Shuttle SN78SH7

Bare-bones system primed for HD home-theater use


AS LONG AS YOUR NEEDS ARE—and will remain—limited, Shuttle's $299 Sh178SH7 bare-bones system should suffice as the starting point for a smart, small home-theater PC.

You have plenty of options for powering this 7.4x8.2x12.8-inch system: It uses an AM2+ socket ready for the latest Athlon X2 or Phenom processors.The two RAM slots can hold up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM.The chipset is the new Nvidia GeForce 8200, which supports DirectX 10 and is optimized for HD
video playback without requiring a discrete graphics card. (If you decide to add a CPU, though, you can use it in concert with the integrated graphics—thanks to built-in Hybrid SLI technology----and boost your video
performance.)

The SN78SH7 has microphone and headphone
jacks, two USB 2.0 ports, and one four-pin FireWire jack on the front panel; and VGA-out, HDMI, and six-pin FireWire connections, two external SATA (eSATA) ports, four more USB ports, an Ethernet jack, and
eight-channel audio on the back. There are two expansion slots (one PCI Express x16 and one regular PCI), and three drive bays
(one each of external 5.25, external 3.5, and internal 3.5)—all in a removable drive rack—for components. An out-of-the-way
300-watt power supply and pre-tied cables help contribute to overall interior neatness.



Storage could present a problem for Media Center chores: You may need those eSATA ports, as there's no room for a
second hard drive. In fact, we had trouble reinstalling the CPU's fan-and-heat-sink combo after our test build, though it and the drive tray were easy to remove. You'll also have to settle for a midrange graphics card at best; don't expect the longer single-slot, or double-slot, kinds to fit. —Matthew Murray

Computer Shopper January 2009
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