Shuttle SZ77R5 Intel Socket H2(LGA1155) Intel Z77 1 x HDMI Barebone

Pros: Small, quiet, efficient and easy to upgrade.

Cons: Medium-quality construction, poor cable management.

Overall Review: I've owned MANY Shuttle SFF boxes- probably 8 or 9, I've honestly lost count. I recently reviewed an SZ68r5, and the issues with the SZ77r5 are virtually identical, mainly because the boxes are identical except for the updated chipset/motherboard. I purchased a refurb from Newegg. Shipping was prompt and efficient, as usual. The box took under an hour to build and configure with Win8... a breeze. However, immediately after I got it running I started having problems- the machine would arbitrarily- and suddenly- power down for no reason. Turns out this model has a BIOS bug in the power regulation to the graphics card, a bug that was until recently not addressed, so if you have an older machine you need to get it updated. Nonetheless I RMA'd the unit, and in the interest of expediency, got a brand new replacement elsewhere that works flawlessly. Cable management in this box is atrocious, especially if you're using a high-end graphics card. The drive tray bangs into the power connectors of a top-plug graphics card, forcing the power cables to do some serious bending. Also, the power leads off the PSU are a tad on the short side... I had to use an extender to reach around the drive tray. This frustrates me because Shuttle had mostly solved this issue in the SP35P2Pro, which IMHO is their best designed and built machine ever. Since then it appears they're losing their grip- slightly cutting corners on design and build quality. It's a bit disappointing. That being said, it's still overall a great machine. My replacement box runs fast, cool and quiet, especially for a Shuttle. I'm running a 3770k w/ 16GIG of RAM and a GTX 660ti on Win8 without a hitch. I just think that because you're paying a premium for a box like this (as opposed to building the chassis piece by piece), a premium product is expected, and it falls just a bit short. It's tough to be such a fan of their product for the past 13 years and not be a bit disappointed with this. Shuttle needs to step up their game or this possibly will be my last box with them.

Pros: Pros: - Fast - Reliable - Small - Lots of room for expansion and capabilities

Cons: Cons: - Only con is replace the stock fan with a quieter one. Shuttle still hasn't been able to provide a decent fan in the 5 years Iv been building these. I went with a Noctua 92mm PWM fan.

Overall Review: My Build - Gaming Rig Core i7 2500k EVGA GTX 670 FTW+ 4gb 256bit Gskill 16gb Rip Jaw series ram (4x4) Samsung 840 Pro 256gb SSD Noctua 92mm PWM CPU Fan Noctua 120mm (x2) fans Custom cut/built shell using the factory case LOVE these computers. Currently building an older one for HTPC 5+++ Stars

Pros: Small form factor. New Z77 Chipset. Solid build for pressed aluminum. Accepts Sandy and Ivy Bridge CPU. Up to 16 Gb Memory, Room for EVGA GTX 570 or 680, 80 Pluz Bronze 500W PSU. Built in Audio, SATA 6G. Whats not to like about a small form factor unit that can be a mid range gamer or high end workstation. The complaints about the build quality are specious. You cant compare this unit to a full size case construction. It is meant to be light and radiate heat. The removable drive bay chassi is nice and give you easy access to the underbelly, but buy longer sata cords so you dont need to unplug anything.

Cons: I normally dont write reviews, but I had to for this one. This is my second unit. The first was RMA'ed. NewEgg as always was fast and professional with returns and rma's, its a pleasure doing business with them. The shuttle on the other hand has two things wrong ... BIOS issues and Quality control issues. The first unit had to be flashed to the latest BIOS. Done easy enough but the BIOS began flacking out after two days. Loosing parameters (not even showing up), Smartfan setting not working and only spinning on low, then finally the on board video crapped out and so did two of the four dimm slots for memory. Right after that, the CPU speedstep was locked at 15, giving only half of the performance of a 3.5Ghz CPU. No overclocking was ever tried. When I got the second unit the first thing I did boot everything. Things seemed fine. I didnt upgrade the BIOS but everything was working so I left it alone. Then I noticed a loose surface mount resistor fall out the bottom...

