[Fiend]

I have a friend who has just offered me his old shuttle:

- Shuttle SN95G5 case + motherboard
- 2Gb RAM (can be upgraded to 4Gb)
- 500Gb HDD
- CD/DVD rewriter

Not sure what processor is in but I know it's dual core.

He says it will be a pretty cheap price second-hand.

Obviously this is quite an old spec machine, but currently I'm using: P4 2.8 G / 2Gb Ram / 120 GB HDD / CD writer only.

So if I can make a little step up at a cheap price, well, I'm pretty damn tempted. Saves me dicking around with components basically. The guy who had it is a geek, I'm trusting it's set-up well.

The main question being: He's only got an uber-basic GFX card in, and obviously I want a pretty damn good one for games. So, what is available for a shuttle like this, and what is recommended??

[Palomides]

Good Morning Fiend.

A quick google suggests that the SN95G5 has an AMD motherboard, with socket 939 processor slot. I think that manufacturing has now finished for the processors that fit this, so you'll be stuck with whatever is in there. It'll be an Athlon 64 or Opteron X2 processor - something like the 3800+.

It also has integrated nForce graphics, which may be what your friend is using.

Good news is that the case has a full-height expansion card slot, and an 8x AGP bus, so a decent graphics card should be possible - but there's a note here that suggests some bigger cards might not physically fit.

The best way to really find out what it's currently equipped with is to run something like SiSoft Sandra to get a full listing of components etc.

Overall it doesn't sound like much of an update to your current system, but if it's a good price, and you can get a reasonable graphics card + some extra memory in the budget (and reinstall windows or install Linux) it'd be interesting.

Make sure your friend deletes their pr0n collection first.

[Fiend]

Okay got more info plus a price from my friend:

Just quickly the current new prices for all the bits:
- Shuttle SD32G5 motherboard+case+PSU, £220
- 2Gb PC-6400 memory, £25
- WD5000KS 500Gb hard drive, £50
- Plextor PX-716A DVD-writer, £60
- XFX GeForce 7600 GS silent graphics card, £75
- Windows XP home, £60
- Intel E6600 dual-core CPU 2.4 GHz, £130

which comes to £620 or £485 without Windows XP + graphics card.
I reckon half price is reasonable, so call it £310 or £240 to you.

Apparently extra ram would be dirt cheap for it.

Do these take standard graphics cards then?? Assuming one fits...

[Jim]

I sold similar a while ago for 200 ish
dvd writers cost 20
the full cost prices are totally unrealistic . you could build a system nearly twice as powerful on that budget.
its looks like a decent set up however

[Fiend]

the full cost prices are totally unrealistic . you could build a system nearly twice as powerful on that budget.
its looks like a decent set up however

Yeah I agree about the full cost prices. However I don't really need a big upgrade but a small one would be nice. Particularly when it's already set-up...

I would like new: motherboard, probably PSU, processor, HDD, CD/DVDr, and GFX card, to replace the creaky old shit inside my case.

The main concern with this 2nd hand shuttle is getting the right GFX card i.e. one that fits...and that would probably be adding £120-150. Hmmm.

[slackline]

I would like new: motherboard, probably PSU, processor, HDD, CD/DVDr, and GFX card, to replace the creaky old shit inside my case.

So basically a new system then