The board itself is based on the nForce 150 chipset so performance was as expected. Aside from the 600MHz HyperTransport, the biggest difference between nForce 150 and 250, is the lack of PCI lock. An AGP lock was present, but unless in conjunction with a PCI lock this is next to useless.

Inside the BIOS there are full overclocking controls, including CPU Ratio, DDR voltage (up to 2.9V), CPU voltage (up to 1.7V), AGP voltage (up to 1.8V), chipset voltage (up to 1.9V) and HyperTransport voltage (up to 1.5V).

Surprisingly, this board was quite happy up to some very high speeds, 250MHz and more. But at this speed, the network would stop working. If a more tolerant PCI network card could be found, overclocking might be possible. 230MHz worked well, and kept our 1.8GHz Sempron (3100+) ticking along at a cool 2.07GHz.

The power supply is 240W. This is meager by today's desktop standards, but the 16A on the 12V rail is enough for what you can realistically throw at a Shuttle.

Final Thoughts

This bare bones unit is excellent. It is sleek, performance is excellent and noise levels are low. What more could you want out of a PC?

At £193.45 inc. VAT from overclock.co.uk this is an attractive bundle. This gives you a case, cooling solution and motherboard. Just add memory, processor and drives. Not only this, it is as good as pre-built. If this case didn't predate the Sempron, we'd suggest it was made for it.

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