• CPU Support: Intel Socket 478, support 400/533/800MHz FSB CPU
• Chipset: North bridge:Intel 865G, South bridge:ICH5-R
• Memory: Supports 2GB of DDR 266/333/400 via 2 slots
• Video: Intel Extreme Graphic 2
• Audio: Realtek ALC 650 6 channel audio
• Ethernet: Dual 10/100 NICs - 1x Intel 562EZ and 1x Realtek 8100B
• Expansion Slots: PCI * 1, AGP *

Now, I'd be willing to bet that the majority of you were about to hit the 'back' button in your browsers and go on about your business as soon as you saw that the SB62G2 had integrated video. However, it does sport an AGP slot, so those of you needing your AGP fix need not worry. One thing that interested me is that yet again we're given two different brand of NICs. Shuttle probably opted for a Realtek NIC to either cut costs or meet the terms of a contractual agreement with Realtek (who also provided the Audio).

Given the target market for the SB62G2, there are no firewire ports. I think Shuttle made the correct assumption here. Firewire just isn't needed on a server or corporate desktop.

For those of you looking for a new print server, Shuttle has decided to put the parallel port out to pasture and it's not included on the ATX backplate of the SB62G2. The header does still exist on the board and there is a parallel port accessory available from Shuttle which will let you use a legacy printer without a USB connection.

I'm sure a lot of you are dying to find out how EXTREME Intel's Extreme Graphics 2 really is, but you're just going to have to wait a little while longer.

Discussion of Application

As I did with SB52G2, I'll take a moment to briefly discuss what roles the SB62G2 could probably fill. A lot of people probably think one of these units would make an excellent small file server. I'm not someone who's 100% sold on that idea. Even though the ICH5-R south bridge does provide SATA RAID (levels 1 and 0), my concern has always been ventilation to the drives. My Western Digital 400JB does warm up a little bit when housed in an XPC as it's in direct contact with the floppy drive and the CDRW. If I was going to attempt it, I'd probably remove the floppy drive and the cdrom and create some space between the two drives.

The next issue I had to address was whether or not the SB62G2 would house my existing PATA RAID controller, which is a 3ware Escalade 7410 (thanks ReMeDy!). As you can see by the picture, I wasn't even close to getting it installed. The PCI slot is tucked inside of the AGP slot so the drive bay impedes the installation of any PCI device other than a sound card or another NIC.

The SB52G2's Gigabit NIC made it an excellent option as a cluster node. Since the SB62G2 doesn't come equipped with a Gigabit NIC, it may be overlooked in that capacity.

For a large web hosting company, I don't think you could find a better alternative for low-end, high volume web servers than an XPC. Not only would it be much more cost-effective than a comparable 1U rackmount machine, but it would be equally space efficient (just in a different way). Imagine a data center filled with stacks and stacks of XPCs. It would be an impressive sight, that's for sure.

With an Intel chipset, a Pentium 4 processor and some quality DDR you'd have a stable machine that would enjoy full hardware support under a multitude of operating systems.