With the multitude of different form factors on the market, along with a plethora of different sized cases, it is hard to decide exactly what you need. When you thinking of a gaming based system you tend to think of using the ATX form factor with a rather large mid tower case. Perhaps a full tower case or even in some cases, people use XL ATX cases, such as the Xigamatek Elysium. Yet have you ever considered using a shuttle as a gaming system? You probably haven’t, but can it be done? The answer is yes, it most certainly can. Today I will show you with a review of a Sandy Bridge H67 based shuttle for those gaming instances. I will also touch upon the advantages of going for a shuttle gaming system, which will appeal to you LAN gamers out there as well as those of you who want a high-powered system in a smaller form factor.
Shuttle SH67H3 Barebones PC
In the shuttle there are the following components;
2600k @ Stock
H67 Shuttle Board
XFX single fan 6950 1GB
12GB RAM
Corsair Force 60GB SSD
1TB HDD
300W PSU
Blu-ray Player
As you can see, it’s packing quite some mighty hardware given the overal footprint of a shuttle. For changes that I’d make for a gaming shuttle, might be to use a lower power CPU such as the, 2500s or 2500t as they would provide plenty of power. Yet while creating less heat and also lowering power consumption. I’d also like to add that with Ivy Bridge having support on H67, it could also be a very powerful and shuttle friendly chip. With its lower power consumption and lower heat output being Intel's first 22nm chip on their new 3D tri-gate transistors. Other changes that I would make would be to use a dual fan GPU for a lower overall sound output when gaming, but I’m only nit picking.
The shuttle itself is made of black brushed aluminium, looking very smart and sleek, similar in my opinion to parts of my Xigamatek Elysium. The base of the shuttle is plain aluminium, which also houses four rubber feet, which also elevate the metal brackets of expansion cards and graphics cards as shown in the picture to the right;
At the front of the case, we have a plastic facia, which is a glossy black, with the face of the shuttle being brushed black aluminium again, with space for a DVD drive (Which in this case is presently occupied with a Blu-ray player). There’s also a bay for expansion, such as a card reader, or perhaps some more USB slots.
Front Ports of the Shuttle SH67H3 Barebones PC
Also at the front of the case, we have some connectivity ports in the form of two USB 3.0 slots and an ESATA port, along with aux and microphone jack. Lastly, at the front of the case, we have the reset and power on button. The reset button is your usual small circular button, glossy black. The power button is a silver button, which must be pressed upwards, as opposed inwards.
Overall, the build quality upon an initial impression of the exterior is very impressive; the case feels solid, sturdy, well built and looks nice and plain.
Rear Ports of the Shuttle SH67H3 Barebones PC
Moving to the back of the shuttle, it is again silver aluminium much like the base of the case. We will start with the connectivity at the I/O plate. On the board used in this shuttle barebones, it is as previously stated, a H67 board. It has a DVI video output as well a HDMI port. With the HDMI output, it will be fine for the majority of HDTV’s if the shuttle was to be used for a media centre in a front room for example, or monitor for a traditional desktop set up. Moving to the right, we have a further 2 USB 3.0 ports, four more USB ports, this time USB 2.0, along with another ESATA port and an Ethernet LAN port. Lastly we have five audio jacks (Green, blue, orange, black, grey) for 7.1. I would also like to point out that this shuttle also has optical out, which is above the PCI brackets. This makes it suitable for media centre use. Also at the back of the case, you are able to see part of the CPU heatsink design which has 3 heat pipes that can be seen with the fins, which also doubles up as a rear exhaust for the case which makes the CPU temps independent from the case ambient temperature. This has 4 thumb screws keeping it in place.
Memory Modules on the Shuttle SH67H3 Barebones PC
Taking off the lid, we can finally get into the shuttle. In such a small form factor it can be a tight fit; however the board is perfectly capable of taking four memory modules. This allows a maximum of 16GB of memory and you’re not limited to using low profile memory, as the below picture shows how much clearance there is, so heatsinks used in the like of the Corsair Vengeance series should be able to fit plentiful.
AMD Radeon HD 6950 Graphics Card in Shuttle SH67R3 Barebones PC
In regards to maximum graphics card length, here is an image of an XFX single fan 6950 in the case. You can see there is quite a lot of clearance left so that you are able to fit even longer graphics cards, although you would need to manage the Molex adaptor. The clearance given should keep you future proof for a certain amount of time.
