RSSThe Shuttle has landed
Comments (0) Over the weekend I got around to completing the build of the shuttle bare bone unit that I brought a few weeks. .
The final build parts are listed below showing the cost for the complete build.
- Shuttle XPC Glamour Series SN68SG2 – no CPU – Barebones £162.38
- Kingston 2GB 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Unbuffered Non-ECC CL6 1.8V £28.68
- Samsung EcoGreen F2 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 32MB Cache – OEM £48.96
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.9GHz Socket AM2 512KBx2 L2 Cache OEM Processor £43.47
- Total Base Unit Cost £283.49
- Additional Extra
- Logitech Pro 2000 Wireless 2.4Ghz Keyboard With USB Receiver – OEM £18.77
- Monitor (Not yet purchased)
- Total System Cost £302.26
I had to add a keyboard as the shuttle only does USB for keyboard and mice, so it was time to go wireless for the keyboard & mice (which was brought a few months ago).
The build it’s self was very easy as the provided instructions were clear and made it so you understood what was what. It most of took only 45 mins to build the unit max. The most tricky part was putting the processor in as you have to remove the ICE cooling unit
then insert the processor and glue it to the ICE cooling unit. Again the instructions provided explained this very well. The DVD drive was transferred across from my old PC, and of course I’m keeping all the old components from it just in case.
Now here came the scary part, the first power up. So I inserted the ubuntu 9.10 CD that I burnt and waited, great the first menu came up and I selected “try with out installing” option to make sure all was ok before install. So off I went to the kitchen for a cup of tea and on my return noted that the screen was “mode not support”!!! mm some kind of graphic’s problem. So after a second go and no luck I was starting to get worried a bit. So back to 9.04 from CD, and great it let me try it without installing. So I installed 9.04, had to activate the Nvidia proprietary drivers after install and then straight upgrade to 9.10. Job done and all working. When I get another 2GB of ram I will move across to 64 bit, but in the mean time I’m staying with 32 bit.
Overall it was very easy to build and I think having the barebone unit helped keep it simple. No real problem installing Ubuntu apart from my 9.10 that let me down. (Could have been the disc?). So it’s now goodbye to my old AMD Duron 1.2ghz with 486mb of ram, happydays.
So if you would like a unit built that is no bigger than your average shoe box (roughly), then let me know.
