The end of the world is now!! Shuttle SZ68R5 unboxing video!!

[melsmed]

Well, the end of the world is indeed here!!

http://www.youtube.com/user/LinusTechTips#p/u/9/VX28ay0By6k

Enjoy.

[OldDummy]

Good Job.

Shouldn't be too much longer now.

Well, the end of the world is indeed here!!

http://www.youtube.com/user/LinusTechTips#p/u/9/VX28ay0By6k

Enjoy.

[melsmed]

It looks nice.

A couple of things to nick-pick:

I wished the optical didn't have a cover.
another one and this one is more concerning, the north bridge heatsink is way to small to allow any overclocking. The Asrok Z68 mitx motherboard has something similar and it gets so hot that it cannot get any real overclock before throttling the cpu down.

Might be easy to replace, but i'm not looking forward in removing the mobo.

Other than that, it looks like a very good system and i will get give Shuttle one more chance with it.

Damn Shuttles, can't escape them! 

[jrturbo]

Hi Guys

Great to see that shuttle for oce in a while doesnt seem to be lagging too far behind the rest of the pc industry in introducing the Z68 chipset, and they have used the extra space of their motherboard to give us 4 memory slots and mni pcie slot and m sata slot.

The bad news is that the case and chassis is nothing more than a variation of what we had before and it will work well enough as the current series do given the constraint that they can house a standard optical drive  and a couple of 3.5" hard drives.

How ever I feel that shuttle should rethink its case design and at least offer another variation of a case which instead uses laptop optical drive and 2.5" drives and perhaps a different psu Format and size, I also believe tha will need less use of the optical drive and if you where to move it below the motherboard  you can use the laptop drives and this frees up a lot of space that be used for cooling and allow a lot fire power even inside a smaller case than currently used by shuttle

Now look at what this guy managed to cram inside a case with a volume of 11 litres with a lot thought and unconventional aproach to pc

http://www.techreaction.net/forums/showthread.php?t=6740


So if this is atainable by a person buying of the shelf components what could shuttle achieve with their knowledge and resources, I hoped that shuttle had been braver in their design, if not I feel someone  else will beat them to it and mini itx is getting bigger and ignoring the competition is not a good idea

[melsmed]

Hello JrTurbo,

Sadly, the real brains that made Shuttle, left the company a long time ago.

Back in the day, Shuttle used to have systems ready every time a new chipset was launched.

The Z68 is actually super late, by Shuttle's previous system releases.

IMHO, i think that the case is as close as it can be to being perfect. But i also agree that full size optical drives are not completely necessary this day and age.

Personally, i barely use my optical drive and my next system will have an external drive, so i can move it to any of my systems when needed.

I would love a bigger system fan or a pre-cut area at the top cover for a second fan to work as a blowhole, like the mods we used to make back in the day here.

The link that you provided is one impressive mod, but is just impossible to make at a reasonable price for the general public, which still constitute the market that govern and drive the industry.

[jrturbo]

Hi Melsmed

I still feel that certain improvements could have beem introduced by shuttle which would inprove the product with a minimal impact on cost.

a) The sides of the case should better vented to allow more airflow to enter the case, or offer as option a case cover with large mesh windows on the sides, this would make the case more compatible with VGA coolers that dont vent the hot air out the back.

b) The ice cooler design should be updated, idealy it should have more cooling area. perhaps a scaled down version of a noctua DH 14 using  92mm fans, or at least fitted with a 2nd fan for push pull configuration which would allow more closely stacked fins which will increase the cooling.

I am sure other user might have other sugestions but the above improve the case cooling and noise, a well known problem when using a powerfull video card and CPU  

[melsmed]

Actually, Shuttle had a cover case with meshes on the side. It was standard with the old SB75, but the temps were not that great. That tells you how good the original design still is.

As far as i can tell, the ICE unit is also working fine. I mean, the old ICE units were able to cool down Prescott's Pentiums 4, which i saw melting plastic stands from a test mobo at HardOCP.

This day and age, i wouldn't buy a vid card that does not vent hot air out of the case.

Here is a shot of the SB75 with the mesh cover.

