Shuttle Zen (ST62K) good or bad opinions?

I have had a Shuttle Zen for nearly 12 months. It has a 3.0 GHz
Prescott and 1 GB of TwinMos PC3200 RAM, and it has been working fine,
except for some small problems:

1. Left plugged in all the time, it regularly finds the wrong FSB after
a cold boot, ie 166 x 15 instead of 200 x 15. I can get around this by
pressing reset while still in the boot screen, once I see the incorrect
fsb reported. It never happens if I leave the AC power switched off at
the wall when not using the computer, or if I disconnnect the DC
connector from the system unit. (The Zen has a separate fanless "power
brick"). The last BIOS update (the Z bios) was intended to address this
issue, but was not universally successful.

2. There is a faint crackle through my powered speakers which seems to
correspond to disk and/or bus activity.

I can live with these problems quite easily. I like the system,
especially its low noise levels. However, over on the Sudhian forums,
the Zen has a terrible reputation. Some people allege that these
machines are prone to burn up their cpus through fan or fan header
failure. Others say they have had no problems. I have not found any
mention of endemic Zen fan failures anywhere else. (Eg here).

Do any present or former Zen / ST62k users have any comments?

I've had the ST62K for almost eight months and I love it!

However, regarding the fan problem - it could be a real problem. Just
today, I noticed that the fan was erratically on and off and the
temperature at the rear vent was very hot. I turned off the pc and the
unit won't turn on. I waited for a couple of hours and came back, the
next thing I noticed was the FSB speed was wrong (166x18 instead of
133x18), the startup was extremely slow, and the fan was not turning at
all - normally the fan would start at full speed during bios checking.
I haven't gone to the bottom it, but there's a good chance either the
fan is blown or the fan controller is bad. BTW I've tried different
setting for the fan, such as setting it to force high/mid/low speed and
auto speed. The fan simply won't turn...


mike.j.harvey.RemoveThis@gmail.com wrote:
> I have had a Shuttle Zen for nearly 12 months. It has a 3.0 GHz
> Prescott and 1 GB of TwinMos PC3200 RAM, and it has been working fine,
> except for some small problems:
>
> 1. Left plugged in all the time, it regularly finds the wrong FSB after
> a cold boot, ie 166 x 15 instead of 200 x 15. I can get around this by
> pressing reset while still in the boot screen, once I see the incorrect
> fsb reported. It never happens if I leave the AC power switched off at
> the wall when not using the computer, or if I disconnnect the DC
> connector from the system unit. (The Zen has a separate fanless "power
> brick"). The last BIOS update (the Z bios) was intended to address this
> issue, but was not universally successful.
>
> 2. There is a faint crackle through my powered speakers which seems to
> correspond to disk and/or bus activity.
>
> I can live with these problems quite easily. I like the system,
> especially its low noise levels. However, over on the Sudhian forums,
> the Zen has a terrible reputation. Some people allege that these
> machines are prone to burn up their cpus through fan or fan header
> failure. Others say they have had no problems. I have not found any
> mention of endemic Zen fan failures anywhere else. (Eg here).
>
> Do any present or former Zen / ST62k users have any comments?