Shuttle launches trio of small factor PCs

Smaller box pioneer Shuttle is launching three new small form factor (SFF) PCs to coincide with the new 915 and 925 chipsets from Intel and the latest processors from AMD.

The company said the systems, due out in late June and early July, are targeted at the media centre, gaming community and mid-range markets.

Shuttle expects the rapid growth in SFF to continue, citing Intel findings that in four years around 20 per cent of desktop sales will be for SFF systems.

This will represent 25 to 30 million units by 2008, a massive jump on today's sales.

Jonathan Yi, vice president of Shuttle's product planning department, said the company's monthly sales had already doubled to about 6,000 units compared to last year.

"A year ago it was really hard to convince enthusiasts that the machines were as powerful as a [full-size] desktop. Now they think they are okay. They are also good to overclock, and some are better for this than desktops."

As ever with Shuttle, its cases are aesthetically pleasing, although it has decided that its usual SFF of 300 x 200 x 185mm is too small for the media centre.

So its SB81P, at 325 x 210 x 220mm, is bigger and heavier than might be expected from the company. Housed in a sleek-looking case, it has a 350w power supply rather than the usual 250w, and more expansion options.

Yi said the decision to bring out a bigger case was because "a lot of people buying the Shuttle X are enthusiasts and want better expansion capabilities".

Its mainstream model will be the SB83G5A, based on the 915G chipset, the socket 775 Pentium 4 3.4GHz processor.

Shuttle expects the PC to have broader appeal than its higher-end machines although, like the company's Media Center PC, the SB83G5A supports the PCI Express interface for the graphics card.

The firm has also scheduled the SN95G5B, a 939-pin AMD Athlon 64 system, for a July release.