[Salamander]

Agreed, they should as some case makers should make designs without an optical drive, so you can make the case smaller or have better cooling, since they hardly of any use these days and since I don't see it, there is a nice market to exploit, either way.

Shuttle is the same, no innovation, so it gets less attention.

[jrturbo]

As it happens my daughetrs SB87G% happens to be fitted with the optional case cover like the one you just showed us





If you click on to the photos I made and enlarge them you can see that the mesh grill that shuttle used is very tight and does not provide an easy path for the airflow, furthermore those mesh panels are made of steel and the rivets used to secure them to the cover interfere with the chasis when slidong the cover on or off.

The ideal stuff as far as airflow goes is the aluminium HEX mesh grill that AC ryan used to sell, which nowadays appears to be discontinued, but its quite flimsy and weak, however there is a far more practical solution which would be to use the hex grill pattern used on the exit of the ice cooler, with the  added advantage that the prill pattern is part of the case cover then, and this would be a huge improvement over the small squares used at present.

I found the hex grill I cut off the case on the exit of the ice cooler om my daughters shuttle I believe they still use the same grill pattern on the new models, and placed it next to piece of AC Ryan mesh with a piece of white paper under them so we can appreciate them better, now compare them to mesh steel grill and original case cover squares and its quite obvious that they would make a huge improvement to the airflow.

[fighterpilot]

Nice overview.

Damn, should have waited for the SZ68R5. I have the SH67H3 and had to buy the beefier PSU, plus the Z68 chipset would have been nice as well.

I agree about the ventilation. I still don't understand why Shuttle doesn't offer a machine like this with the mesh cover. I can't find it anywhere. I used to have one for an old Shuttle I had, but I sold the Shuttle with the mesh cover.

In any case I made my own that's completely mesh:

[iG]

As it happens my daughetrs SB87G% happens to be fitted with the optional case cover like the one you just showed us





If you click on to the photos I made and enlarge them you can see that the mesh grill that shuttle used is very tight and does not provide an easy path for the airflow, furthermore those mesh panels are made of steel and the rivets used to secure them to the cover interfere with the chasis when slidong the cover on or off.

The ideal stuff as far as airflow goes is the aluminium HEX mesh grill that AC ryan used to sell, which nowadays appears to be discontinued, but its quite flimsy and weak, however there is a far more practical solution which would be to use the hex grill pattern used on the exit of the ice cooler, with the  added advantage that the prill pattern is part of the case cover then, and this would be a huge improvement over the small squares used at present.

I found the hex grill I cut off the case on the exit of the ice cooler om my daughters shuttle I believe they still use the same grill pattern on the new models, and placed it next to piece of AC Ryan mesh with a piece of white paper under them so we can appreciate them better, now compare them to mesh steel grill and original case cover squares and its quite obvious that they would make a huge improvement to the airflow.

I miss those silver, brushed aluminum models.  Shuttle's selection is so bland now.  They need to start releasing in silver again as well.

[OldDummy]

Authoritarian to a fault, but yes, I miss the pure functional simplicity of the silver G2’s.
IMO, what is really needed is the inclusion of a 120mm fan with ICE.
With that one change everything else would fall into place.  Rad…etc.

[iG]

I suppose Shuttle still used a non-standard 1155 mounting hole layout?  I'd like to use an Asetek 545LC (liquid cooling kit w/ 92mm radiator) in the SZ68R5.

[jrturbo]

Well dont give up hope yet,because from the video it looked like the cooler used push pins to secure it and shuttle may at last may have made the transition to an intel standard sizes

[iG]

Good to hear.

I'm worried though that the 500W PSU won't be enough for my components:
2GB XFX Radeon 6950 (dual fan version)
i7-2600
16GB DDR3-1600
600GB VelociRaptor
300GB Intel G3 SSD
LG Blu-Ray Burner
Asetek 545LC liquid cooling kit for CPU (pump / reservoir and 2x 92mm fans)

[VillageIdiot]

I'd like to get a SZ68R5 and stick a 7970 video card in it.

Is that retarded, or conceivable?

I know the reference model of the 7970 vents out the back, I'd make sure to pick a version that did so.

Is this shuttle model actually available for purchase yet?

