Shuttle XPC. Advice on graphics card & Blu Ray drive.

[Mark T]

Well I just purchased my first Shuttle XPC system. It's going to be used in the living room for general use although I would like to play Blu Ray DVD's through it. Spec is as follows.

Chassis
P-type aluminum chassis with integated card reader
completely black, alu cover, plastic front
storage bays: 1 x 5.25", 3 x 3.5" (2 internal)
screwless drive installation without tools
stealthed drive doors
dimensions: 32.5 x 22 x 21 cm (LWH)
weight: 4.5 kg net / 6.3 kg gross
Mainboard
Shuttle FB81, Shuttle form factor, proprietary design for SB81P
chipset: Intel 915G + ICH6R
Award V6.0PG BIOS, 4MBit flash memory
with hardware monitoring and ACPI power management functions
dimensions: 20.5 x 28 cm
Power supply unit
SilentX 350 Watt mini PSU with switch, supports 115/230V
connectors: 8-pin ATX2, 6-pin ATX1, 4-pin ATX3
Processor support
Socket 775 supports Intel Pentium 4 (with 1 or 2 MB Cache) and Celeron D processors
supports Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4 GHz
at 800 or 533 FSB
supports Hyper-Threading
Processor cooling system
Shuttle I.C.E. (Integrated Cooling Engine)
advanced Heatpipe technology
linear fan control
Memory support
2 x 184 pin slots, supports Dual Channel
supports PC3200/2700 (DDR400/333) DDR SDRAM memory
up to a total size of 2GB
Expansion slots
1 x PCI-Express (PCI-E, 16X)
1 x 32 Bit PCI (v2.2)
Integrated graphics
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 (GMA900)
with PCI-E x1 improved bandwidth
features 333MHz graphics core
DX8/DX9 support and enhanced 3D performance
Dynamic Video Memory Technology (DVMT) 3.0
shared Memory max. 256MB

The system I have purchased comes with a P4 3.2 ghz processor and 2gb RAM included. I am looking to change the graphics card as it has a PCI-E slot and I would like to include a Blu Ray player aswell. From what I've read, in order to play the Blu Ray DVD's in HD I'm going to need a graphics card with a DVI output which I can then convert to HDMI or a graphics card which has an HDMI output.

I really need advice on a reasonable graphics card which can be no longer than about 19cm and no wider than 2.0 cm. I know the newer graphics cards come with huge heat sinks and fans so hopefully you'll be able to help me out. Price doesn't really matter although I don't want to throw too much at this.

Thanks.

 

[DQuaN]

I think my 8800GT has an HDMI out. It's quite chunky but not as big as the GTS or GTX.

They are pretty reasonably priced too at around £160-170.

 

[Eric.]

I would have recommended that too, but I wasn't sure about the size of it. I also don't know how well it would deal with the power requirement and the heat (which I know isn't awful, but the case is really small).