Shuttle Zen (ST62K) good or bad opinions?

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.shuttle (More info?)

I've had the ST62K for almost eight months and I love it!

However, regarding the fan problem - it could be a real problem. Just
today, I noticed that the fan was erratically on and off and the
temperature at the rear vent was very hot. I turned off the pc and the
unit won't turn on. I waited for a couple of hours and came back, the
next thing I noticed was the FSB speed was wrong (166x18 instead of
133x18), the startup was extremely slow, and the fan was not turning at
all - normally the fan would start at full speed during bios checking.
I haven't gone to the bottom it, but there's a good chance either the
fan is blown or the fan controller is bad. BTW I've tried different
setting for the fan, such as setting it to force high/mid/low speed and
auto speed. The fan simply won't turn...


mike.j.harvey@gmail.com wrote:
> I have had a Shuttle Zen for nearly 12 months. It has a 3.0 GHz
> Prescott and 1 GB of TwinMos PC3200 RAM, and it has been working fine,
> except for some small problems:
>
> 1. Left plugged in all the time, it regularly finds the wrong FSB after
> a cold boot, ie 166 x 15 instead of 200 x 15. I can get around this by
> pressing reset while still in the boot screen, once I see the incorrect
> fsb reported. It never happens if I leave the AC power switched off at
> the wall when not using the computer, or if I disconnnect the DC
> connector from the system unit. (The Zen has a separate fanless "power
> brick"). The last BIOS update (the Z bios) was intended to address this
> issue, but was not universally successful.
>
> 2. There is a faint crackle through my powered speakers which seems to
> correspond to disk and/or bus activity.
>
> I can live with these problems quite easily. I like the system,
> especially its low noise levels. However, over on the Sudhian forums,
> the Zen has a terrible reputation. Some people allege that these
> machines are prone to burn up their cpus through fan or fan header
> failure. Others say they have had no problems. I have not found any
> mention of endemic Zen fan failures anywhere else. (Eg here).
>
> Do any present or former Zen / ST62k users have any comments?

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.shuttle (More info?)

Have you tried moving the fan connector from Fan 1 header to Fan 3
header?

I've had my ST62K for about a year and a half and just in the last 6 months, the fan started to behave in an irregular way, unlike the previous year. The other day it went on full, then quit all together. This caused the machine to get extremely hot, slow down like glue and then reboot. I let it sit until morning.

I tried setting the fan speed to maximum in the bios to see if i could get the fan to go on, but no luck, i was about to get a whole new mobo, but then tried the suggestion above, switching the fan from Fan 1 connector to Fan 3 and voila !

I have my fan (and my pc) back and it seems to be working ok... will let you know if i run into any other problems.

Thanks everyone !