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Shuttle KPC K45 Barebones System
Introduction
I've had this KPC for a month now. Maybe longer, actually. This review has seen setback after setback: I've had entirely too grand a time playing with this little Linux wonder to really bother with writing. Sure, it's got drawbacks--big ones, to be honest--but it also has this charm not readily engendered by other boxes, no matter how small, elegant, or polished they may be. And, pretty soon, I'm going to have to take it apart and stick its silicon organs into another machine so I can report on my KPC's performance. I want to delay that. I want to keep playing. By the way, if you're not familiar with the term barebones, it means any computer that's just a case, motherboard, and power supply. That is, it's missing hard drives, optical drives, a processor, and cooling. A video card isn't necessary for the KPC because the motherboard has onboard video. In this way, it means that you're not getting a computer for $100. But you can use pretty much any hardware you have lying around or can afford, so it works out. As weird as this is to say, a lot of the charm comes from the price. It's a hundred-dollar barebones. A lot of features are missing, and, you know what? I like it because of that--it doesn't even have an optical drive. Without all the features it's easy to see what's so great about it. It's simple: take the focus off hardware, and you spend time having fun, knowing everything works, well, good enough. You're not getting a high-end machine here, but, at the same time, it's not locked into low-power, low-performance hardware. It can run Vista, it can run SLAX. I tried both. And XP, Gentoo, and Ubuntu... and best of all, Linux Mint. Why Mint? Because I couldn't get my CAOS Linux live CD to use the right DNS, so it wouldn't connect to the repositories. Also, it didn't seem to display at a sane refresh rate and that is the embodiment of every frustration that lurks so near just to prevent people from ever giving Linux a second chance. Mint just works, man. Kinda like this KPC. First Looks Along with the barebones is included: some screws, a single, short SATA cable, no IDE cable, a power cable, a hex/ Allen wrench for the faceplate, some manuals, and a driver CD.        This is smaller than any Shuttle you've ever handled. It's also shiny, and attracts both dust and prints like a crime scene--now that the silvered KPC is on the market, I know which I would have preferred. The front plate is thick Plexiglass with counter-sunk hex screws, and adding a photo or design is cake-walkly. There are no front connectors of any kind; just a chromed plastic power button, a blue power LED, and a red hard drive activity LED. Inside, there're also one red and one green LED that don't seem to have any function but to be visible through the vents down the flanks. The KPC also sacrifices USB connectivity in favor of legacy devices. There're PS/2 keyboard and mouse jacks, a serial connector, and a parallel printer port. There's a VGA connector, but no DVI, four USB sockets, an Ethernet jack, and three 3.5mm audio jacks. On the left side of the case is a single expansion slot, PCI, naturally.
Page 1: Introduction & First Looks
Page 2: Inside the Case & Settings Things Up Page 3: In Use Page 4: Conclusion 
Related Reviews Add Comment
11 User Comments 1 - Posted by
afs
on June 26, 2008 - 12:02 am Imo the reason the KPC is missing features is so it doesn't cannibalize the sales of Shuttle's costlier barebones. They do sell models that have the "missing" options.
2 - Posted by
Anthony
on June 26, 2008 - 10:20 am I have two XPCs - one is a W2k3 Server and the other is a WHS box. Both work really well and only consume about 50W of power.
3 - Posted by
loz
on June 26, 2008 - 2:05 pm I agree the PSU a loud. But I disagree on two things : - there's room for a slim optical drive (take care to choose a short power adapter for it). You just need to remove or cut the front panel. - Mine came with the 92 exhaust fan. And by the way I didn't had any heat problem (with the exhaust fan, and all components chosen for being low-power consumption, though). But I had memory recognition problems with 800Mhz Kingstone sticks. I downgraded to 667Mhz and now it runs flawlessly. 4 - Posted by
Kurtis
on June 26, 2008 - 2:50 pm afs: good point about the other models which come with the other stuff :-P loz: I think he meant you can't just plop a drive in there, since most people wouldn't want or know how to modify the case. 5 - Posted by
loz
on June 27, 2008 - 3:19 am You don't have to "modify the case". - Remove the front panel (4 screws, tool included) - Remove the metalic grid from the front of the case (no tool needed, just your fingers). - "plop" the drive If you want the (optional, it's just for the look) plastic panel back, and if you want a permanent access to the drive, you'll have to drill a hole in the plastic panel, indeed. 6 - Posted by
cubiclegangsta
on June 27, 2008 - 3:27 am very nice article. in fact, it was one of the most relevant I have read on the kPC. Regarding "kP2" there are some new variations coming out "soon": global.shuttle.com/awards_de tail.jsp?award_id=848 No idea on price or actual release though. I don't know if I can/want to wait.... damn it. 7 - Posted by
Joacchim
on December 12, 2008 - 6:26 pm I could not get the KPC to recognize my 120Gb IDE hard drive. I kept getting a "disk read error" when it booted up. This is a drive with XP already loaded that I was using in another computer with an AMD CPU. Do I have to reload XP on the drive to make this work? Any help out there? Thanks in advance... 8 - Posted by
Max Slowik
on December 13, 2008 - 3:44 am Yeah, that, to me, seems like a common boot problem you run into when you change Southbridge chipsets with XP already installed. If you have another hard drive you can copy your files to it temporarily before reinstalling Windows on the first drive, that way you won't lose the data. 9 - Posted by
Joacchim
on December 13, 2008 - 7:11 pm Thanks, Max. I called Shuttle tech support after making this posting - they also suggested your fix - but another idea they had steered me in the right direction. I was using an old IDE cable (instead of the one still dangling from my other computer) for the 120Gb hard drive in the Shuttle and their rep "Bill" suggested that the larger hard drives require a "more modern" (my description) IDE cable with quite a few more conductors. I was skeptical, after all they all have the same number of pins at each end, but when I plugged in the newer cable, my hard drive worked! Then all I had to do was re-activate XP thru Microsoft. Thanks again for your prompt response!
10 - Posted by
Kurtis
on December 14, 2008 - 12:34 am Interesting fix... glad you got it all sorted, and thanks for sharing how you did it!
11 - Posted by
Mista2
on September 3, 2009 - 10:01 pm I've bought shuttle bare bones for my last two desktop and have been very happy with them so I have bought a kpc sight unseen. Dissapointed now to find it might be noisy. I spluged on a 60gb SSD just to keep the noise and heat down. Howver I do have a 3GHz core 2 duo and 2gb ram too so should still be a good performer even with the crappy intel GMA950 Add Comment To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields. |
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