Interior

All pre-built systems usually have some sort of cable management. The Shuttle XPCs and all SFFs have some of the best cable management because of the small volume and limited workspace and most importantly, airflow.

As you can tell, all the cables are cut to exact lengths, and are routed around the case with plastic hooks. This reduces clutter, and maximizes airflow in an already hot environment.


The 975X Northbridge and ICH7R Southbridge are passively cooled. This reduces noise in the XPC. These chipsets consume much less power than NVIDIA’s nForce 500 series, so they don’t need active cooling. The DIMM slots are well organized. Each dual channel configuration is marked, so you know where to place your memory modules. This is the first SFF to support 8GB of RAM. More than 2GB is not necessary today (particularly if you’re running a 32-bit OS), but Shuttle’s innovation should not be overlooked.




On top of the chassis are two aluminum hard drive trays. We recommend housing SATA drives only here though to ensure optimal airflow. If you have a PATA hard drive we’d suggest you house it in the empty external 3.5” bay. In any case, the hard drive trays are removable, and placed well in the case, so they don’t radiate heat on other components. Right below the hard drive trays are the 5.25” and 3.5” bay tray. At the back of the case are two small 60mm fans. They are not too useful though, because there is a very restricting grille in front of them, preventing air from exiting the case. Underneath the fans is the 400W Silent X power supply. It has two PCI Express power connectors for Crossfire support.


For expansion the Shuttle SD37P2 features two PCI Express graphics slots. The slots are placed close together, so you won’t be able to house two X1950 XTX cards inside the SD37P2 for CrossFire, but two single-slot cards like the X1950 Pro should fit just fine.

Today’s processors are the hottest yet. So Shuttle includes a proprietary ICE™ cooler for the CPU. Like in most SFFs, this cooler is proprietary, so it will only fit in the chassis it is designed for. The cooler has two fans. One 70mm attached to the heatsink that pushes air onto the fins, and a 92mm fan on the chassis that sucks hot air off of the fins and out of the case. Shuttle’s design has heatpipes and a very well polished copper base, ensuring that the heatsink will cool to its full potential.

Now let’s move on to testing the Shuttle SD37P2, and see if it can keep up with the full size motherboards.