Introduction

Another new platform released, another Shuttle small form factor (SFF) chassis introduced to go alongside it. Shuttle repeats becoming the first to release a small form factor chassis, the SN27P2 for the AM2 socket. Shuttle was also first to introduce a SFF for Socket 939, the first nForce 4, and the only nForce 4 SLI small form factor chassis. With the SN27P2, Shuttle continues to build upon it’s very successful nForce 4 small form factor products, the SN25P and the SN26P, arguably the best SFFs for AMD K8 to date.

A SFF chassis is obviously much smaller compared to a standard ATX case, therefore it sacrifices upgradeability. SFF systems only support 1 optical drive, and only 2-3 hard drives. The greatest sacrifice however comes with the expansion slots. All SFF systems only have two expansion slots: enough for a video card and one PCI card. Standard ATX motherboards have 6-7 slots for adding extra cards.

Ultra high end video cards requiring dual slot cooling could not fit into SFF systems until the SN25P was introduced, and now carries over to the SN27P2. Shuttle reverses the placement of the PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slot and the PCI slot to allow video cards with dual slot coolers to fit. We’ll discuss this later when we open up this tiny beast. The SFF platform isn’t for everyone, but even enthusiasts could get by with the lack of upgradeability.


Let’s take a look at the SN27P2’s specs:

CPU
AMD Sempron/Athlon 64/FX/X2 Processor
Socket AM2

Chipset
NVIDIA nForce® 570 Ultra MCP

Memory
4 240-pin DIMM sockets supports up to 8GB of DDR2-400/533/667/800 SDRAM

Expansion Slots
1 PCI Express x16 graphics slot
1 32-bit/33MHz PCI slot

Networking
Marvell 88E1116 Gbit LAN PHY
Supports 10/100/1000 Mbps Operation

VIA VT6307 controller
IEEE1394 OHCI V1.0 compliant
400/200/100 Mb/s data transfer rate

I/O Front Panel
2 USB 2.0 Ports
1 Mini IEEE1394 Port
1 Mic In
1 Earphone Out

I/O Back Panel
6 USB 2.0 Ports
1 RJ45 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN Port
1 IEEE1394a Port
1 External SATA Port
1 Front Out
1 Side Surround Out
1 Rear Out
1 Center/Bass Out
1 S/PDIF Coaxial Out
1 S/PDIF Optical In
1 S/PDIF Optical Out
1 Clear CMOS Button

Expansion drive bays
1 3.5" Bay
2 3.5" Bay (internal)
1 5.25" Bay

Audio
Realtek ALC882 HD Audio
7.1 + 2 HD Channels
Above 103dB SNR quality output

BIOS Bus speeds
HT: 200-300MHz in 1MHz increments
DRAM: 400, 533, 667, 800MHz

Power
Silent X 400W(PFC) Power Supply Unit
Input 100-240V AC