When it comes to building Media Center PCs, Shuttle's small form factor designs have always seemed the ideal enclosure: the company was instrumental in bringing low-size, high-performance PCs to mainstream attention and is currently speeding ahead of the rest to bring desktop technology into the home entertainment arena.
Now it's giving things a further push by supplying this pre-built system, including internal components and a copy of Windows XP Media Center Edition so that all you need to add is the mouse, keyboard, and monitor.
Unfortunately, while the build quality is exemplary, in process the machine is dogged with exactly the same problems that have dogged legions of self-builders: the size may be unobtrusive, but the noise is anything but.
The G5's fan starts with a roar like an airconditioning plant every time you switch it on, before settling down to a constant PS2-like rumble that's definitely more acceptable in the office than the living room. Such relegation is further encouraged by the design; while the alluring glossy finish and stereo-like LCD front panel does a great job of concealing its desktop origins, the sugar-cube shape isn't easily accommodated.
Sparce spec
It doesn't have a huge amount to keep cool, either. The specification is as we've come to expect from the latest crop of Media Center PCs: a 3GHz Pentium 4 processor, paired with 512MB of RAM and a separate graphics card - in this case, a rather weedy 128MB ATI X300SE.
Accordingly, it performs swiftly and capably, with only the occasional stutter when it's pushed to the limit - but we've already seen this exact specification contained much more elegantly in Evesham's excellent eBox.
It's a shame to see that the fractionally increased space that's available in the Shuttle hasn't been filled with something a little more powerful; a better graphics card, for instance, would have made for a more convincing gaming performance and justified that dreadful noise output. Storage capacity gives less cause for complaint; a 200GB hard drive and 16-speed dual-layer DVD rewriter make short work of music or recorded TV.
Connectivity is similarly acceptable, rather than substantial. Top marks must go to the elegantly concealed 5-in-1 card reader, dual USB, Firewire and audio ports that lurk behind the drop-down front panels.
