Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 Barebones System Review

Overview

 

It’s always nice when we have a first here at pcG and this time around we don’t just have the first of welcoming Shuttle to our review pages we also have numerous other firsts too! This is the first time we’ve ever seen a barebones system here at pcG and it’s also the first time I’ve had to build a system (or half build) a system, that I’m then going to review! In fact when we initially talked with Shuttle I was even unsure that this sort of product belonged on pcGameware’s review pages. But (as you probably guessed) Shuttle persuaded us otherwise, and without giving too much away, I’m glad they did…

So what is the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 then? Well that’s a good question and the simple answer is a barebones PC; the next question is probably well what’s a barebones PC then? Well let me tell you a little about this one shall I!? The SZ170R8 is effectively a Mini-ITX PC in a small form factor case (SFF) that’s ideal in size for a Living Room PC (LMPC) or Home Theatre PC (HTPC), especially as it measures in at a minuscule 332mm (L) x 216mm (W) x 198mm (H). Within the Case itself we find a 500W 80-Plus Silver rated Power Supply as well as an Intel Z170 based MITX Motherboard supporting Skylake CPUs (Core i3/i5/i7) up to a TDP of 95W. There’s also support for 64GB of RAM up to 2133MHz in speed. While the Motherboard also features a Realtek ALC892 audio solution, an Intel based 1GB/s LAN adapter and a M.2 socket. Pre-installed there’s also a bespoke CPU Cooler hence the limit on the wattage of the CPU itself. To this you will need to add a Skylake CPU, Memory/RAM, Storage (HDD/SSD) and if you wish a dedicated Graphics Card.

 

 

 

The Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 arrived at pcG in a (somewhat predictably) small box, the box itself was almost completely white except for a small Cube image on the front and top with product and range names also shown. The back of the box is similar in style, this time offering up some basic features (see Specifications/Features) below. In addition to this the left side of the box features an image of the XPC Cube itself, the basic specifications of this barebones system, as well as showing off the Intel Chipset (Z170) logo and the 80-Plus Silver logo.

 

 

On opening the box we can see that the XPC Cube SZ170R8 was both well packaged and decently presented with the main chassis being protected by soft-cell foam blocks and further protected by a plastic bag. Tucked into the right side of the right hand foam block we find a small brown cardboard box containing all of the additional accessories.

 

 

Within the aforementioned cardboard box we find a quick start guide (in various languages) as well as an EU power cable, a Drivers DVD, some thermal paste, x4 SATA cables, a bag of additional screws and the cover for the CPU socket.

 

At the time of writing the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 is very difficult to find for sale due to its newness to market. Pricing should be around the £300 mark and it comes equipped with a 2 year warranty. UPDATE 08/03/16 MSRP: is £253. The Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 can now be purchased from CCL.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Shuttle

 

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

 

First impressions of the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 are (somewhat obviously) along the lines of wow this things small and dare I say cute too! This is definitely something I’d be more than happy to have in my living room, dare I say even the wife would be happy with this also (she likes small things after all!). The SZ170R8 also seems well made too and the device as a whole has an air of luxury about it. Let’s take a closer look at what’s what…

 

 

Looking at the front of the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 reveals an understated look with the front panel seemingly made from brushed aluminium and anodised black. In the top left corner we have a simple Shuttle logo in white while in the opposite corner we find a drive activity LED, power LED and the main power switch. Note that there’s no power switch at the back of the unit, as this system uses a special bespoke Power Supply. Bottom right we find a simple XPC logo, while below this we find what appears to be a flap (judging by those three white dots in the far bottom right corner).

Behind that flap that we find the two Audio ports (Microphone & Headphone) flanked by USB 3.0 ports, with the port on the right supporting Fast Charging capability via software.

At the back of the unit in the top left there’s a small 60mm exhaust fan below which we find the main power socket. To the right of this is the exhaust grill for the internal CPU Cooler (see below) while beyond that on the far right we have the two PCIe expansion slots. The I/O shield comprises of x2 DisplayPorts, x2 USB 3.0 ports, HDMI port, eSATA port, x2 USB 3.0 ports, LAN port, x2 USB 3.0 ports, CMOS reset button and finally the 7.1 on-board audio outputs.

 

 

Both sides of the XPC Cube SZ170R8 are effectively the same and are made up of a single section of pre-shaped brushed black aluminium that covers both the top and the side of the system. The only difference being that the left side has more ventilation than the right, no doubt to promote better Graphics Card cooling. There’s also not much to see beneath the unit other than the fact that it sits up off of the surface thanks to four rubber feet.

 

 

Removing the panel, by way of the three silver thumb screws found at the back reveals a surprisingly spacious interior, for a case so small. Although as you can see from the images above the majority of it is taken up with the drive cage and the CPU Cooler.

