Shuttle AN51R (Athlon 64) nForce3 250 Mainboard

Manufacturer: Shuttle
Supplied by:  Shuttle
Street Price: $105

by Dean Barker (8/04/2004)

Introduction

Shuttle has been pioneering small form factor systems for so long that some people have forgotten the Spacewalker motherboards of old and how that’s where Shuttle actually cut their teeth.  Today, we return to Shuttle's mainboard division and their newest AMD Athlon 64 board, the Shuttle AN51R, based on the nForce3-250 chipset.  The AN51R is of course, the successor to the Shuttle AN50R based on the nForce3-150 chipset.  Sporting an improved chipset and some changes to the DIMM slots, the AN51R further hones a well respected socket 754 motherboard.  We are fortunate enough today to see if the new Shuttle board has what it takes to stretch out the life of the socket 754 processors.  Let's dive into the specs to get things going.

Specifications

• Application: AMD Athlon64 processor socket 754

• Chipset: NVidia nForce3 250

• System bus: 1600MHz with HyperTransport

• Memory: Three 184 pin DIMM slots supporting up to DDR400

• Graphics: AGP 8x slot

• Audio: Realtek ALC650 supporting 6 channel and SPDIF audio

• NIC: Gigabit LAN

• IEEE 1394A: Two ports (rear)

• Sound: On board Realtek ALC650 six channel audio

• NIC: On board Realtek 8100C supporting 10/100 LAN

• IDE: ATA133 IDE connectors x 2

• SATA 150 x 4 supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD

• PCI slots: Five

• AGP slots: one

• BIOS: Award/Phoenix

• Dimension: 305mm x 244mm

• Rear I/O: Mouse and Keyboard PS/2 ports, COM ports x 1, LPT Printer port, clear CMOS button, SPDIF jack, NIC, USB 2.0 ports x 4, Firewire ports x 1, sound jacks for 5.1 channel sound output.

• Internal connectors: USB 2.0 plugs for 4 additional ports, Additional Firewire plug, Front audio connections

What you get

Opening up the AN51R box we found several accessories for the board.  A two port USB 2.0 slot bracket, a two port Firewire slot bracket (which is a little confusing considering you only have one plug on the board), FDD and standard IDE ribbon cables, SATA cable, rear I/O plate, driver/utility CD, color manual and a NVidia RAID manual.  While this superficially looks thin, it is not - all the bases are covered here.

 

NEXT

Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - Board Layout
Pg 3 - Layout and BIOS
Pg 4 - BIOS and Testing
Pg 5 - Business Productivity Benchmarks
Pg 6 - Gaming Benchmarks
Pg 7 - Overclocking and Conclusion