The MusicXPC Professional houses the Shuttle FB61 motherboard, a tiny Flex ATX number that includes the all-important AGP and PCI slot. The motherboard provides a total of 6 USB 2.0 connections [4 external and 2 internal] as well as 3 IEEE1394 [Firewire] ports. It is also capable of supporting the new Intel hyper-threading Pentium 4 processors. All in all this motherboard provides everything the audio professional would need and more.

IDE channels and DIMM slots in pairs

The FB61's IDE ports and DIMM slots are pushed up against the front of the case, right next to the board's power connector and front panel port cluster. You have to remove the drive tray to really get access to them, but that's not a bad thing since those drives go hand in hand with the IDE interface. You can swap DIMMs with the drive tray in or out, but having it out makes the process a whole lot easier.

AGP and PCI slots

A long-awaited AGP slot sits among a mass of cables on the outside edge of the FB61. Having the AGP slot closer to the edge of the motherboard than the PCI slot gives the AGP card a lot more room, so you can easily drop in a gargantuan GeForce4 Ti 4600. There's a lot of internal cabling to feed the front I/O ports crowding the PCI and AGP slots, but there's just enough slack there for a tight fit.

Chips ahoy

The FB61 is built around Intel 875GE north bridge and ICH5 south bridge, both of which are outfitted with passive heat sinks. The MusicXPC's integrated graphics are fine for most music applications, but if you're doing heavy video work, or require more than one monitor then you may want to invest in an AGP card.

Realtek's increasingly popular ALC650 chip provides the FB61's built-in sound; it's a capable 6-channel audio chip. Despite the very decent quality of the on board sound, owners of the MusicXPC will likely want to add a high quality audio card. In that case, the MusicXPC's PCI slot, USB 2.0 and IEEE1394 ports will serve you well.

The FB61 employs Realtek's popular RTL8100B 10/100/1000 Ethernet chip for networking. The 8100B performed as well and negate the need to buy a PCI based network card. VIA expands the MusicXPC's multimedia hub capabilities with support for three Firewire ports. IEEE 1394 is particularly useful for digital video capturing, but is facing a major challenge from USB 2.0. The MusicXPC supports USB 2.0, too, so you're covered no matter which standard becomes more popular with portable audio interfaces.


Detailed specifications

		CPU Support: Socket 478
			Intel® Pentium® 4 in the 478 pin package with 400/533/800 MHz FSB
		Chipsets:
			[North] Intel® 875P
			[South] ICH5-R
		Form Factor:
			Shuttle Form Factor
		Memory
			2 x 184 pin DDR SDRAM Socket
			Support DDR333/400 Dual channel DDR DIMM slots up to 2GB capacity
		Video: 64MB video card
			NVidia MX400 chipset
			Fanless video card
		Audio: Realtek ALC 650 six channel audio
			AC '97 v2.2 (supports 5.1 channel) compliant CODEC on board
			Support Digital SPDIF In/Out
			MIC in, headphone out, Surround audio outputs
		IEEE 1394a [FireWire®]: VIA VT6306 [2 ports: 1 on front, 1 on back]
			Complies with 1394 OHCI specification revision 1.0
			Support 400Mb/s, 200Mb/s, 100Mb/s data transfer rate
		USB 2.0: [6 ports: 2 on front, 4 on back]
			Supports up to 480Mb/s data transfer rate
		Ethernet: Fast Gigabit Ethernet
			On board Broadcom 5788 support 10, 100 and 1000 Mb/s operation
			Supports Wake-On-LAN function
		Serial ATA
			Intel ICH5-R built in support two serial ATA ports
		Serial ATA-RAID
			Intel ICH5-R built in support RAID 0, 1 function
		AGP Slots
			1 AGP V3.0, 1.5V, 4X/8X mode Slot
			Support external AGP V2.0 compliant VGA device
			Support 2X, 4X, 8X AGP data transfer
		Expansion Slot:
			1 x PCI slot
			PCI 2.2 compliant, 32-bit BUS Master Slots
			133 Mbytes / sec maximum throughput
		Power Management:
			APM 1.2 compliant, ACPI 1.0 compliant
			250 W PFC
		Legacy Ports:
			1 PS/2 keyboard port
			1 PS/2 mouse port
			1 VGA output
			1 Serial port
			1 Parallel port
		Dimensions, Weights:
			300 x 200 x 185 x mm [L x W x H]
			Gross weight: 9.1 kg [20 lbs]