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Nevermind the low energy claims of the Dell Studio or the Mac Mini. A company famed for making small computers, Shuttle, is planning to release an even tinier and greener desktop called the X27.
Shuttle says the new PC will use as little as 23 watts in idle mode, and 36 watts while in use. That's more akin to a laptop than a desktop machine, some of which can use more than 200 watts in use (potentially costing £200+ to run each year!).
The X27 falls into the 'Nettop' category of low cost desktop PCs, and uses Intel's Atom low power chip. It also has the bonus of being mighty quiet, reportedly humming at just 23 decibels -- quieter than a "bedroom at night", according to decibel noise charts.
The low noise is matched by a suitably small case which measures 10 inches long, 7 inches wide and 2.75 inches tall; about the same size as Asus' Eee Box.
Pricing's up in the air, but September is scheduled for a US launch. It's likely to land in the UK, although Shuttle Europe says it's not yet confirmed. Gadget fans can see it in person at next week's consumer electronics show, IFA, which starts in Berlin on 29 August.
17 September update: The Shuttle X27 is now on sale as a barebones PC for €205 excluding VAT (£164).
The Shuttle X27 in scale: not quite as small as a mouse, but damn small
Round the back: four USB ports for all your gadgets & add-ons
22 August 2008 04:46pm
Are PC's like this viable for a home entertainment PC (particularly for 720p and 1080p content), or is that expecting too much?
22 August 2008 04:58pm
One a single core Atom like in the Asus Eee Box, 720p is ok but 1080p is unwatchable because of the constant stuttering. But once the dual core Atoms come out, they will play 1080p stuff just fine. So if you expect to watch a lot of 1080p content you should wait for the dual core atom systems.
22 August 2008 05:42pm
it will run 720p video fine, but not 1080p. It would be a great little media center hub if you were dealing with not quite full HD video.
22 August 2008 06:15pm
Shuttle computers are crap! Innovation is usually used to describe their products yet most of their models still look just like the ones they released in 2003 and 2004. What other PC manufactures sell systems that look like there models from 4-5 years ago? To the poster who stated this will play 720p, don't count on it. I suggest contacting their Tech Support before you buy. Their Tech Supports sucks almost as much as their products. Shuttle's time has come and gone. It's over for Shuttle.
22 August 2008 07:10pm
This looks like a great platform for Ubuntu and the boxee.tv media player front end!
23 August 2008 09:05am
So about the same power usage as my 4 year old Via Epia MII. Yes this is faster, but it would be nice to make some progress towards using less energy.
24 August 2008 01:58am
You act as if adding another core doubles the power of the box, which is false. Most video playback apps aren't threaded in a fashion that'd allow them to utilize an additional core. The end result is that adding another core will probably leave you with the exact same video playback woes. Make an app that's multithread aware and compiled for a multithread box and you might see differently - but I doubt we'll see that for a bit.
29 August 2008 11:53am
Would this be any good as a windows home server, with a couple of 1T WD My Book's to store music, and backups?
25 September 2008 02:26pm
Shuttle has the worst tech support. I purchased two machines from them. On both the power supply failed after 2 years. The replacement cost? $80 each!
17 November 2008 12:23am
If it got a GPU that supports DXVA (hardware video-decoding), then a powerful CPU is not needed to play 1080p-video (although some x264-rips are L5.1, which don't support DXVA :P)..
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