A few reviews of Shuttle’s ST20G5 XPC found using Google, ordered by date.
- Hexus.net reviews Shuttle XPC ST20G5 (May 29, 2005)
- [H] Enthusiast reviews Shuttle ST20G5 (June 14, 2005)1
- ExtremeTech reviews Shuttle ST20G5 Socket 939 XPC (June 21, 2005)
- bit-tech.net reviews Shuttle ST20G5 (July 5, 2005)
- HarwareZone reviews Shuttle XPC ST20G5 (Socket-939) (July 8, 2005)
1: Note that the instability of the system criticized loudly by the reviewers at [H] Enthusiast could be due to Vcore and Vdimm voltages being set too low.
The overall consensus (at least, apart from [H] Enthusiasts) seems to be that this is a well-performing piece of hardware. It’s not a system for gamers, overclockers or other hardcore hardware enthusiasts (sic), but does pretty well for its price tag (which, AFAICT, has even dropped since these reviews were written). The Performace Summary at bit-tech.net says it is “as fast as the fastest platforms we have tested to date, and in some cases we found it to be the fastest platform we have tested to date.” (Note that this was written almost exactly one year ago today.)
The integrated graphics chips seem to cause some trouble if you try slip in an Nvidia graphics card (the internal gfx chipset is made by ATI; the two are notoriously incompatible), but on the other hand, adding an extra display adapter with ATI chips on it you get up to three video outputs with the help of ATI’s SurroundView multi-monitor software.