Shuttle Glamor XPC SN78SH7 AMD Phenom / Athlon 64 X2 / Sempron AMD Socket AM2+ / AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 GeForce 8200 mGPU 1 x HDMI Barebone

Pros: Looks solid built and easy to handle. used as add-on to the 50" LCD Tv.

Cons: Died after 2+ yrs. After power on, the fan tries to spins for 2 seconds and thats it. taking out the dvd, hdd drives and cpu form this for my next htpc system and the rest in garbage.

Pros: The small form factor is nice and overall the box is well built. Yes there is plastic but it has been fine in use. It has been used mostly for programming and number crunching.

Cons: It failed after 1yr and 4mo. The warranty is 1yr.
Hard to say if it is the power supply or motherboard. It seems this motherboard is prone to capacitor failures on the motherboard.

Other Thoughts: I'll talk to Shuttle to see if it makes sense to get it repaired.
All in all, a disappointment. This was not intended to be a throwaway device.

Pros: Small, quiet and cool. HDMI video and fiber optic sound. Perfect for home theater or home entertainment/gaming.

Great price.

Linux (64-bit Fedora 12) installed and runs with no issues so far. I plan a dual boot system, but have not yet installed Windows 7.

Cons: The usual problem with Shuttle barebones - you need to upgrade the BIOS to get them to boot with the latest supported processor/ram. I had to purchase a cheap older Athlon x2 and scavenge an older ram stick from another PC to get this box to boot so I could flash to a BIOS version that supported the processor and RAM I wanted to use. Once you get past that step, things were great.

Optical drive eject button is not well designed and took some adjusting to make it reliable.

Other Thoughts: Components in my working system:

AMD Phenom II x4 940 Model HDZ940XCGIBOX

Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR2 1066 Model TWIN2x4096-8500-C5

Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

LG Black 8X Blu-ray Burner SATA Model WH08LS20

Shuttle PC23 25-in-1 USB 2.0 Card Reader


Components I had to buy or scavenge to get a bootable system to flash the BIOS:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ 2.8GHz Socket AM2 65W, Model ADO5400IAA5DO

Kingston 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 Model KVR800D2N5/2G

This system has no problem booting from a USB thumb drive to flash BIOS.

Pros: 6 usb, 2 sata ports. Built in vid with HDMI port is a welcome bonus for people buying this for a HTPC.
Cooling works well, and is whisper quiet. Cables are pre-arranged and tucked neatly.

Cons: Not really a con, but don't expect to play games with the built in video. It chokes on any half way modern game even on low settings. Video card IS up to the task for playing BluRay, web-surfing, or small simple games. Optical bay door is a little wanky. Single spring? for pulling door back which catches on sides.....will have to get out the emory board and free up the sides a bit.

Other Thoughts: Got this from another retailer for $99 after $20 rebate. I can't believe Egg is asking almost 2-1/2 times the price....

Pros: This is a great little media center. I had this connected to my 52" Sony Bravia KDL-52z5100 and it worked flawlessly for HD playback. It has pretty much everything you need and the on-board graphics are good enough, though I did have a Radeon HD4600 in it since I had it lying around and I do like to play WoW on my bigscreen!

Cons: It failed. Plain and simple. I went to boot it up when I woke up this morning and was greeted with nothing but a black screen. Very disappointing. After troubleshooting I believe the motherboard to be at fault. This is unfortunate, but luckily it failed 2 days before I could no longer return it to Newegg for a replacement. I guess my christmas gift is NOT having to deal with the manufacturer! Not that I have any experience with them, but it always seems more difficult to get anything done when having to send things back to the MFG.

Other Thoughts: Works great!....when it works. I'll update my review if my new one fails. I figure if two fail, then it's just not meant to be. BUT, I'm holding out hope that it works fine, I really think this is perfect for what I'm using it for and hope to be able to spend a much longer time with my replacement unit.

Pros: Excellent features; H-series chassis is very good, runs cool and quiet; the onboard GeForce 8200 IGP is good enough for normal use and provides very good hi-def blu-ray decode; supports Phenom II CPU's; HDMI.

Cons: RMA in progress; system will only run stable with one DIMM installed (in either of the two DIMM slots); with two DIMM's (of any speed, even down-clocked to slow DDR2-400) it hard-locks after POST, reboots, and fails upon restart unless BIOS reset is executed; see other thoughts (below) for minor concerns.

Other Thoughts: Questionable design decisions: the PCI and PCIe slots should have been reversed to allow for a double-width graphics card install; only has two SATA ports though it has three expansion bays; only has two memory slots, should have four (not that it matters when mine would only work with one DIMM in either slot, but never two); these design choices combined with a seemingly higher-than-acceptable defect rate put a black-eye on what is otherwise a very good feature-set; will write a follow-up review after a replacement arrives and is tested; I can live with the questionable design choices (new this before purchasing), but the instability with two DIMM's installed, in this day and age, is quite disappointing.

Pros: Much quieter and takes up much less desk space than my old ATX tower. Works perfectly with Athlon II 250 3.0ghz and 2gb PC6400 OCZ dual channel memory. Case is small but very well thought out and easy to set up. No thermal issues like I've had with other compact cases.

Cons: No S-video output for those of us who haven't gone to HDTV yet. Onboard video works great for Aero but gaming performance is less than my old PCI-e Geforce 7600.

Other Thoughts: Makes my workstation look oversized now!

Pros: Quiet, Great features, Good speed, Nice machines when they run.

Cons: POOR QUALITY! This machine ran 36 days before the motherboard failed. This is my second one of these. The first one was DOA. Newegg replaced it (a 10 day process). This one was in service 36 days before it wouldn't turn on. This is not the Shuttle quality I'm used to. I am running recommended a CPU, memory, settings, et. al. These machines just don't cut it. Not the old Shuttle Quality. I have had 2 older shuttles that have run very dependably; one ran 5 years before the power supply died, the second is 4 years old and still running strong. Until Shuttle can get their act together I would recommend you look at something else or buy the extended warranty and expect to be without your machine a lot.

Pros: Nice looking machine.

Cons: Machine was DOA would not start.

Pros: Small. Great for a jukebox pc in my living room. Looks great sounds good.

Cons: Didn't like the Crucial Newegg Lanfest ram I had sitting around. Very erratic booting, was a disapointment.

Other Thoughts: I ordered some Kingston HyperX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KHX8500D2K2/2G - Retail52152822 ram that was on the list as having been tested on this system and it works great now.Pick the right ram and you will be happy