Shuttle reveals VIA Nano SFF box
FANLESS PCs usually involve intricate heatpipe systems and massive heatsinks to make up for the lack of airflow, but Shuttle's latest XS29F - where the F stands for fanless - gets back to basics by just using good old fashioned power-efficient components. Based on VIA's Nano CPU and VX800 chipset, the new pint-sized PC doesn't require a single fan inside, and its external power brick means that there's no noise from the power supply either.
The XS29F features a VIA ultra-low-voltage Nano U1700 CPU, which is clocked at 1GHz and has 1MB of Level 2 cache. Meanwhile, the VX800 chipset provides the essentials, including HD audio and VIA Chrome9 HC3 integrated graphics with DirectX 9 support. VIA also says that the chipset is capable of accelerating MPEG-4, WMV9 and VC1 in hardware.
The result is a minuscule box that Shuttle says has a capacity of just three litres and only consumes a maximum of 50W at full load. The motherboard can support up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, and supports S-ATA II storage. Plus, there are plenty of connections on the back too. These include both DVI and D-SUB video outputs, a pair of PS/2 ports, four USB 2 ports and an Ethernet port. Bizarrely, there's even a serial port on the back, too.
To introduce the PC, a VIA rep explains, "if your computer makes any noise at all it's almost definitely going to be because of the fans that are inside - those fans that are needed to keep the system cool. This guy of course doesn't have any fans, so it's a lot quieter. It's virtually noise free. The only components that make any noise at all are the hard drive and the optical drive, which don't make much noise."
He adds, "this is a huge advantage for people in office environments, especially when you have a room filled with many people working on PCs and you don't want that humming noise throughout the day." VIA also says that "SME and SOHO users will also benefit from a lower TCO through reduced energy consumption and lower fuel bills."
Meanwhile, in a particularly vicious bout of marketing-speak, Shuttle's chairman David Yu said, "The Shuttle XS29 Slim series offers small but can do it all functionality that meets VIA's design strategy of small is beautiful."
No pricing has been announced for the Xs29F yet, but it's currently scheduled to be released in June. µ
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It's funny how these PR guys only repeat the company's mantra all the time. If they ever had to do some basic maintenance on a PC they would know that the best thing about going fanless is that every time a fan jams, the whole machine crashes. When you gotta keep a few tens of computers running, that makes a HUGE difference on your maintenance bill.
Is that a capacity of three litres of megabytes, or just three litres of bytes; perhaps three litres of megahurtz?
Half the processing power of a Mac Mini and still a lot bigger, and the Mini has been around for how long? Shows the importance of Steve Jobs andf that Taiwan just can't fugure it out.
will it play crysis?
"Pint Size"? ... Er "3 Litre" more like 5 pint size!
is a crap game.
I've been waiting for someone to do something useful with the nano for like, ever. I've also been waiting for a fanless machine that didn't have a massive cooling system. It even plays HD video. It's tiny. It's the coolest(pun might be intended, depending on how bad your sense of humor is) computer I've seen. In short, this is a must have in my world[clearing a space in the living room]. Is that a HDMI port I see?
@b
Be very careful in your assumptions. The speed at which they clocked this processor (1Ghz) makes it slower than a single core Intel Atom!
The 2nd issue is that it can't do 1080p. You'll be lucky if you can do 720p without skips and pauses. (The IGP on this platform performs worse than Intel i945's IGP.)
This would be almost perfect if they offered a dual-core Nano with Nvidia ION.
dude, it's the volume of the unit itself. of the case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liter
1 litre = 10 cubic decimetres (liter and meter in US english)
"Bizarrely, there's even a serial port on the back, too."
Nothing bizarre about it at all. Many UPS models come with only serial connectivity and a serial port is essential for SDIO on DVRs in surveillance applications, for which this machine would probably excel with a four channel USB frame-grabber. One can use a USB- Serial bridge device such as the Prolific PL2303, but it's better to have everything to hand and integrated.
Looks like Via have done their homework.
No, no, no! I'm sure it's a measure of storage or computing capacity. I'm just not sure, from the article, which thing is being measured!
Not sure if you are joking or really dont get it but here goes just to be sure.
3 Liters is the case size, it's common in the smaller mini-itx cases to compare them not just by dimensions but the internal volume, in this case (no pun intended) its 3 litres, which is actually really rather small, even by mini-itx standards.
I think I deserve a prize. Can I have prize?
@hoohoo: Go drown yourself in a 3-litre toilet bol please...
It's a know fact that RS-232 USB
I think ill die before knowing how to perfectly program & implement a usb on an embedded system.
[drag the dead body of hoohoo out of the 3 litres toilet and drown himself.]
Serial ports are still heavily in demand for embedded applications and VIA supplies some of the best kit for this. The serial port is used for setup, admin and monitoring.
I've been looking for a small, simple, no-moving-parts box to run my website on.
This looks great - although I was leaning towards an Atom 330 - based box, they seem very thin on the ground, and tend to have Ion which I don't want or need.
If your webserver is going to be doing any https/ssl the Nano will blow the Atom away. Crypto is very CPU bound and the Nano has built in cypto functions supported by Linux/BSD. For reference a 1.3 GHz Nano is 93% faster than a 2.93 GHz Core2Quad at crypto.
( http://hothardware.com/cs/forums/t/40368.aspx )
I tried to find a price on the shuttle setup at their site but no mention. Their cheapest X series starts listed right now start at $439 with Linux onboard.
I would have to go with the Nvidia Ion platform (NVIDIA GeForce 9400M) with Atom 230 Hyperthreaded, much more video power for the same price. One reviewer says it does OK on Blue Ray movies too. It may even run Crysis, for the one poster :-)
Here is a fanless Ion MOBO at Newegg for $150.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500029
Put this little guy in this case for another $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121092
A 160Gb HD can be had for $50
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149073
add a DVD Burner drive for about $25 and 4Gb of DDR2 800 for $44 you have yourself a sweet little rig for about $325
Ubuntu is a CD sized download but Windoze Millennium II OEM edition can be bought at Newegg for about $100.
So really you Shuttles little setup is fair priced and no build hassles. You got to love choices and the free market.
Those of us with CarPC's (like my Via 2ghz) know the benefit of serial ports. If you use USB-to-Serial connection for GPS, OBD, etc, the connection is opened at boot up, and then closed and opened again by windows, resetting the device.
However, actual serial ports do not exhibit this behavior. So basically, you boot up and your serial devices are ready, instead of waiting for them to initialize as windows starts.
It would have been an excellent computer for companies .... if the processor was actually better.
I doubt Visual Studio would feel "snappy" with just that 1Ghz processor or when alt-tabbing between 5-10 SAP (made in Java) windows.