Holy cow did I really rack up over 3000 posts on this forum back in the day?

[jrturbo]

Hi there Village Idiot

There is nothing wrong with you wishing to pair a 7970 with an ITX mb, and it will work fine, provided you have psu powerfull enough and case big enough to house it.

You can run an itx sandy bridge solution and 7970 in Silverstone SGO7 or SG08 no problem, and possibly in a SG05 or SG06 moding the case and with the more powerfull optional 450 watt psu, the 6970 and 7970 have the same length of pcb 10.5 inches, although the plastic shroud is actually smaller on the 7970 so it might be possible to install the card without having to cut the front fascia panel.

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=672962


regards

Joe Rubido

[Digikid]

Yes I am still alive!  LOL!!!

This looks perfect for my next build.  Any good reviews on it?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Someone on OcUK has got a unit and is going to write a review:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18366157

However,the case has no mini-ITX mounts so it is another one-shot Shuttle disposable system and the motherboard looks very basic.

Another fail from Shuttle.

They said last year they were developing mini-ITX compatable cases and it really does seems that this is not happening.

For me this system,considering its disposable nature should not be more than £200 to £240,yet I suspect it will be around £300 when sold in the UK.

Why £200 to £240? A Silverstone SG05 with a 450W PSU and a Z68 based mini-ITX motherboard with better build quality is around the same price. The case and PSU are upgradeable. I would put the extra 2 RAM slots and nicer Shuttle case as being compensation for the disposable nature of the system.

The funny thing is that if Shuttle sold a mini-ITX version of the case with a 500W PSU for around £150 to £170,I suspect many people would buy it.

[tino]

Lots of old faces in this thread!!

Its a shame that Shuttle have really lost touch with what made them so popular recently.

I had high hopes for there new mitx range of cases when they mentioned them, but as previously mentioned this seems to have been forgotten about.

[Digikid]

OLD?!?!?!?! 

LOL!!!

Well I have been having an itch to build a system....a small one. 

Not a lot of reviews on this unit as of yet.  When was it released?

[melsmed]

DIGIKID!!!!!!!  TINO!!!!!!!!!

Wow, long time indeed!

Back to topic, regarding the meshes covers, I remember the reason they "failed" is because the fan was not able to move enough air over the motherboard and thus temps were actually worse.

The vents at the bottom does indeed direct the air over the components. But the lack of a bigger vent for the vid card is always the weak point of the Shuttle cover.

Regarding ITX mobo's, they are great, but at the same time, the placement of the CPU has created a big inconvenience for the majority of coolers out there, not to mention, that, well, imho at least, they are just too small and manufactures can't really add as much stuff as, lets say, a Shuttle mobo.

Also, ITX is treated in the same way as matx was, which is as a "incapable" mobo for high end designs and until they (mobo manufacturers) realize that there is a huge market for high end ITX systems, they will continue with this.

As Digikid stated, I also have the itch, well, more like a justifiable need to build another system, since my SX38 is kind of crying for retirement, but I cannot find a decent ITX mobo and case that is better than the venerable Shuttle G case-based system.

But I believe that this Shuttle (SZ68R5) is just way too late, considering that Ivy Bridge and new chipsets will be launched in the next couple of months and I just cannot justify buying this now. Not to mention, I'm not sure how viable Shuttle is as a company these days, since none of the people that made the XPC a hit are around anymore and the ones there seems like they could care less.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems the case can take mini-ITX motherboards:

http://www.shuttle.eu/fileadmin/resources/download/docs/spec/barebones/SZ68R5_e.pdf

Excellent!!

[craigbru]

While Shuttle may be slightly behind everyone else, at least they are still bringing new barebones to the market.  That said, since there are quite a few other choices out there when it comes to ITX motherboards, I can't help but think they need to push ahead with a little more innovation.  I've been looking to get a new Shuttle PC for some time now, but I'm not yet convinced they'll be getting my money. 

[agogley]

It's kinda humorous, I remember people saying the same thing three and four years ago.  I'd like to see Shuttle do more, faster but at least they have a product.

Mine is now 2008, with some products in it that predate that so I'm looking around a bit.  But honestly, my wolfdale still handles pretty much everything I throw at it.