Digital Home Thoughts: Powerful, Small, Stealthy: Shuttle's SD11G5 XPC

Getting Dual DVI: Just Way Too Hard
Now what about the video card you might ask? As you read above, I couldn't cope with the nasty quality of the VGA port running a DVI-based monitor, so I needed a dual DVI video card. I happened to have a PCI Express XFX 6800GT video card that I acquired (at great pain and expense) in early 2005, so I slapped that in...and quickly groaned at how loud it made the SD11G5. When you build a computer completely focused on low-noise, a screaming fast and loud video card unbalances the entire thing. The SD11G5 might be rated to run a 780GTX, but what's the point?

Video card makers focus on performance, but they could seem to care less about how loud their cards are. If I'm going to spend $700 on a high-end video card, I want great performance, but I also want something better than a 50 cent, brutally loud fan. I know it's possible to use larger, lower RPM fans. I also know it's technically possible to create a video card that doesn't start the fan until it needs to (gaming) while staying perfectly quiet for everything else. No video card company in the market today seems to understand that, though there are glimmers of hope with some passively-cooled cards I've just started to see on the market.

So what did I end up doing? The same trick I did with my SN95G5 – I bought an XFX 6600 card and unplugged the fan. That's right kids – no fan. When I tried that with the SN95G5 at the suggestion of a Digital Media Thoughts forum member (thanks David!), I was surprised at the results. At idle, with the fan connected and whirring away loudly, the GPU on the card was at 60 degrees Celsius. The danger zone where the card will clock down or warn the user of a problem is an amazing 140 degrees Celsius, so that left me with a lot of headroom. After unplugging the fan, the temperate went up to 75 degrees Celsius and stabilized. I play games on it so rarely that even if I need to open up the case and re-connect the fan, it's a small price to pay for having a completely silent card.

The problem is that it's hard to find NVIDIA 6600-based cards with two DVI ports – they're still rare on low and mid-range cards. I tried a 6600GT card that had dual DVI, but without the fan plugged in the temperatures got to 90 degrees Celsius and kept climbing, so I quickly abandoned that plan. The 6600 seems to be the fastest chipset possible that you can do this with. I managed to find an XFX 6600 card from Tiger Direct that did the trick.

Now you see why I was so disappointed that the SD11G5 didn't come with dual DVI ports – this whole issue proved to be a major hassle for me. In the marketing materials for the SD11G5 Shuttle uses the term "Dual Independent Display" to tout the dual video connectors, but until the quality is there I don't think this is something that should be considered a feature. I realize most people don't have two monitors, but it's certainly not as uncommon as it once used to be and anyone buying a Shuttle XPC is probably much more likely to need dual DVI than someone buying a $299 Dell PC. Come on Shuttle (and Intel), step up and give us dual DVI!