On the outside, the only difference between the SN25P and the SB95P is the color of their front panel. Only a look at the rear-panel I/O reveals a few differences. The motherboard is visible once you remove the casing cover and take out the rack mount. It is plain to see that the nVIDIA chipset is actively cooled. If you now remove the cooling system, the CPU socket is exposed. It is designed for AMD Athlon64/Sempron/Athlon FX processors. The memory interface can handle dual-channel DDR modules.

The onboard ports leave nothing to be desired: USB 2.0, FireWire 1394a, Gigabit LAN and 4x Serial ATA. For EIDE drives the motherboard still features an ATA 133 interface via which CD or DVD drives can be operated. In terms of audio, the unit features 7.1 channel-capable Surround Sound which can be output via digital, optical and/or analog ports. The nForce4 goes with PCI Express for the expansion card interfaces. Anyone who had hoped to see SLI will unfortunately be disappointed. Despite the odd rumor on the Internet that Shuttle plans something of the sort, the manufacturer denied it when we asked them directly.

Standard casing from Shuttle (P chassis)

Retail package of the nForce4-based XPC

The XPC is equipped with not one, not two, but three shoddy covers.

The back of the XPC SN25P

The I/O interface features a plethora of different ports.

This is how the guts of the SN25P look.

Active nForce4 chipset cooling

The motherboard has two PCI Express slots.