The number of Pentium M-friendly motherboards has multiplied considerably over the last few months, a trend that looks set to continue with the launch of the new dual-core Pentium M, codenamed Yonah, early next year. So after a triplet of motherboards from AOpen and MSI, next off the blocks is Shuttle's XPC SD11G5.
Before I delve into the guts and gizzards of the SD11G5, let me make one thing clear. The indecisive fellows at Shuttle sent us a white SD11G5 but, before starting mass production, then decided to make it in silver. Thus, the SD11G5s in the shops will be silver, not white. Which is quite fortunate really, as neither Gareth nor I liked the white dried-out dog's droppings look.
So without any further ado, let's move on to those guts and gizzards. The SD11G5 is based on the old G5 Shuttle chassis, so it's considerably smaller and more discreet than more modern XPCs, which use the P-series chassis. At first, this appears to be a good thing, but it has a downside, because the 16x PCI-E slot is squeezed in right next to the left side panel, leaving no room for a dual-slot graphics card. This is particularly disappointing, as the SD11G5's CPU HSF is very quiet - the BIOS fan controller keeps the 80mm fan at 900rpm most of the time. Sadly, having a near-silent CPU cooling system is totally pointless if your single-slot graphics card is howling away in the background.
The motherboard is based on the Intel 915GM chipset with the on-board Intel GMA900 GPU, so you don't have to use a PCI-E graphics card. You can forget about gaming on the GMA900, though, unless you like watching slideshows at 800 x 600.
The motherboard also has a 1x PCI-E slot next to the 16x PCI-E slot, if you can find a card worth slotting into it. Also on the motherboard is an empty mini-PCI slot - probably the most useless expansion slot in the world. However, I suppose you could always buy a wireless LAN mini-PCI card for £35 to put in it.
The SD11G5 supports both 100MHz and 133MHz FSB Pentium M and Celeron M processors, but it's pretty hard to buy 100MHz FSB chips these days. Up to 2GB of PC2-4200 DDR2 RAM is supported, thanks to the two DIMM sockets. The BIOS is pretty basic, and to disable the on-board graphics you have to change a big bank of jumpers on the motherboard. However, it does provide the option of changing the FSB between 100MHz and 165MHz.
Rather than sticking with the Intel HD Audio codec that's bundled with most Intel 915GM motherboards, Shuttle has opted for Creative's Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit. This resides on a separate daughterboard towards the rear of the case and adds support for EAX Advanced HD, something HD Audio can't match. It means there's no room inside the SD11G5 for a PSU, so an external 220W Delta PSU provides power. It's passively cooled, so it's totally silent, but, as it's the size of a household brick, it almost defeats the point of having a SFF PC in the first place. Fortunately, as the Pentium M is so energy-efficient compared with other CPUs, the 220W PSU has plenty of juice to spare for a powerful graphics card.
The G5 chassis may be smaller than the P-series, but there's still room for one 5.25in and two 3.5in drives. One of the 3.5in bays is external, but since there's no floppy disk controller on the motherboard, it's only really useful for a media card reader.
The on-board GPU has D-SUB, DVI and S-Video outputs, while the motherboard has two S-ATA ports and a single EIDE channel. A good number of USB 2, FireWire and audio ports are split between the front and rear of the chassis.
PERFORMANCE
We fitted the SD11G5 with a 1.73GHz Pentium M and 1GB of Corsair XMS2-5400 DDR2 RAM, and at the stock clocks, it performed as we expected. Thanks to the Pentium M's efficient architecture and cool running, the SD11G5 is very quiet, and performs brilliantly in games and other tasks such as photo editing. However, as Pentium M is currently only available as a single-core CPU and has a short pipeline, it's very poor at video encoding.
Because Pentium M already runs at such a low voltage, compared with Athlon 64 and Pentium 4, it doesn't need any extra power in order to be coaxed into running faster than specified. Our 1.73GHz chip, for example, was perfectly happy to run at 1.95GHz in the SD11G5, simply by raising the FSB from 133MHz to 160MHz. This might not sound like a huge overclock, but remember that Pentium M has an incredibly efficient architecture, so it doesn't need to run fast. The SD11G5 is a good overclocker; with the CPU at 1.95GHz, it completed the Custom PC Media Benchmarks 12 per cent faster than it did at stock clocks.
Gamers should pay an overclocked Pentium M more attention. At 1.95GHz, and with a GeForce 6800 GT installed, the SD11G5 made light work of Far Cry at 1,280 x 1,024 with 2x AA and 2x AF, averaging 68fps, which puts Pentium D and even Athlon 64 to shame. Not bad for a 27W CPU, eh?
Hopefully, in future BIOS updates, Shuttle will add more overclocking controls, such as CPU multiplier adjustment and RAM voltage.
CONCLUSION
While it's great that Shuttle has made such a superbly quiet Pentium M small form factor, the SD11G5 lacks the one thing that would make it truly great: room for a dual-slot graphics card. This is a real tragedy, as the SD11G5 is a solid performer, and would otherwise make a great basis for a small gaming PC. The bulky external PSU is another letdown too, and the addition of a Creative Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit daughterboard bumps up the price, although it does add EAX Advanced HD support.
Unfortunately for the SD11G5, you can build a system using the SilverStone SG01B Sugo case and AOpen i915GMm-HFS motherboard for a similar price; this combination would be equally overclockable and would also have room for a dual-slot graphics card. Here's hoping that Shuttle realises the shortcomings of the SD11G5, and starts work on another Pentium M SFF bare bones in a slightly wider chassis.
