As a former Shuttle owner I was interested to read the review - personally I'm impressed by the way Shuttle constructs their systems for air flow and cooling, and it's generally worth the premium you pay for the SFF.

However, I found mine to be very sensitive to ambient temperature changes: in winter or an air-conditioned office it was stable, but in summer, or with slightly restricted airflow (or possibly underneath a TV, for example), heat build up was much more of an issue. In the end I switched to an off-the-peg gaming laptop, and touch wood I haven't had the heat-related problems of the Shuttle.

it's butt ugly. I wouldn't want it on my desk.

It looks like a techie "designed" it, in much the same way that somebody "designed" the hideous 60s' and 70's tower blocks that blight the country.

There doesn't have to be a choice between form and function. It is possible to have the two at the same time.

I went the Small Form Factor route as I was toting my box to work and back on a daily routine.

I wish there were some numbers to the heat and noise above as I'm not sure you could squeeze all that hardware into such small spaces without some compromise.

My Biostar iDEQ 200P had similar issues to the first commentator in the Summertime with overheating, but these days with new GPU and CPU die sizes and hence lower power requirements, this could well be the sweet point for CPU cooling/temps.

I eventually went for a LAN Box from Thermaltake as they could take the full size PSUs which meant I had all the cables I needed for dual graphics cards plus more CPU cooler choice etc. But it was a lot bigger than a standard SFF! But if the power and the cooling are sorted, I'd seriously look at one!

My biostar was so small and cute in comparison to my current box!

I have an old Athlon based shuttle (SN21g2 if I recall). I've had it running overclocked for about five years, through summer and winter without problem. Compared to a full tower, these are a hell of a lot nicer looking, while not as performance compromised as all-in-ones, other sff PCs or net-tops.

Having owned Shuttle boxes for many years, I have found them to be quiet, attractive and very reliable. The major drawback in my opinion is that it's either impossible or very expensive indeed to upgrade the motherboard.

This limits their attractiveness greatly in my opinion - my other, non-Shuttle cases have had 3 or 4 new Mobos before becoming totally knackered. I can see my current Shuttle being retired long before it wears out - that's assuming I don't experience a Mobo fault, which might mean buying and entirely new box....

If you have the money though, there's no better SFF.

Why don't they put a handle on the case if they're supposed to be easy to carry?

Dear Reg

Please include the following in future reviews of these type of products:

Idle and under load temperature and noise measurements

Pics of the interior of the case

It's all well and good to say it's quiet and cool but let's have some numbers. Also describing the shape of the PSU or the layout of the cooling systems isn't as effective as showing it.

Thanks

Adam

The handle is on the box so you can carry it around with it's foam packaging in its box!

Shuttle's are very nice if you can afford them ;)

There are plenty of third party harness/straps for SFF cases. Gear Grip from Case Ace is what you want to search for. A nice Keyboard and sundry item enclosure comes with it to make it more useful!