Setup

After tearing the machine to pieces, it was time to put the cube together for testing. Unlike the toys of yore, putting this tiny thing back together is a piece of cake. A screwdriver is really only required for the drive cage, while the rest of the case can be disassembled with a few thumbscrews. For a case so small, we were surprised that there wasn’t more to assembly. Adding drives and cards was a snap. One thing does get annoying - having to take out the drive cage whenever you want to fiddle with something. This shouldn’t be a problem as once you’re done shoving in all your parts, there really isn’t a reason to open the box up again. This is mainly due to the size. I doubt Shuttle could have made it any easier to take this thing apart; it’s probably more of me being lazy than their problem.

All of it together

Upright and together

Wiring

The first thing we had to do was decide where the wires were going. Fortunately most of this was outlined in the manual that I neglected to read, since discovering things is so much more fun. Generally we go for straight performance, but in this case we wanted to stay on the safe side, so we used a single IDE cable to minimize on the clutter on the inside of the case. We ended up hooking up both the CD-ROM and hard drive to the same cable and let it rip. In this case we didn’t have to utilize the cable clip on the drive cage. But we did get to use the clips along the side of the case to secure the rounded cable. We had to use a pair of pliers to get them out a bit, but these are a must for any case. It basically routed the entire cable along the side of the case.

The little snake

Gratuitous box shot

We didn’t bother installing the floppy drive, as the only use we ever have for one is when we have to flash a BIOS. This left only the internal motherboard cables to rout – i.e. the cables for the front ports. In a case this small, where you put the cables means the difference between moving air and a blocked hole. Interestingly enough, the Shuttle system has more cables poking out of the motherboard than my main system. Many of these are optional and go to the front ports of the case. Shuttle already has them zip tied together in a nice bundle, unfortunately this bundle is worthless if you want to install an AGP and PCI card. Following a quick snip, I rerouted the cables so that they made more sense. However I ended up doing this the following day, which lead to a little confusion, which cable is which? A label would have been nice, but by process of elimination and squinting at the pictures in the manual, I was able to figure out which cable went where.

Heatsink installed shot

Look at the size of the North Bridge heatsink!

The rubber stopper

Following the wiring, the add-in cards were plopped into the system. There wasn’t anything terribly noteworthy here. But after we had the cards in, we ran into a slight snag. On one side of the drive cage is a rubber stopper, placed there specifically for the sole purpose of preventing huge problems. This little rubber knob can essentially mean the difference between a dead computer and a working one. If something were to jostle your add in cards, they might knock against the drive cage. As we are well aware, metal and electricity don’t mix too well. Now here’s the kicker. I think we may have been the odd man out in this situation, as no one else we know reviewing the box ran into this problem. In trying to install the Creative Audigy, the rubber knob would essentially prevent the cage from installing. Mind you, even after we removed the stopper, the cage would almost graze the pins on the back of the Audigy. While we have been reassured by Shuttle that this shouldn’t be happening, we are happy to say that fixing this little problem is as easy strapping on some electrical tape. Ten seconds and five electrical tape strips later, we were back in business.