Shuttle's long awaited SD11G5 Pentium-M SFF

[NoiseFreeGuy]

I have been runnig the SD11G5 for 2 days now. ...

....The noise from the power brick can be heard only in a very quiet environment and when you get real close, about one foot away. Not a problem.
Xavier

Folks I've listened to the squealing noise (downloaded Mike's recording) and can concur with a few others on what's going on here.

I learned about this noise first-hand recently after purchasing an HP printer. The printer's power adapter makes the same type of squealing noise. Some component(s) inside the power adapter are obviously causing the squeal (possibly a coil or two?).

Anyhow, it's specific to the power adapter used. There are noisier and quieter ones. I have a strong suspicion that they will all develop the squeal over time and possibly even a hum too.

I called HP tech support and they sent me another power adapter (gratis).
The second one is much better than the first. It still has a very faint squeal, approx. 1/4 the noise level of the first.

[BillyBuerger]

I just picked up one of these a little while ago. Great little box. Works great with my Celeron M 350. But on the power brick noise, I notice it too when the PC isn't powered up and even when in standby. It's quiet enough that I wouldn't normally notice it. Except that when I plug in my audio or composite video out cables, the noise gets transferred through into my amplifier and is clearly audible through my speakers. The power cable between the power brick and PC has a filter on it. So I would think that would help keep the noise out. But somehow it's still getting through. I might try putting some filter on the audio/video cables too and maybe even the AC cable. But otherwise, I'm gonna have to look at a new brick maybe. I definitely don't need the 220W. And it is pretty large.

[NoiseFreeGuy]

I just picked up one of these a little while ago. Great little box. Works great with my Celeron M 350. But on the power brick noise, I notice it too when the PC isn't powered up and even when in standby. , the noise gets transferred through into my amplifier and is clearly audible through my speakers. .

It's good to hear that you like the Shuttle. I'm considering buying one.

Re: the brick noise.
It is amazing how the noise is transmitted.
With my HP printer, I have the printer in my work room along with my monitor, keyboard and mouse.
The printer power brick is in the next room along with the CPU.

If I plug in my printer brick the quealing noise is transmitted through the
cord that feeds through the wall to the printer. The printer doesn't even need to be turned on to hear the noise at the printer! It is very faint though and I keep the printer brick unplugged most of the time.

[BillyBuerger]

Yeah, this isn't a new problem with me. In fact, I think my subwoofer amp is partly to blame. I had a problem when I first got it where it picked up a bunch of noise. I almost sent it back until I noticed that it only happened when I had my coaxial cable plugged in. The problem went away once I made sure I grounded the coax.

Which led me to my most recent test. I grounded the case with a wire to the earth ground on my power strip. Although the noise was still noticeable through the amp, it was greatly reduced. So it is a grounding problem.

[jessekopelman]

Given that Newegg is now selling these for $150, it seems worth reviving this thread. If I combine it with a used Pentium M 740 that I can get off of eBay for < $40, I've got a combination that blows the doors off of an Intel BLKD201GLYL plus that iStar mini-ITX case that Newegg sells. For less than $30 more, I would have a faster CPU, nicer case, and DVI, optical S/PDIF, Firewire, S-Video out, Gigabit Ethernet, and SATA support.

The only caveat is that, surprisingly, I would not have lower power consumption. Given that my Pentium M 735 -based Thinkpad only draws 12W at idle in its docking station, I would have thought the shuttle with a similar processor would draw well under 20W. Based on the SPCR review, it looks like nearly double that. What's the culprit? Is the Shuttle MB just an energy hog, or does their power brick have unusually bad efficiency? Or is it just that without a true mobile motherboard and SO-DIMM RAM you can't take advantage of all the Centrino power saving tricks?

Still, at least the power consumption is as good as going with a BLKD201GLYL. This older solution is pretty much the hands down winner if you need a cheap and full-featured SFF that idles < 40W. Maybe if AMD chipset DTX boards ever appeared with some applicable cases, we'd have some real competition in this space.

[hmsrolst]

I don't know the answer to your questions, but I do own the SD11G5 that was in the SPCR review. I've run it so that a 750 idles at .70v using Notebook Hardware Control (and 1.05v under load). It could be that Mike didn't take the voltage all the way down at idle.

