Review: Shuttle SX38P2 Pro barebones PC

The SX38P2 Pro is the new king of Shuttle’s small form factor PCs. It exceeds the rest with the biggest power supply, the most PCI Express slots and Dolby Digital Live certified sound output.

It relies on Intel’s X38 chipset, which can deliver full bandwidth (roughly 16Gbytes/sec) to both PCI Express 2.0 slots, making it preferable over P35 motherboards, which usually have half the available bandwidth for Crossfire setups.

There are two glaring omissions on the SX38P2’s feature list: integrated Wifi and a remote control. Some other Shuttles have these and they are excellent inclusions since small PCs are liable to be stuck underneath a TV.

Otherwise there’s a feast of ports including two Firewire ports, eight USBs, surround-sound connectivity and a ‘Clear Cmos’ button on the back of the chassis to reset it to factory default settings.

There’s a PCI Express Mini slot at the bottom of the chassis, the type usually found in laptops, which Shuttle says can be used for Turbo memory (a first on a desktop that we’ve seen), but it could also hold a miniature Wifi card.

The 450W power supply is rated at 80 per cent or greater efficiency and, combined with the intricate chipset and CPU heatsinks, noise levels didn’t go above a low whoosh during testing when fueling an overclocked Core 2 Duo E6750 and two Radeon HD 3850s.

Quad-core processors can be used, but the Shuttle failed to start up with Intel’s best 1,600MHz front-side bus (FSB) QX9770 inserted. This will be rectified when an X48 based Shuttle arrives in the coming months, we're informed. Performance in PCmark05 was nearly identical to a full-sized MSI X38 Platinum motherboard and Crossfire performance scaled well.

With a single Radeon HD 3850 the Shuttle achieved 9,472 in 3Dmark05, rising to 12,907 when a second was added. However, getting two cards into the chassis requires real muscle to force back rigid cables, leaving no breathing room for the innermost card. We've had two 3850s in Crossfire overheat on our testing bench when placed in adjacent, single PCI Express slots.

Overheating on our testing bench resulted in graphical artifacts and frame rates dropping, which is a worry since the same could conceivably happen in the SX38P2 after prolonged periods of time.

Shuttle's P35 design has the same processor support but lacks Crossfire support and for £120 less, it's the sensible buy if you need a high performance, small form factor PC.

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