Shuttle continues to develop their Mini-PC systems and most recently out on the market is the new flag ship SX79R5 which in its characteristic cubic format has room for both Sandy Bridge-E processors and powerful graphics cards. Other nice functions is USB 3.0 support and dual gigabit network connections.
Shuttle SX79R5 is a so calles XPC Barebone where the consumer first of all buys the chassi and a customized motherboard in the same bundle. This time Shuttles has used their R5 chassi that with a clean aluminumdesign measures 33,2 x 21,6 x 19,8 cm (~13 x 8,5 x 7,8 inches) (DxWxH) and weighs 3,5 kilograms (7,7 lbs). Along with the bundle comes also Shuttle’s I.C.E cooling system, that transports the heat from the processor circuit to a radiator heatsink at the back of the chassi, and a 500 Watt power supply with 80 Plus Bronze cerification.
Under the hood we find a FX79 motherboard that with Intel’s Patsyburg chipset support the company’s most powerful Sandy Bridge-E processors with up to 6 CPU cores, 12 threads, 15MB cache memory and a quad-channel DDR3 memory controller. With four memory slots in total there is support for up to 32GB of DDR3 1600 RAM and looking at the storage solution there is room for a 5,25 inch optic Drive along with two 3,5 inch devices for harddrives and SSD units. But we also find a mSATA port for those who wants to use really slick storage solutions.
Despite its tiny appearance, SX79R5 has room for up to two PCIe x16 graphics cards or a bigger card that span across both expansion slots. Other possibilities for extended funcionality exists with two Mini-PCIe slots for WLAN cards or similar. Behind a hidden panel in the front we find two USB 3.0 ports, audio connections and two USB 2.0 ports where one supports Quick Charge for users who wants to charge their tablets or other more heavy-powered USB devices.