[nightmorph]

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[jessekopelman]

Okay, this is the now the new(er) old hotness. Looks pretty good; even idling <40W puts it closer to the ol' VIA + miniITX mark. And it may be more powerful, have more features, etc. Seems like a nice box for a LAN server of some kind. I may have to build one off this, with one caveat: I think months of looking at miniITX motherboards and cases has spoiled me; this Shuttle now seems positively gargantuan. Much too big to easily sit on the desk.

Ah, how times have changed, eh? MiniITX does put size in perspective.

You must have a small desk. The shuttle is less than half the size of a small µATX mini-tower and I've seen plenty of those on peoples desks. Still, when you compare it to something like a Mac Mini, it is huge.

Anyway, a mini-ITX board with all of these features is going to cost at least $250. In fact, SPCR just reviewed one! A nice looking mini-ITX case can cost serious money too. You pay a big premium for very small size. Whether it is worth it is a subjective call -- much like silent computing.

[hmsrolst]

As someone who has become enamored with smaller computers in the last few years, I'll reflect my experience. Although these little computers are very likable because of their small footprint, it's really hard to get them as quiet (silent for all practical purposes) as a larger PC. As a result, the two PC's I work with throughout the day are MoDT systems in a P180 and a P150.

The SD11G5 is pretty close if you swap in a Nexus 92mm and undervolt it. For over a year it was close by on my desk, and I found it to be just fine quiet-wise.

But I've also built systems with an AOpen Mini-PC and their Mini-ITX board. The former is just not very quiet, and the latter (in an AOpen S120 case with the fans undervolted to the max and a Microcool HSF) is fine in a somewhat noisy space (as my wife's computer next to the kitchen), but would bother me in my office. The most quiet small PC I've found is a Mac Mini, but it's not as quiet as the SD11G5.

Have other's had better experiences?

[nightmorph]

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[djkest]

I thought I already posted this somewhere, but I'm planning on getting one of these hopefully very soon, CPU will be the Gen 2 1.7GHz 2mb cache Pentium-M CPUs you can get on ebay for about $25. I'm gonna cram a high end tuner card in there for DVR stuff, not a lot of PCI-E tuner cards unfortunately.. strange they went with all PCI-E 2 years ago.

Should mention that this product is going for $149.99 on newegg now.

[MikeC]

I thought I already posted this somewhere, but I'm planning on getting one of these hopefully very soon, CPU will be the Gen 2 1.7GHz 2mb cache Pentium-M CPUs you can get on ebay for about $25. I'm gonna cram a high end tuner card in there for DVR stuff, not a lot of PCI-E tuner cards unfortunately.. strange they went with all PCI-E 2 years ago.

Should mention that this product is going for $149.99 on newegg now.

wow, those prices are amazing, considering what P-Ms fetched at one point. Still perfectly useful CPUs; I have a P-M system going still, no plans to retire that. perfect for eco/silent pcs.

[djkest]

I'm curious to know how say a 2.0 GHz Pentium M would compare to a 2.0 GHz athlon 64 in terms of everyday application speeds. I know many of the newer CPUs have really pushed the work/clock cycle equation to do more with the same speeds. Also, kind of odd I noticed they paired DDR2 with an older CPU design. If you had PC6400 which can run at 800 mhz, could you lower the timings if you only had it running at 533 mhz? Hopefully in less than 2 weeks I get they money to snag one of these.

[MikeC]

I'm curious to know how say a 2.0 GHz Pentium M would compare to a 2.0 GHz athlon 64 in terms of everyday application speeds. I know many of the newer CPUs have really pushed the work/clock cycle equation to do more with the same speeds. Also, kind of odd I noticed they paired DDR2 with an older CPU design. If you had PC6400 which can run at 800 mhz, could you lower the timings if you only had it running at 533 mhz? Hopefully in less than 2 weeks I get they money to snag one of these.

I don't think you'll notice any significant difference in speed unless you're multitasking immensely. I routinely move from an Athlon 2500+ system to a P4-2.4 (400MHz bus) system to an A64-4800 X2 system.... and I can't say there's any difference with typical apps. Differences in HDDs and video cards as well as the amount of RAM will have at least as much impact.

[djkest]

Using coretemp it looks like during most uses only one core is being loaded up, even running bioshock, I saw that one core was 4-7 degrees warmer the whole time. Perhaps it is due to current OS's and programs not being programmed for dual cores. In any case, current software does not require such a thing.