Shuttle SD11G5

Pure Silence..?

White seems to be this season’s colour, and Shuttle have decked out this baby in a sexy little white number. They can afford to do this because the Pentium M gives off so little heat compared to a normal desktop CPU, and now that the PSU is external, there is even less heat to worry about. Thus, there won't be problems as a result of covering the aluminium chassis with an insulating layer of gloss. The paint is pretty durable and scratch resistant, but the thumbscrews at the back can tend to take a bit of the paint away if you tighten them up too much. On the case side we have the usual embossed Shuttle logo and grill for ventilation.

After peeling off the clear plastic covers from your new SD11G5, the white plastic underneath looks fantastic and compliments the case wonderfully, it doesn’t even pick up fingerprints too badly either. However, it does seem to pick up dust like some sort of passive vacuum cleaner, and you find yourself forever flicking off bits of fluff and dust that have inevitably been drawn to it. The front of the case sports the usual ‘G5’ styling with stealthed drive bays and a sleek design. Popping open the bottom flap with a simple press and click we find a couple of USB ports, mini IEEE 1394a Firewire and a pair of 3.5mm audio sockets for headphones and a microphone.

The back of the SD11G5 is something new. Since the PSU is moved externally Shuttle has used the new empty space to its advantage and moved the sound outputs there, providing more space for other connectors. In all there are five 3.5mm audio jacks and optical S/PDIF in and out. No RCA S/PDIF is included, unfortunately.

At the bottom we find a very helpful clear CMOS button, so you don’t have to open the case (and thus cause more paint removal) and fiddle around inside. 6 pin IEEE 1394a Firewire, PS2 ports, S-Video out, a pair of USB ports, a Gigabit Ethernet socket, VGA and DVI out complete the rest of the rear outputs. Along with this we finally have the socket an external PSU plugs into to provide power for the XPC.