Creative Labs takes on Shuttle with small barebone PCs

I don't recall that I have read or seen anything from the company about this, but it all seems pretty real to me.

The "silent" PC comes using the I845GE chipset and the ugly name the MCP51C1, or you can choose two other models called the MCP51C2 and MCP51C3 using SIS chipsets, based on SIS 651/962L or SIS 651B/962L combination. This means that Creative will target the majority of market that wants cute but not so expensive nicely packed machines.

Each machine is powered with Sound Blaster marchitecture. The C1 and C3 feature the Audigy 2 card while the C3 apparently uses a Sound Blaster Live card.

The size of these machines are very similar to Shuttle XPC designs, with the difference being that they don't have any space for floppy or a memory reader. You can get a DVD/CD inside them.

They are, in fact, apparently re-branded Shuttle machines, so the Taiwanese firm must be confident Creative can find a different set of customers to buy them.

As for cooling, Creative has invented so-called Integrated Coolant Technology that should have to power to cool things down and be quiet at the same time.

All of these machines are powered with nice stuff such as USB 2, Firewire and LAN while at least one of the machines comes with an AGP slot. We believe all have PCI ports as a sound card has to be plugged in somewhere.

Creative will likely introduce some new models that should be able to work with later chipsets others that already offers latest greatest chipsets including the Intel 865/875 chipsets.

Bear in mind that Creative Labs has many resellers on its list, so expect to see quite a few machines based on these designs out there.

There's even an official web site at the Slix Address.