Shuttle SZ68R5 Z68 Intel LGA1155 Barebones Mini PC Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,750 words · ~8 min read
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well I don't know about where you live but in Vancouver houses are really
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expensive and so are apartments and so are condos and dogs actually no dogs
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aren't more expensive but places to live are certainly more expensive so having a
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smaller computer is probably a good thing today I have an unboxing of a very
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fully featured small form factor computer from shuttle although there's
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no actual functional computer in this box this is a barebones which means you
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have to add a CPU memory a drive an
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operating system and I guess that's pretty much it
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so basically what it is is a motherboard
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a case and a power supply now what's
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cool about this product to me is the
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fact that it is the first one that both
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the Crazy Russian and myself have
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directly influenced during the design
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phase so when shuttle did their h67
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barebones we suggested to them that because uh LGA
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1155 produces such low power and yet
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capable gaming CPUs they should make the system a little bit more gaming capable
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themselves by adding um additional
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capacity to the power supply so shuttle went ahead and took our suggestion and
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ran with it I mean we like to think it was we were the only ones who suggested
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it but we probably weren't so with the took our suggestion and ran with it and
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this barebones computer actually includes a beefy enough power supply
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that you could install a fairly high powered graphics card in it so check
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this out this is an 80 plus
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bronze where are we here I remember someone told me already what it is and I
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know that it's beefy but I don't know exactly what the capacity is we're going
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to have to find this out just a sec so yes it is a 500 watt continuous power
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supply which means yes you can throw a quad core CPU in here no problem you can
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throw a decent graphics card in here also no problem and you can load it up
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to the gills with all the hardware you want with yes once again no problem so
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I'll show you guys the basics of the inside so right here you've got support
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for two 3 and 1 12 in drives as well as some do not eat silica gel
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let's go ahead and slide this baby back
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you've also got support for one 5 and 1/4 in drive so you just mount
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everything onto this right here and then slide the whole thing back in it comes
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with two SATA cables your thermal compound your mounting screws your
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socket cover as well as your power cable and your full color quick installation
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guide once you get the drives out of the way you can actually see the rest of the
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internals so here we go here is our front USB 3 which is included and
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already even plugged in with the unit here's our front USB 2 as well as our
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front panel audio I'll show you guys the front panel in just a moment here's all
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of the rest of our internal connectors so let's see what we got here you guys
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we've got oh check this out that's right dual PCIe 1 18 pin one six pin
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very very nice we've also got support for one two three four SATA connectors
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so that means you can throw a bunch of 2 and 1 half inch drives and run like a a
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raate array off them or something if you want we've got two Molex 4 pins and one
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floppy connector coming off this power supply that is in addition to the oh man
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look at this it's got an 8 Pin CPU power connector over here so they're only
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using four pins cuz that's all we really need for this as well as the 24 pin
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connector so that is a truly beefy power supply we've also got a very um capable
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looking cooling system on the vrm here
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and I think that pretty much covers the power side of things so shuttle has also
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I mean along the lines of making this very capable of putting a very capable
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machine inside included four dim slots four SATA connectors as well as a
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couple of mini PCIe uh connectors here
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so you could put like a Wi-Fi card here look at that it also oh look at that
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Intel SRT support MSA only oh very neat
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so they've included that functionality as well see that's the thing about a small form factor desktop is the kind of
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stuff that's normally reserved for notebooks tends to uh tends to find its
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way in there so just for heat reasons I
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really don't think that I I would expect to put anything bigger than about a GTX
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560 in here even though the reality of it is with a 500 W power supply you
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could probably do like a dual core and a 570 um I still wouldn't really recommend
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that but I'm going to go ahead and show you guys how a 560 will fit then I'm
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going to put the case back on and then I will show you the outside of the unit
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now that we've oh we should look at the cooling solution first sorry guys so it
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uses push pins which are not my favorite but as long as you're only going to use
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it a couple times I guess it's not the end of the world and then there are
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three heat pipes that lead up to what appears to be a 92 mm cooling fan which
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has a shroud sort of functionality built into it so it's a little distance away
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you can see the Shroud here from a radiator that sits right at the back of
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the unit so the entire unit is cooled by this fan and this fan this one for the
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CPU and this one for the power supply so
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let's go ahead and show you guys how easy it is to install a graphics card in
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here I have no idea I'm just assuming that it's easy based on shuttles that
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I've used in the past being fairly easy to install things in in spite of their
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uh small stature so let's go ahead and
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position the graphics card correctly push down on it and there we go so you
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can see that there is plenty of room for my graphics card even once I have
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installed so let's go ahead and throw this baby back in here my hold
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on going have to give me a sec to get
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these cables out of the way guys the card's in the drivve tray is
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back in I'm just going to show you guys a quick view of what the interior looks
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like once you've got that card installed so yeah it's a little cramped but that's
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sort of the reality when you're running a shuttle PC so here's the reason for my
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suggestion that you only really take it up as high as maybe a a GTX 56 rather
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than going all the way to those Enthusiast class cards and that is how
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much ventilation space you're going to have for that graphics card so shuttle
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has in their wisdom included ventilation holes right here which means that those
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fans do have direct access to cool air from the outside which will then be
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exhausted through the CPU heat sink and
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then out the back of the case let's actually have a closer look at the back
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of the case so this is what it'll look like once you install a graphics card
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remember this is a z 68 chipset so you do have support for Lucid logic's Hydra
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that means Intel SRT even if you do have a graphics card installed cuz it does
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have Onboard video we've also got eat as well as USB 2 USB 3 gigabit Ethernet a
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clear seos button which is kind of unique to see on like a I mean you would
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typically expect these smaller form factor machines to be more value
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oriented but there you go it's there cool as well as our back audio 7.1 we've
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also got spit if that's optical audio out our power in so that's on the back
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of the power supply and moving over along to this side we've got a nice
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brushed metal finish this is sort of my expectation with shuttle they do a good
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job of the finish of their machines you can see the top as well and then let's
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have a look at the front of the box so this eject button sorry I pushed it in
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there's nothing there's nothing resisting it right now because there's no optical drive installed so that's uh
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that's the problem there we've got room for oh is is there space for two 5 and
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1/4 in drives it would appear that there is let
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me find that out for you oh no there isn't here we go here we go so that's
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where you can put like a media card reader or something like that okay and
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then here we've got our front panel so that's front panel USB 3 that's a total
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of four usb3 ports two USB 2 and there's
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your microphone Jack remember there wasn't one on the back it is on the front as well as your front headphone
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Port so you can see gorgeous little brushed finish on the front here as well
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so thank you for checking out oh there's your power button just like that thank
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you for checking out my unboxing and first look at I never actually even said
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the model this is the shuttle s z68 RS
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don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and yeah
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that's the box for it thank you very much for that and other computer videos