Shuttle XPC G5 8300mc

Photograph by Rick Rizner, Chris Manners

The XPC G5 8300mc looks like it belongs in the living room. Its stylish black-and-chrome case measures just 7 by 8 by 12 inches; the small, green LED display on the front will look right at home next to an amplifier or DVD player. Likewise, the thin, black, wireless Logitech keyboard has an attractive, minimalist style that includes multimedia control buttons, though no shortcut keys.

Priced at $2181 with a 17-inch monitor, this Shuttle PC charges a premium for its good looks. Though it's well equipped with a 3-GHz Pentium 4 531 CPU, 512MB of DDR400 SDRAM, and an EVGA E-GeForce 6600GT graphics card, it doesn't come with a dual-core CPU, which is common on the budget-priced Media Center PCs we've tested, including the much less expensive $1700 HP Media Center m7260n Photosmart PC.

Performance scores were about what we'd expect for a PC equipped with similar hardware. The XPC G5 8300mc earned a WorldBench 5 score of 84 and achieved high frame rates on our video game tests using Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Unreal Tournament. That's plenty of processing power for everyday computer tasks, Media Center duties, and decent performance on many games. Game play on Return to Castle Wolfenstein was very smooth, though colors looked slightly washed out on the Shuttle XP17 Lite display.

The system comes with a meager 200GB hard drive, a dual-layer DVD±RW drive, a four-in-one media card reader, and a single TV-tuner card. Here's hoping that's all you'll need, because the machine's cramped interior allows no room for additional devices. If you want to add a new component, you'll either have to remove an existing piece of hardware--a process that will require at least some disassembly--or connect the device externally via one of the system's two open USB ports or two FireWire ports. The three other comparably priced Media Center PCs we tested this month each came with a second optical drive, and more hard-drive space. In fact, the $1888 Polywell MiniBox 939NX-MCE had two 250GB hard drives striped in a RAID 0 array for faster performance.

The XPC G5 8300mc has all of the usual Media Center PC connectors on the back of the case, including S-Video-in and-out ports, VGA and DVI ports, 5.1-channel surround-audio jacks, an S/PDIF digital audio output, and cable-TV and FM-antenna connectors. But the system lacks composite-video ports, and we would have liked to see more than the four USB ports.

Novices won't get much help from Shuttle's documentation; the motherboard manual and superthin installation guide with incredibly tiny diagrams will aid only the already initiated. If you don't need detailed instructions and you're seeking a tiny Media Center PC that doesn't look like a PC, the XPC G5 8300mc is worth a look.

The small Shuttle XPC G5 8300mc Media Center PC is a good choice if you're willing to pay a premium for its stylish looks, and if you can live with its limited expandability.

Photograph by Rick Rizner, Chris Manners

Photograph by Rick Rizner, Chris Manners

Photograph by Rick Rizner, Chris Manners