Shuttle SN26P with SLI

Final thoughts

It's fair to say that it can sometimes feel like not a lot of innovation is going on in this industry. One company will come out with a product or a chipset, and a whole bunch of people will launch designs off the back of it. We see endless streams of products that are essentially the same thing and we get a bit, well, jaded.

In contrast, this Shuttle has blown us away. Combining the power of AMD's Socket 939 Athlon 64 processors with NVIDIA's SLI graphics leaves even the most demanding gamer wanting for nothing; the only thing that comes close is the loony dual-Opteron IWILL ZMAXd2 we previewed back in May. Unfortunately for us, IWILL face an even steeper learning curve than Shuttle do in order to squeeze two Opteron processors and SLI into the same SFF box.

Shuttle haven't won the race just yet. As we mentioned, this sample is a press preview version and is not a 100% production-ready example. There are still a few small issues to iron out - we have concerns about the heatsink not making contact with the full area of the processor's heat spreader, and there is more work to be done with the SLI packaging in order to support GeForce 7 cards.

We are confident these niggles will be resolved - Shuttle have an enormous wealth of experience in engineering small form factor machines, and with the SN26P they are trying to raise the bar in terms of packaging and performance.

One thing it won't be is cheap. Shuttle have not revealed retail pricing yet, but the SD31P retails for around £335 inc vat. Add to that the cost of the SLI cards - between £500 and £700 depending on 6800 GT vs 7800 GT vs 7800 GTX - and the cost of the heatpipe coolers for the graphics cards. All up, we're talking at least £800 and possibly as high as £1000; admittedly, an SLI desktop system will set you back similar amounts

All told, the SN26P is one of the most exciting developments in the SFF in recent times. We will reserve judgement until work on the final retail version is completed, but we think it has the potential to be a must-have for the well-heeled LAN party enthusiast this Christmas.