Looking at the SZ170R8 from the other side we can see the bespoke Power Supply and its mass of cabling! But what is impressive for such a small unit is the fact that it is 80-Plus Silver rated for efficiency and 500W! 😮

 

 

Looking from above we can see that the drive cage really does take up most of the interior space, what’s also odd is that it seems to only cater for HDDs!? Also note the large amount of silica gel taped to the base of the drive cage in an attempt to keep moisture at bay.

Th drive cage can be easily removed by undoing the four silver screws at the top. Now there’s a little more space to work with, I guess we better get some more components into the build and get this beauty up ‘n running…

 

So far I’m pretty impressed with what I’ve seen, apart from the seeming lack of 2.5″/SSD support (other than the M.2 SSD slot that is!) and as long as it’s not too difficult to remove that CPU Cooler. And, more importantly all of our components fit, (especially GPU & RAM). But it already looks like Shuttle might just be onto an award winner here…

UPDATE 08/03/16: 3.5″ – 2.5″ adapter for SSD support can be seen here and purchased here.
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Installation

 

 

The first task was to fit our test CPU of choice into the SZ170R8’s Z170 based (Skylake) motherboard, we opted to use an Intel Core i5-6600K for this build. Therefore the (real) first task was to remove Shuttle’s proprietary CPU Cooler (shown above left), which at first looked a little tricky! Actually, it was pretty simple, just a case of undoing the four silver thumb screws at the rear to remove the fan assembly, not forgetting to unplug the fan connection from the motherboard. Then the four clips (not a fan of these) can be rotated counter clockwise to unlock the four plastic pins from the motherboard, the CPU Cooler itself can then be removed.

With the cooler removed I found a small piece of plastic film that was protecting the socket’s pins. This was then removed and replaced with the Intel Core i5-6600K, as can been seen in the latter two images above.

 

 

The next task was to install the G.Skill Ripjaws 4 memory modules, here we used two 4GB DIMMS. The motherboard supports up to 64GB of RAM with the maximum supported speed being 2133MHz. Note that there’s a height restriction on the RAM if using the drive cage and this height is 42mm from the motherboard (according to Shuttle). Needless to say our RAM fitted without issue.

I then added some Thermal Paste to the CPU and refitted the CPU Cooler. This again was easy enough but I’m still not a lover of the plastic clips that secure the cooler’s baseplate to the motherboard, as it just feels too loose IMHO! For the time being and to leave a little more space I left the CPU Cooler’s fan (and associated shroud) to one side.

 

 

Now this is the important part; as we’re trying to build a Gaming PC here the Graphics Card is the all important part, as it always is to be honest. Now according to Shuttle’s specifications the maximum supported size for the GPU is 267mm long by 120mm tall and 34.6mm wide. Now while that’s a good size it’s still too restrictive for our EVGA GTX 980Ti Classified card. Therefore we needed something else, luckily I managed to source another EVGA card (unfortunately temporarily), but here we have the EVGA GTX 970 FTW+ measuring in at 256mm long by 111mm wide. PERFECT! 😉

Now what was surprising is that when I went to fit said EVGA Graphics Card into the XPC Cube SZ170R8 it fitted with ease, to the point that not only are the Graphics Card size requirements a little over zealous, but I thought that even our GTX 980Ti might fit, but alas no! As you can see there’s plenty of room around the GPU and I’m sure larger cards could be fitted…

 

 

I was impressed to find that the supplied 500W Power Supply was equipped with two PCIe power cables one with 8-pins and one with 6-pins, perfect for our test GTX 970! After a bit of cable management (not much can be done in a case such as this!), it was time to refit the drive bracket, which looked like it was going to be a awkward task! And it was (a little) there’s room (just!) for the GPU’s power cable to trail down one side and under the drive bracket, with the cable effectively sitting between the RAM slots. After a little cursing and swearing and gentle cable manipulation the cage was back in position and the final part of the puzzle could be fitted.

It was a shame that I had no M.2 drive to hand at the time of the review as I was forced to use a regular 2.5″ SSD. Of course I could have used a HDD, but come on it’s now 2016 FFS! 😉 And, because the drive cage has no caddies and there’s no support for 2.5″ drives I had to settle for just allowing our test HyperX Fury to simply sit in the bottom of the drive cage!? 😮

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

 

Benchmarks Used:

 

 

Hardware Performance

 

• Shuttle SZ170R8 – with Intel Core i5-6600K, 8GB 21333MHz RAM, EVGA GTX 970 FTW+ & HyperX Fury 120GB SSD – (stock settings)

Benchmark	Result
Metro Last Light	80.00 FPS
UNiGiNE Heaven	1402
3DMark (Fire Strike)	9639

 

What’s impressive about the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 is not only its diminutive size but also its performance, and that’s Gaming performance we’re talking about here too! But there’s an argument that that’s down to the components that I have added and of course to some degree that is true! But what I wanted to see was whether you can build a real Gaming PC using the XPC Cube SZ170R8 as a base, and the answer to that folks is a resounding yes, and that pleases me greatly! 🙂

What’s important here is that using the SZ170R8 as a base has NOT restricted the Gaming performance of this PC at all. In fact I checked the benchmark scores against the last GTX 970 that we tested (on a Z97 platform) as as you can see (here) the results are very similar! Therefore as a staring point for a Gaming PC that’s going to live in your office or the living room the SZ170R8 is a great choice and you’ve simply got to love its simple small (cute) styling, that’s almost a hit simply due to its size alone!

