE technology used by Shuttle for its newer SFFs is the heat pipe based cooler shown here. Heat from the CPU is redirected through the pipes at the back of the chassis, which is then cooled by a 92mm smart fan. This smart fan can be controlled via the BIOS, where users are given the choice of built-in profiles like Ultra Low or they can be triggered according to pre-defined temperatures. We found the default settings quiet enough for us but users can experiment with the 'super silent' Ultra Low settings. System temperatures too were stable and hovered at a very healthy range of between 40 and 50 degrees in our labs.

Besides the integrated graphics from the Radeon Xpress 200 chipset (RS480), the FT20, which is the actual name of the motherboard used in the Shuttle ST20G5, has a Southbridge provided by ULi. ULi also provides the SATA RAID support found in the ST20G5. Meanwhile, the other onboard features available in typical motherboards are present here. Gigabit Ethernet is available thanks to a Broadcom 5751 Ethernet Controller chip. The FireWire support is enabled by the VIA VT6307, while the audio subsystem is excellent for an SFF with the capable HD Audio Realtek ALC880 CODEC (supports a 7.1 speaker setup).

The NorthBridge of ATI's RADEON Xpress is cooled by a small heatsink and fan. There is also a passive heatsink for the SouthBridge as shown here.

Installing the processor and the cooler was quite simple. Similarly for memory and a separate graphics card. Fixing the other drives (optical, floppy, hard disk) to the detachable drive cage was also relatively straightforward once we found out which screw holes to use. The main difficulty was attaching the power and SATA connectors to the devices after that. There was limited space at the back of the chassis that made connecting the cables an exercise in finger dexterity. Shuttle had some form of cable management for the G5 chassis but it was sadly not as refined as that found in the P series. Suffice to say that impatient users may get their fair share of stubbed fingers.

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