Shuttle XPC Cube SZ170R8V2, SFF Intel Skylake Z170 Chipset LGA1151 i3/i5/i7/Pentium, DDR4 (MAX. 64GB), ICE 2 Cooling Heatpipe

After 7 months of use, the PSU has given up. Computer will not power up, no LEDS.I have always like the Shuttle form factor, this little beast is amazing, my current setup is:Intel i7 7600kCorsair Vengeance LPX 16gb x 2EVGA GTX1080 FTWSamsung 960evo 500gb M.2 SSDSamsung 850evo 500gb SSDIntel 8260 wifi M.2Replaced the internal fans with Noctua 90mm and 80mm PWM fansYes you saw right, this little beast can run a EVGA GTX1080 FTW without issues! running at a idle of 40 degrees Celsius and it is quite!

I have to preface this review by saying I've been a long time Shuttle fan as my first Shuttle PC was an older model from prior to 2006 for an AMD Athlon XP that I used as a dedicated Linux based file server. After that I built another as my primary machine for an Intel Core 2 Quad in 2009, then more recently in 2014 I upgraded to another with a Haswell Core i7.What I love about these barebones PCs is that they allow you to have a quality motherboard with quality components and typically the best connectivity, but without all the "gamer" nonsense that's typically incompatible with anything but some poorly written software for Windows. These make excellent Linux workstations (probably work great under Windows too, but I wouldn't know). With the cube series I am able to run the full 91W i7 version of the Core line of CPUs without issue (I can peg all 4 cores to the max for hours and not suffer thermal throttling). Though I do not think the stock cooler setup would be sufficient for any amount of overclocking. I would not know because I haven't been interested in attempting any overclocking in over a decade. But it is of maximum importance to me that I be able to run my chosen CPU at it's stated specified speed continuously without issue, and some small form factor cases or computers these days don't allow you to do that (worse yet they don't tell you that thermal throttling is actually to be expected). Not with these chassis. You can probably fit a double wide discrete GPU graphics card in this thing as the instructions say without any real issues, but again, for my needs, the builtin video works great, dual monitor setup that just works out of the box. Everything is fully compatible with Fedora Linux 26.Socket 1151 supports Intel CPUs up to 95W Core i7Z170 chipset with support for overclocking and "K" variants of the Core CPUsDual Display Port with 1 HDMI port (no VGA as SkyLake dropped all VGA support going forward)6 USB 3.0 in the rear and 2 more in the front (no USB 2 only ports as was the case with my previous Haswell build)Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports (i219M and i211 both fully capable of saturating Gigabit line full wire speed)Full 3.5mm audio jacks for complete 7.1 channel audio (w/ mic/aux in) in the rear and headphones and mic jacks in the front (Realtek ALC892)4 x DDR4 DIMMs for a maximum of 64GiB of RAMM.2 2280 PCIEx NVMe SSD support with also M.2 2230 for a WiFi/Bluetooth card option4 x SATA 3 6Gbps AHCI ports1 x PCIEx x16 slot1 x PCIEx x4 slotCMOS clear button (never used this, wonder how it works)Compared to my previous unit this one has slightly fewer options, but really when you think about it, they're all older technologies that have been replaced by something more modern or have just generally fallen out of wide use.No USB 2 only ports (not needed as USB 3 ports are backward compatible, now you just have more USB 3 ports)No eSATA (not needed because USB 3 transfers fast enough and is more compatible then eSATA, now you also get a second NIC instead)No ieee1394/Firewire (again not needed anymore as it was obscure, and easily replaced with USB 3)No DVI/VGA ports (again these are older technologies, with VGA fundamentally no longer supported with SkyLake and DVI has fallen quickly out of favor for HDMI who is also slowly getting replaced with Display Port at least on the computer side)No TOSlink optical audio out (this is probably the only thing I miss, however I have to admit this is also a really old technology that was more problematic than it was worth as modern 5.1 audio over a TOSlink cable was not possible without using proprietary codecs that were typically only available previously on dedicated hardware that added to the cost or software that only runs on Windows)No mSATA (this was a cool option my previous build had that I never took advantage of after I found out that port was unfortunately stuck at SATA 2 3Gbps speeds and the SSDs for that port were also rare and costly. Again this was ultimately superseded by the way superior M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs that run at more than 4 times the speed of SATA 3 6Gbps.)Oh, and did I mention it's super quiet at idle?

I bought two of these to use as VMware ESXi servers in my home lab. So far, the only issue I have with them is the very tight fit to install RAM with the hard drive cage installed. I initially built them with two of the RAM slots filled then decided to add two more and it is difficult to add the RAM without removing the hard drive cage, which would mean disconnecting the power and SATA cables from my four HDs.Other than that, I really like these boxes. I've bought Shuttle PCs in the past and will very likely do so in the future.

This is the 4th XPC Cube I have purchased over the years. This one was purchased as a headless server for Plex, movie ripping and transcoding, and generally to store lots of files. I put in a Skylake i7-6700K quadcore 4.0Ghz processor, 512GB M.2 NVME SSD, 32GB of DDR4-2133 and a 4 port Addonics SATA controller and attached my multiple raid boxes and optical storage tower to it.Everything is great except its ability to handle the 91W TDP processor under full load. The box is rated for a 95W TDP processor and the i7-6700K is specifically listed as supported. They have a build in heat exchanger for the processor the pipes heat to the back and has a fan on the back. Using Handbrake to transcode movies, the processors all peg out at 98%+ utilization for hours at a time. The process fan goes to max speed and then keeps fluctuating. With a monitoring tool you can see the fan go to max RPM and then back off about 30 RPM and fluctuate. The problem is you can hear this. It sounds like a whine. If it maintained a single speed it would be better.The processor temperature climbs up to 80C and spikes up to 84C pretty regularly. You want the processor kept below 80C and when the box is rated for this processor, that is what I expect. The inability to handle this processor when running all out is disappointing.

Perfect kit.

This PC's small volume and efficient cooling makes for a great always-on digital signage PC. I equipped mine with a Pentium CPU, 4GB RAM, small SSD, and NVidia Quadro GPU for 8 monitor outputs. It is being used to display work instructions for a manufacturing facility.

Works as advertised.

The computer never work... after running some tests the mother broad bad....