Of course there are some down sides and that’s because it’s simply not a good idea to stuff hot running Gaming components into a small Case! Especially if there’s no dedicated cooling for the Graphics Card, which there inst in this case (get it, in this case! haha). The cooling that is there simply cools the CPU more than anything, which to be fair it does a good job of as I didn’t see temperatures above 60 degrees Celsius. The Graphics Card on the other hand has to rely on sucking in cool air from the left side of the case, as there’s effectively no natural or forced airflow here! The end result is that our test EVGA GTX 970FTW+ GPU got a little warm and topped out at 80 degrees Celsius. But this is still well within the thermal limits of the card and it simply meant that GPU Boost (i.e the Core Clock speed) throttled from around 1418MHz to around 1348MHz due to the heat.

Of course the net result of the Graphics Card getting a little warm (and it’s nothing to worry about BTW) is that the fans can put out a bit noise. We measured 44dBA with our test equipment and that’s a fair bit if you’re looking to have it in the living room! But to be fair cooler/quieter Graphics Cards are available, just watch that size restriction! 😉 With no load on the GPU noise levels dropped below 37dBA, nice and quiet… 😉

The only other issue that I can see with the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 is the lack of support for 2.5″/SSD drives, of which (strangely) there appears to be none! Support for an M.2 SSD is here though and that’s what I would recommend for a system such as this anyway. There’s also support for up to x4 HDDs too, but HDDs are a thing of the past surely…

 

Final Thoughts

 

We’ve not seen many systems like this here at pcG, but having seen the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 we would definitely like to see more. The SZ170R8 has proven to me that you can have a SFF PC and have a powerful Gaming system within. Of course this also boils down to what components you use, but there’s no doubt that the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 is a good foundation on which to start…

The Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 arrived at pcG in a white smart and small box with minimal livery, in fact it looked a little classy with its carry handle et al. Packaging and presentation was also of a good standard. Once out of the box the sheer beauty of this little box of tricks was revealed. Measuring in at just 332mm (L) x 216mm (W) x 198mm (H) the Case is not only minuscule it’s good looking too and also appears to be really rather nicely made.

The SZ170R8 comes equipped with an impressive (due to its size) 500W 80-Plus Silver rated PSU, a Z170 based motherboard (with LAN, Audio and M2) and a propriety CPU Cooler. All we need to do is add a CPU, RAM, Storage (HDD/SSD/M.2) and of course (for us Gamers) the all important Graphics Card. For this we opted to use an Intel Core i5-6600K, 8GB of G.Skill RAM, a HyperX Fury SSD and an EVGA GTX 970 FTW+ Graphics Card. Of course this meant that there was an installation to complete…

Installation into such a small Case is something I never look forward to, but this time around it was far easier than in the past! The only real restriction to worry about is the size of your selected Graphics Card (Shuttle states 267mm long by 120mm tall and 34.6mm wide) with the maximum height of RAM being 42mm. In fact the only issue on install, that really was a breeze, was the lack of support for 2 5″/SSD drives which seems odd to me? Although of course the sensible option is to use that M.2 connector on the MB. Our Chosen GPU (measuring in at 256mm long by 111mm wide) also fell into the space, meaning that larger GPUs would indeed fit and suggesting Shuttle’s guidelines are a little on the conservative side.

Once built the system booted without issue with everything being detected correctly, although the BIOS/UEFI doesn’t seem to support any form of Overclocking or present many options. Initially I had concerns over the performance of such a system, would the basic MB/CPU Cooler hold the system back in anyway? With our chosen components (inc GTX 970) the system performed extremely well, proving that a high-end Gaming system could live within such a small Case. It really is impressive…

Of course the downside is heat and where there’s heat there’s normally noise! But to be fair noise levels peaked out at 44dBA with the GPU temperature peaking out at 80 degrees while the CPU was approximately 60 degrees Celsius. All of these figures though are fine and are recorded while the system is under full load. 44dBA though in the living room may be a little too noisy for some, but this is down to the GPU and obviously other (cooler/quieter) Graphics cards are available.

The bottom line is that I’ve been shocked by the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 it’s proven me wrong! It is possible to have a good looking SFF PC that contains a powerful modern Gaming system and one that keeps the whole lot cool (just!). This is the first Shuttle PC we’ve seen here at pcG, but I sure hope it wont be the last, in fact I might just buy one myself… 😉
 

PLEASE NOTE: At the time of press the retail price of the Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8 is still unknown, for this reason it’s Value score has been removed form our Verdict scoring system. UPDATE: 08/03/16 MSRP is £253.

Verdict

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Many thanks to Shuttle for providing this sample for review