Shuttle XPC Cube SZ270R6 Mini Computer System Intel Kabylake/Skylake Z270 LGA1151 i3/i5/i7/Pentium DUAL LAN PORTS ICE 2 Cooling Heatpipe black

Excellent well made product. A must for the any wannabe PC builder restricted on space.

where's the 8.1 software?

DO NOT PURCHASE bls2kit8g3d1609ds1s00 with the Shuttle XPC Cube SH81R4 (https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Ballistix-PC3-12800-240-Pin-BLS2KIT8G3D1609DS1S00/dp/B006YG9EEW) This is the currently recommended "shopping pair" by Amazon and it just does not work.The Crucial Ballistic Sport ram with the part number above, looks like it would work, it even tests fine with memtest. Try going into the BIOS. It was the weirdest thing I have ever seen. As I went through the BIOS menus to configure the system, video corruption would occur and eventually BIOS corruption. IE it looked like video corruption, but I really think that the system hates this memory.Then when I went to install windows 8, it would start the install and I could never make it to the install button, the system would freeze and reboot.I tried the above mentioned memory in two different SH81R4 systems brand new and had the same issue. I ended up looking at shuttles site and purchased memory on the compatibility list: 2 of Crucial 8GB Single DDR3 1600 MT/s PC3-12800 CL11 Unbuffered UDIMM 240-Pin Desktop Memory CT102464BA160B (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AZGZFGS/) and it solved the problem.

Up to the standards I've come to expect from Shuttle bare-bones systems. I've owned three so far going back to the mid-2000s. I find this one to be better for my purposes than their newer design which doesn't support an optical drive. Cooling is good but that may be because the new CPUs, while being faster, dissipate far less heat. My previous unit had a CPU rated at 135W TDP and running at full load 24X7 as it did made the cooling a bit problematic. The new style is rated for up to 95W TDP and the excellent Intel i7-6700 is only a 65W part. Nothing is perfect: it is a letdown that they have switched over to Intel-style pins to secure the heat pipe unit to the CPU rather than their previous screws and I HATE these pins. Also it is good to be aware that there is only a single USB3 header inside and that is taken up feeding the front panel so if you have an internal device needing USB3 you are probably out of luck (it is possible to buy a splitter for the header but I wouldn't trust it myself).Anybody who has built a computer before should have no trouble putting one of these together in under an hour (just watch out for the pins and be trebly sure that they are snapped down tight). My Shuttle is equipped with Kingston HyperX Fury Black 16GB memory, a ZOTAC GeForce GTX 950 OC, Intel i7-6700 CPU, LG WH16NS40 16X Blu-ray optical drive. I pulled the Samsung SSD and a 3tB hard drive from my previous unit and managed to get MicroSoft to re-bless the system configuration with no trouble. I switch the old unit over to Mint Linux and it is running well.

Some of my PCs are serious builds, but I needed a reasonably fast, completely stock workstation for work purposes. I've built a lot of Shuttle XPCs in the past (older models), but I figured that the Shuttle XPC Cube SH310R4V2 would be good for my purposes.My build consisted of an i7-8700K, an M.2 Samsung 970 EVO NVMe, and 2 x 16GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX PC4-21300 (C16). In order to get the CPU in, you have to remove the heatpipe plate, which requires the unscrewing of the back-mounted heatsink, fan, and shroud. There's some thermal grease included, but you should feel free to use something better (I did). The NVMe is easy to get to, but the case makes it tricky for clumsy hands to screw the M.2 down. Please note that there is NO M.2 cooling, so you may want to bring your own heatsink and/or fan solution. The DIMMs were easy to get to, also - I used low-profile DIMMs, and that's probably a good idea, since some of the DIMMs with HUGE RGB-infused heatsinks may not clear the bottom of the drive cage.The whole build took less than 5 minutes to put together. Budget another couple minutes if you want to add an optical drive or SATA HD (3.5 or 2.5").A couple observations:The Shuttle is supposed to be good for 95W TDP, so the thermal solution should be able to handle it. I experienced no issues (overheating, throttling, etc.) under full loading of all cores.The included PSU is only 300W. That's fine for my build, but you will have to give some thought to what you are going to do about graphics. Since it's a work machine, I'm fine using the IGP. However, if you want an external graphics card, you should know that you can get a 500W power supply for this machine. It's relatively expensive, so you may be better off getting one of the higher end XPC chassis with the 500W PSU to begin with. Also, you're limited to a shorter card with this chassis, but you can get decent GPUs in half-length cards (there are different XPCs that are better suited to full-length cards).If you want a build like mine, this is a great barebone starting point. Highly recommended.

This things is super! The boot times are insane. There is little to no time wasted loading the Bios. And with any SSD you will most likely see a start time is 5- 10 seconds. Very nice! I would buy again for sure! After Windows 10 forced updates on this system I started having problems with it freezing and not waking from sleep. Finally after 2 months of having a system to unstable to use the issues have been correct after more windows updates. I ended up testing the system with several distributions of Linux just to make sure it was Windows. And Linux ran so well I just finish backing up my Windows install and my simply run Linux on this one because I need to have more control.