Shuttle XPC SN25P barebones SFF PC

Thanks to the nForce 4 Ultra chipset, the SN25P is ready to accept the AMD's new dual-core X2 processors, although you'll need to upgrade the BIOS first. Other benefits of the Nvidia chipset include integrated Gigabit LAN with a hardware accelerated firewall along with Serial ATA and IDE RAID. There are some limitations to the drive capacity so if you want to use four hard disks in a RAID you'd have to sacrifice the optical drive. Alternatively, you can have a spare drive fitted to take over the functionality of one of the two RAID drives in case of a failure - although then you can only mirror, rather than stripe and mirroring.

As with previous XPCs the SN25P features a wide range of connectivity options. Around the back of the case are four USB 2.0 ports, two PS/2 ports, a serial port, a six-pin FireWire port, the Ethernet connector, 7.1-channel audio outputs, optical and coaxial S/PDIF out as well as optical S/PDIF input. The audio comes courtesy of a VIA Envy 24PT hardware audio controller which offers far superior sound to AC'97 solutions normally used. Around the front are a further two USB 2.0 ports, another six-pin FireWire port, and headphone and microphone sockets.

A clever feature that Shuttle has implemented on its recent XPCs is the external 'clear CMOS' button which makes it much easier to reset the BIOS if you've tried to overclock your system too far. The SN25P is also one of only a few SFF PCs in which you can install a graphics card with a two-slot cooler. However, there's one slight problem the SN25P shares with the iDEQ 330P and that's the lack of a six-pin PCI Express power connector. This means that you have to use the supplied extension cable to make one of the Molex connectors reach to the adaptor that comes with the graphics card. It's also worth noting that the adjoining slot is not a PCI slot but rather a x1 PCI Express slot, so if you were planning on using a PCI card with the SN25P, you'll have to think again.

This makes for a fairly messy installation in an otherwise very tidy case as Shuttle is now pre-routing most of the cables. The only cables that aren't pre-fitted are the floppy drive ribbon and the third SATA data cable. The reason for this is that you can only use one or the other and Shuttle has left this choice up to the user.

The CPU cooler is not as easy to install as the solution Biostar has come up with - it's quite an intricate system where you need to remove a plastic airduct and a fan before you can even get to the heatsink. This is fastened to the case with four screws, so being careful when replacing the cooler is a must. Act a little too roughly and you could damage the motherboard.

Apart from the CPU cooler, assembling the SN25P is quite straightforward and the hard drives are easy to install thanks to the screw-less drive rails. The same goes for the optical drive. I do, however, have one small complaint here: the drive door's spring can quite easily get unhooked and it's also not that easy to put it back again. Shuttle also offers an 802.11g wireless network option which is connected internally via a special USB header and fitted just above the PSU.