Shuttle SN45G XPC
Posted on Sunday, December 07 @ 18:42:03 EST by Akira
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Well, the ABIT AT7-MAX2 finally crapped out last night so Fasha gave me my Xmas present early, a Shuttle XN45G XPC. This thing kicks so much ass its not funny. After some initial hiccups, it is ticking away smoothly. Click read more to get the full story!
So my main desktop, an Asus AT7-MAX2 has been on the fritz lately, cdrom's not working, xp install going bad, etc and it finally took a final dump last night. Fasha elected to give me my xmas present early lest I be without a desktop until Christmas (oh the horror!!)
Taking the XPC out of the box I was amazed at how small this darn thing was. And it appears that the engineers had thought of everything. Custom IDE cables were provided (CDROM cable was pre-rounded), and everthing tucks away neatly in the case. There is even a small panel that is hinged upwards near the AGP/PCI back panel to ease installation video card and whatnot.
Installation was not without trouble though. After putting the machine together it ran for about 15 seconds before shutting off. I noticed a red glow from the side of the case and removed the cover. There is a CPU Overtemp indicator on the motherboard, and it was illuminated. After disassembling almost the entire thing so I could reseat the processor, the problem continued to reoccur. Seemed the machine thought the processor was overheating when the BIOS indicated the processor was a toasty 40c, however well within operating boundaries. After carefully removing contaminants from the bottom of the cpu so the thermocouple could get a better reading and removing contaminants from the thermal paste (somehow a HAIR got stuck in it) things seemed to go smoothly. So I began OS installation....
I quickly realized I didn't have a bootable XP installation cd nor did I have a floppy drive available at the time. So, windows 2000 got installed, then Nero, then XP image got burned and XP got installed. Overall a rather lengthy process just to get a new machine up and running, but I'm pretty happy with the results.
More pictures here.
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