Optical and Hard Drives in the Shuttle SH67H3 Barebones PC
The shuttle chassis had two 3.5” hard drive bays, which in the shuttle being used today is occupied by the 1TB HDD and a 60GB Corsair SSD. It would be entirely possible to use a 5.25” adaptor to use allow for 3 hard drives if you didn’t wish to have a disk drive in the system, or instead used an external optical drive.
Interestingly as I was looking at the motherboard, I noticed that it had two fan headers. One was being used on the rear fan and I could not quite imagine what other fan you might use inside the shuttle for the second header. Except from perhaps some graphics cards, which have custom heatsink and fan designs that require the use of a fan header for power to the fan.
The last part to talk about of the internal workings of the shuttle is the power supply that is supplied with the barebones. It is a none standard size, rated at 300W with an 80 plus bronze rating. While this is “only” 300W, it powered the 2600k with 6950 perfectly without any stability issues. Power supply requirements are generally overhyped, as long as you’re not trying to go overboard, this 300w is perfectly adequate and should be fine for other graphics cards, more notably the upcoming 28nm GPU’s which should bring the same performance and higher, with lower power consumption.
Before I go into the general usability of the machine, I would just like to show you two images comparing the size of the shuttle system and my home system, which is housed in a Xigamatek Elysium, and has similar specs to the shuttle based system, albeit a 2500k and a 6870 Crossfire as opposed 6950 and 2600k.
The Xigamatek Elysium system is about 3 times the height of the shuttle, possibly even more. While being twice the length of the shuttle, as well as substantially heavier, yet the two systems aren’t much different in what they’re capable of. If you were building a gaming system that you would plan on taking to a LAN, which case do you think is the easier to take? The shuttle by a country mile, it has made even easier by the fact there are special shuttle carrying bags available for just this purpose.
Even if you managed to carry the Xigamatek Elysium or even a HAF932 etc to your car, packed with all your hardware. Carrying it in your arms is not exactly comfortable. It also would not be an enjoyable experience, yet the gaming experience would not be any different to the shuttle. This barebones proves that you are able to fit heavy-duty hardware into a small and manageable size.
Exhaust Fan and Graphics Card on Shuttle SH67H3 Barebones PC
With a single fan in the shuttle running as an exhaust and the PSU fan, the shuttle is overall very quiet when you are browsing the internet, reading E-mail and general use. I found it to be much quieter than my own home system, so it would suit the role of being used as a media centre in the living room (or where you choose to put it) very well.
Arguably, I figure that most people would be interested in the temperatures for both the GPU and the CPU, if they were to use a shuttle based gaming system. The most important temperatures gathered, which I am sure most of you will agree, are when gaming.
To gather results for the CPU and GPU temperatures while gaming, I ran MSI Afterburner and HWmonitor and allowed them to keep recording data. I ran four different games, those being; Crysis, Dirt 3, Dawn of War 2 and Aliens Versus Predator, each for 10 minutes each. I only have one set of data, as I left the recording throughout all four games.
As you can see, the CPU temperatures are getting a little toasty, which is a shame, however that’s more down to the CPU that’s being used, as mentioned earlier, if you were to use a 2500s or 2500t, it would run much, much cooler, as would an Ivy bridge 22nm part. However, I must stress that the CPU was stable.
The GPU did not get too hot, in line with what you would expect when gaming. The temperatures could be improved upon by using a graphics card with a different cooler, such as a dual fan GPU card.
For the noise under gaming, as you would expect, the GPU fan kicked up to just below 60%. While it was not overly loud, no more than in a desktop system, you may wish for a quieter card if you were seeking quiet gaming while using a shuttle.
After using this shuttle system, it is clear to me that there is some advantages to using shuttle based systems. Firstly having gone to a LAN only recently (i44 in fact) I saw the majority of systems there. Some were large full sized towers and I can only imagine how some people struggled to get their system out and about. Having compared the size of my own system and the shuttle, I would much rather take a shuttle based system to a LAN as opposed a full sized system, the ease of using a shuttle bag doesn’t even compare to trying to haul a massive tower around in both arms.
There are some limitations when using a shuttle based system, you are limited to a single graphics card, but that is not a massive problem, as many people would prefer to use a single GPU system than a multi-gpu set up as a multi-gpu set up can bring about its own problems.
Another limitation was the CPU cooling for the 2600k. While it was running stable, I would much rather use a lower power CPU as I have mentioned.
For the shuttle itself, the overall quality is very impressive, it is stylish and can house some powerful components which such a small footprint. For a media centre in a living room, it would not be an eyesore.
I would have no hesitations in recommending this shuttle to anyone. Hats off to Shuttle for producing such a well thought out barebones. Ideally suited to gaming, multimedia, office work or just a general small form factor family PC.
