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X58 in a Pocket - Shuttle SX58H7

By Kenny Yeo - 24 Jun 2009

Cozy Interior

Cozy Interior

Depending on whether you suffer from claustrophobia, you'll either find the interior of the Shuttle X58 either cramped or cozy. The layout is somewhat similar to the older Shuttle SFF systems and the designers tried their best to utilize any and every ounce of space they could find.

The board supports CrossFireX and SLI natively, but the lack of space means that you can only attempt multi-GPU configurations with single slot cards. Even if you opt for a single dual-slot card, fitting it might be an issue. The ASUS EN9800GTX that we used in our test setup took us quite a while to get it in place. The main difficulty encountered was connecting the two PCIe power connectors that were needed to power the card. It's a tight fit, and even if you manage to get your card in, there's still the consideration of the heat generated in such cramped quarters.

If you go the full stretch and have two hard disks and an optical drive on top of the graphics card, we're concerned that in such tight confines, it will be too hot for optimal operation. Therefore, for gamers who are looking to build a high-end system portable enough for LAN parties, the selection of the graphics card is an important one. Efficient and high performance options are key; perhaps may we suggest a pair of Radeon HD 4770 graphics cards in CrossFire?

We begin our inspection of the interior with the PSU. It is rated at 500W and has a 80 PLUS Bronze certification. Note that at the bottom right corner, there's also two USB headers.

Here's a closer look at the PSU. Note the 80 PLUS Bronze certification sticker.

On the other side, we can see that installing a high-end graphics card takes up nearly all the space that is available. It was also very difficult for us to connect the PCIe power connectors.

The Shuttle SX58H7 has two PCIe slots and is both CrossFireX and SLI compatible. The problem, however, is that multi-GPU configurations are possible only with single slot cards.

Here are the DIMM slots. Notice how most of the data and power cables have already been pre-routed for easy installation.

Removing the HDD rack, this is what we see. Yes, as you can see, it's really cramped.

To keep the processor cool, Shuttle is using what they call I.C.E. (Integrated Cooling Engine). The heatsink uses a Vapor Chamber base to draw heat from the processor to the rear via four heat pipes so that it can be cooled by a fan.

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