Intro :
In our Modern world it happens to often that you want all your media in one machine. You want a DVD Player, a Game system and your internet acces directly on your TV. Only a few years ago nobody could have thought about this but now it becomes reality and more and more prople are buying very small cases with motherboards and PSU's allready installed also known as Barebones. I am one of those people. Ok i have to say that i bought my Barebone because i wanted to do something new. All the time just these standart PC's can become pretty fast very boring.
Before i bought my Barebone i allready had a few components. I got them from my 3 year old Dell Dimension 4550 Performance. So i had a Pentium 4 2.4 GHZ W/O HT socket 478, 1x 256 MB DDR (333 mhz) Kingston 2.5 CL, 1x 512 MB DDR (333 mhz) Kingston 2.5 CL, 6 year old 12 GB PATA Seagate and a very nice NEC CD Burner in Black.
Equipment :
The Equipment is nothing very special. I saw more and less equipment coming with hardware. Anyway, what i liked about the equipment was especially the Power supply which wasnt in but oustide of the ST62KS. This PSU is completely silent and you can replace is very easy if it breaks.
The short IDE cable was very usefull. It was exactly measured so that it would fit perectly from Motherboard to the HD.
The second IDE Cable (Long) which schould go to the DVD drive wasnt that good. After spending alot time to getr it thorugh different holes it was stuck in my DVD Drives back. I recognized that when i wanted to change the drive. After about 30 minutes of pulling i finally ripped my DVD Drive out and was able to replace it with a new one.
The Manuals arent that good. They dont show very much information and even worse the "CPU - HOW TO PUT ON" Guide was wrong. After another 15 minutes I finally figured out how to mount the HS on my CPU.
On the Driver disc is everything you could wish for. Ok lets say everything you would realy need would fit better. The only stuff on there are very old driver's. But ok they worked fine.
Quality :
I was positively surpised with the quality. Everything was realy nice. No sharp edges, no scratsches no nothing. The cable were all long enough and working, the plastic didnt break even after a bending test. Just flawless quality. Here Shuttle did an excelent job !
Design and Ideas :
There are some realy nice ideas in this small barebone. My first point is the CPU heat Sink which turns out to be a case fan on the baclwall of the case. A small and quiet rotating fan is connected to the P4 CPU with a few Heatpipes. The heatpipes are going directly into the metallic HS of the P4. Under load my P4 only reached about 55 °C which is pretty nice for one of the old Northwoods in a barebone this small. Anoter very nice and inventive idea was the one with the HD. It is suspended it its own "Changeable" cage under the DVD Drive. You can change the HD with this invention in a matter of seconds without problems.
Performance :
Sure there is no AG-Port on the Motherboard with the ATI chipset but who says you need it ? The ATI graphics chip performs pretty well in games. Even new games can be played. Trackmania 1 runs on Medium to high settings and Trackmania 2 runs very nicely on low Settings (It is able to run on middle settings). The Graphic performance is equal to a MX 440 from Nvidia.
Conclusion :
Shuttle did it once again. with the ST62KS shuttle is presenting a good performing and very high quality product without any bigger errors. People that are planning on gaming schouldnt buy the ST62KS because an AG-Port is missing and the 9100 IGP performce not very good in new gen. Games. The shuttle ST62KS is with its 206 $ not very expensive.
Quality : 9.5
Equipment : 6.5
Performance : 7
Price : 9
8.0/10.0
80 %
-FFX
In our Modern world it happens to often that you want all your media in one machine. You want a DVD Player, a Game system and your internet acces directly on your TV. Only a few years ago nobody could have thought about this but now it becomes reality and more and more prople are buying very small cases with motherboards and PSU's allready installed also known as Barebones. I am one of those people. Ok i have to say that i bought my Barebone because i wanted to do something new. All the time just these standart PC's can become pretty fast very boring.
Before i bought my Barebone i allready had a few components. I got them from my 3 year old Dell Dimension 4550 Performance. So i had a Pentium 4 2.4 GHZ W/O HT socket 478, 1x 256 MB DDR (333 mhz) Kingston 2.5 CL, 1x 512 MB DDR (333 mhz) Kingston 2.5 CL, 6 year old 12 GB PATA Seagate and a very nice NEC CD Burner in Black.
Equipment :
The Equipment is nothing very special. I saw more and less equipment coming with hardware. Anyway, what i liked about the equipment was especially the Power supply which wasnt in but oustide of the ST62KS. This PSU is completely silent and you can replace is very easy if it breaks.
The short IDE cable was very usefull. It was exactly measured so that it would fit perectly from Motherboard to the HD.
The second IDE Cable (Long) which schould go to the DVD drive wasnt that good. After spending alot time to getr it thorugh different holes it was stuck in my DVD Drives back. I recognized that when i wanted to change the drive. After about 30 minutes of pulling i finally ripped my DVD Drive out and was able to replace it with a new one.
The Manuals arent that good. They dont show very much information and even worse the "CPU - HOW TO PUT ON" Guide was wrong. After another 15 minutes I finally figured out how to mount the HS on my CPU.
On the Driver disc is everything you could wish for. Ok lets say everything you would realy need would fit better. The only stuff on there are very old driver's. But ok they worked fine.
Quality :
I was positively surpised with the quality. Everything was realy nice. No sharp edges, no scratsches no nothing. The cable were all long enough and working, the plastic didnt break even after a bending test. Just flawless quality. Here Shuttle did an excelent job !
Design and Ideas :
There are some realy nice ideas in this small barebone. My first point is the CPU heat Sink which turns out to be a case fan on the baclwall of the case. A small and quiet rotating fan is connected to the P4 CPU with a few Heatpipes. The heatpipes are going directly into the metallic HS of the P4. Under load my P4 only reached about 55 °C which is pretty nice for one of the old Northwoods in a barebone this small. Anoter very nice and inventive idea was the one with the HD. It is suspended it its own "Changeable" cage under the DVD Drive. You can change the HD with this invention in a matter of seconds without problems.
Performance :
Sure there is no AG-Port on the Motherboard with the ATI chipset but who says you need it ? The ATI graphics chip performs pretty well in games. Even new games can be played. Trackmania 1 runs on Medium to high settings and Trackmania 2 runs very nicely on low Settings (It is able to run on middle settings). The Graphic performance is equal to a MX 440 from Nvidia.
Conclusion :
Shuttle did it once again. with the ST62KS shuttle is presenting a good performing and very high quality product without any bigger errors. People that are planning on gaming schouldnt buy the ST62KS because an AG-Port is missing and the 9100 IGP performce not very good in new gen. Games. The shuttle ST62KS is with its 206 $ not very expensive.
Quality : 9.5
Equipment : 6.5
Performance : 7
Price : 9
8.0/10.0
80 %
-FFX
