XPC SV24

Conclusion: Shuttle Spacewalker SV24 is a device of lovely shape with compact and noble design. By its overall rich supply of interfaces, an expansion for firewire hard-disks or USB framegrabber-cards is possible despite of the lack of room. Our special praise is for the two USB-ports, the headset- and microphone line in. Simply practical. (...) 

Silberkästchen

Fazit: Shuttle Spacewalker SV24 ist ein formschönes Gerät, kompakt und edel im Design. Durch das überaus reichhaltige Schnittstellenangebot läßt es sich trotz Platzmangel erweitern, etwa mit Firewire-Festplatten oder USB-Framegrabber-Karten. Besonderes Lob verdient die Verlegung von zwei USB-Anschlüssen sowie Kopfhörer- und Mikrofonbuchse auf die Gehäusefront - einfach praktisch. (...)

Conclusion:

We show by the example of the Spacewalker barebone system, how to assemble an individual and ultra-compact PC without effort. (...) It offers connectors for network and digital video cameras (firewire). It was a pleasure for us to configure and mount this little Mini-PC. (...) The harddisk can be easily mounted in a special tray (...) the integrated S3 graphics comes with TV out (...) Conclusion: the new PC fashion is Maxi, but Mini! This ultra-compact barebone system convinced us. (...) Its nice aluminum case is an optical eyecatcher in contrast to the conventional and - above all - voluminous ones. Amazing is also the weight of the fully equipped PC system: almost 4.6 kilogram. Its volume even amounts to once a quarter of a comparable system. Thus, it competes both with a classical desktop system and with a modern notebook. (...) our DIY-PC-system based on Shuttle's SV24 kit is ideal for office use and can also be used for playback of DVD and MP3 files and for DVD ripping and encoding as well (...)

Aluminium cube: Shuttle proves, that PC design can be elegant, thoroughly...next to the HIFI system. 

Der Powerzwerg
Fazit: Der Spacewalker ist eine originelle und qualitativ hochwertige Lösung für Platzsparmeister. Wer keinen Hang zum permanenten Aufrüsten hat, ist hier optimal bedient. Eine scharfe Konkurrenz für Office-Midigehäuse und auch Notebooks.

Pro's: The Size, Aluminum, Removable HD tray at rear, Thumbscrews, Very light, 2 Firewire ports, 2 USB ports on the front and 2 on the rear, Line-in and Line out ports on the front, Price, Portability, 10/100 LAN onboard, S-Video out

Highly appraised: aluminum design, compact size, connectivity, number of ports, FireWire port, 2 USB ports at front, 2 at the back, S-Video port
Appraised: Relatively easy to set up, nice box which can be used for carrying the computer around

Pros: Stable, Looks nice, Unbelievably small, Runs well in games in an okay resolution, Made of aluminium, Onboard FireWire, Onboard TV-out, Onboard netkort

The SV24/C3 combo is a match made in heaven. We've seen attractive PCs in the past but they're usually a little bigger that what we would like them to be. Shuttle manages to show some mighty impressive engineering with the SV24 by making it really compact and fully featured. What's really cool about the SV24 is that it doesn't market itself as a heavy duty PC and you're not going to buy it to get lightning frame rates in Quake 3. Which is why it makes perfect sense to add a C3 CPU inside it that will keep the box a lot more cooler than a Celeron or a P3. VIA has done a real good job with the C3, especially in the Price department. It's definitely the coolest CPU to enter t-break labs. We've heard reports of the C3 managing to run the Quake3 time-demo all night long WITHOUT a heat-sink. That is definitely saying something. We whole heartedly recommend the SV24 with a Cyrix C3 processor. We weren't disappointed and we know that you wont be either.

At the end of testing out the SV-24 Mini Barebones System, we couldn't help but be fascinated at how the folks at Shuttle managed to get so much into such a small system. Creating a system that is no larger than a shoe box without sacrificing too much in performance is nothing short of an engineering wonder. Through out the testing of this product we found that the SV-24 offered an awful lot in such a small package. With the integration of such key features like Fire wire, LAN and TV-Out, this system truly offers the enthusiast a system that will be useful for some time to come. At an MSRP of #250, the SV-24 is a steal. If you were to build a simple workstation/server rig with similar features, you could easily exceed that cost by #100 or more. In the near future Shuttle will be offering newer versions of the mini barebones system with both Athlon and Pentium 4 support. (...) we feel that the new SV-24 Mini Barebones System is an excellent product. With an innovative design that doesn't skimp on quality and features, the SV-24 offers the user a lot of flexibility to customize this system in a way that will suite their needs.

The good: Amazingly small footprint - about A4 size, brushed aluminium case, highly integrated, 4 USB ports, on-board FireWire, inexpensive for what it is, supports UDMA100, very light, could carry it anywhere, excellent DVD playback, the 'fun' factor!