Shuttle SZ77R5 Mini PC Barebone Intel Z77 LGA1155 DDR3 1PCI-E16 SATA3 USB3.0 HDMI 500W 80 Plus

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My configuration is this shuttle, I7 3770k, MS 650 boost twin frozr, Kingston hyperx Blu Black Series DDR3 and a Samsung 250SSD.I've always been a shuttle owner from the old lowly Pentium Shuttle box to my last sp35p2 which could hold up to 4 x 3.5 hard drives. Unfortunately with each iteration of the shuttle, you lose some features and gain some others. However the ability to hold 4 hard drives will be missed because the chipset on this motherboard allows you to build a full compact raid system. If you really want to be picky, you could use one of the new features of a mini ssd for a boot drive and the 3 hard drive slot as a raid 5.Anyways this is a great shuttle box no matter my complaints. With built-in USB 3.0 support, the lack of esata ports becomes a non-issue as you can add as many external usb 3.0 drives with full read-write speed matching that of esata.In addition you have the full range of 1155 cores for your picking including the top end 3770k that with a bit of overclocking you can get speeds up to 4.5mhz if you are lucky.In comparison to my other shuttles, this one is the most quiet as even my MSI 650 boost twin fans are only whispering; which is a bit disconcerting as I miss the the noise of my old Shuttle.All the components fitted in easily as there were no surprises. Even the large two slot MSI graphics card fitted in without a problem. I had thought the power connector on top of the graphics card would be a major problem but the hard drive metal bay fitted on top of the graphics card with room to spare. After everything was put together, my trepidation was palatable as I held my breath when I turned it.... Nothing happened... no sound, no beeps, no fan noise... I thought I must have inserted the CPU backwards or perhaps one of the memory chips was not inserted properly?Then all of a sudden, the graphics card whirled to life.... then it stopped.... the power supply whirled also, then stopped... This repeated a few times as I figure the bios determined which graphics (internal or external) to use...Then the windows graphics appeared on screen telling me that everything was fine.... It took another few reboots as Windows re-configured itself with new drivers until I was able to take control, allowing me to install all the new drivers from the CD. After a few more boots, I was completely upgraded from my lowly Q6600 cpu to this new I7 ivy Bridge shuttle.Ultra quiet and fast. Combined with the 650 boost graphics, this system should be enough for all my gaming needs until 2020 :PThanks for reading....

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Very easy job to build a great system with this mini pc. I put in an i5 3570K, Win 7, couple of hard drives, 2 sticks of memory, a good one slot graphics card, and it was a quick and problem free build. Very satisfied.

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I bought a Shuttle SS51 for my daughter back in 2002 and it is still running. I have gone through a couple of computers myself in the meantime and decided I wanted to go the compact route this time while making no compromises. I looked at a number of Small Form Factor cases from different manufacturers but kept coming back to Shuttle because of my previous good experience.The system hasn't disappointed. With a fast Intel 3770K CPU and a OCZ Vertex 4 SSD this system boots Windows 8 in under 20 seconds and does heavy tasks like photo and video rendering or statistics in half the time my old system did.Despite the tight confines of the case, careful layout and cable routing can let you shoehorn in a fast video card.NCIX let me know my system would be delayed (because of backordering of the Vertex 4) and allowed me to adjust my order. A great company to work with!

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The case is small and well-built, and it comes with all the connectors you would want for such a wee setup. It accepts and runs a Sapphire Radeon 7970 with no complaints, and it is always gratifying to see Skyrim suggest "Ultra-High Quality" settings when you fire it up.Building it was relatively painless, except for having to use a substitute processor just to update  the BIOS to accept the Ivy Bridge CPU I had waiting for it. Given the small stature of the case, it's no surprise that the cabling inside, while thorough, is a bit tricky to manage. Getting the VGA power cables around the drive cage was a bit of a tight fit.I set it up for Intel Smart Response technology, meaning that a 64GB mSATA card is supposedly caching the main HDD for performance. I'm not 100% sold on this procedure, and might one day change it up to have a dedicated SSD.My next trick with it would be to investigate alternate cooling, as the stock heatpipe/fan setup is a wee bit louder than I would like. The point of getting the small case was to keep things unobtrusive... I don't have a lot of experience with cooling, any recommendations would be welcome.Thanks and enjoy!

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This is the second Shuttle XPC I've owned. Love this XPC! Got this for my new Ivy Bridge build. NCIX called me to let me know that the BIOS chip needed an update  (very awesome). Since I didn't have a Sandy Bridge CPU I had to get them to update  the BIOS. (Wasn't sure if the system would boot with the Ivy Bridge CPU in it to get the BIOS upgrade done)I'm running 2 SDD drives (120 GB and 60 GB) and all of my media files are stored on my file server. The great thing about this case is that you can actually put 4 2.5" drives in it really easily using adapters, if you're concerned with storage space.Lots of USB ports as well.Really like it that Shuttle decided to release a system that is Mini-ITX upgradable as well, so in the future I'm not stuck with a non-upgradable box.