Overall Review: The loose resister scared me, but everything worked so I taped it to the cover and called it a day. I can see where it fell off under the motherboard and one day if I ever buy a micro solder gun I'll put it back. The Smartfan setting still doesnt work (i wonder if the resister is causing that), and I have a Sandy Bridge. So I installed a manual speed controller and set it manually to 2100 RPM. With the water cooler I bought from ASETEK this keeps the CPU below 100F. So far after a week things are working fine. But I basically just bought my last Shuttle. I dont have faith in the brand anymore after two back to back flaky units. I dinged it one egg for the Fan issue and loose resister. I hope you have better luck with yours.

Pros: * Nice compact design. * Accepts a full size ATX Power Supply. * Decent price.

Cons: * Should have made the HDD tray removable or front/side loading. * First one was not fully DOA but has intermittent onboard video artifacting. * PC Doctor says CMOS pattern test failed. * Front USB 3.0 port is randomly connecting/disconnecting my external drive.

Overall Review: For the price, you expect it to perform better. I might just have to build my own instead...

Pros: Very fast with Intel I5 CPU, quiet SMART fan with linear speed increases, no big noisy steps.

Cons: Mother Board had a flaw that randomly shutdown WIN 7. An fast RMA MB fixed the problem. Support was excellent. Check your BIOS displayed voltages first thing. If VIDEO CORE = 0.12 volts vs 1.x volts, the MB is hosed.

Overall Review: Really nice product, extremely quiet and fast. I see TURBO action from 1.5GHz up to 3.8 Ghz dynamically to preserve power and heat - really cool for sure. I am running an SDR radio with Fast Fourier Transforms so speed is paramount.

Pros: Small and quiet, this PC seemed like the perfect machine for us. We placed it on top of the desk where it was super easy to use.

Cons: Mother board went up like a slice of burnt toast.

Overall Review: We're hoping Shuttle will professionally honor their warranty and quickly return our Shuttle in an "As New" condition.

Pros: The case is very nice and small, exactly what I wanted. Didn't have any trouble with the physical install.

Cons: There are 4 sata connectors on the motherboard. 1 and 2 are very easy to reach from the back of the drive bay, the 3 and 4 ports are positioned toward the front of the case, under the drive bay. The case comes with two sata cables though there is room for 3 drives in the drive bay (two 3.5" drives and a 5.25" drive). If you are wanting to use all three drives the 3 and 4 slots looked to be a bit hard to reach using the provided cables though I admit that I didn't actually check this, I just used a longer cable from a previous machine. When I first booted the machine into win7 I had no video/ethernet/etc because win7 doesn't natively have the drivers. After installing the drivers with the provided disc the machine began shutting off intermittently. Once when I clicked in the address bar in IE, another time when I entered the "Screen Resolution" settings on the desktop and a couple more times for good measure. I had read in the reviews about others who had this issue and fixed it with a bios upgrade so I attempted the same. It worked and I have no more problems but it scared the hell out of me because the bios upgrade runs inside of windows 7. I was crossing my fingers the entire time, praying that the machine wouldn't shut off and toast itself or that if it did the bios had dual flash banks to protect itself. If you get this box I recommend having the latest bios update on hand and making installing it the first thing you do after you get windows installed. The system was stable before I installed the provided drivers so if I'd flashed the bios before installing them I wouldn't have had any worries. Gave the box 4 stars rather than 5 because of the rebooting issues.

Pros: Ive been building gaming machines for over 10 years now and this is my first foray into smaller form factor cases and let me tell you ... bravo Shuttle. Not only does this case support full sized video cards such as the GTX 560ti, which is installed but it has the capability to support multiple hard drives and a full compliment of non low-profile ram. The sturdiness of the case along with the curved edges made the installation a piece of cake. I have a 300gb WD Raptor as the primary and still had room to install a 1.5tb Seagate for storage and what not. Very impressive case overall. Bios was a piece of cake, cabling was tolerable considering size of case and front panels worked (opened and closed) with no issues.

Cons: The only donwside to this case is that there is no built in wi-fi. Not a huge deal, as you can buy usb wi-fi cards for about $40, but having it internal would have been great. Now mind you, if you DONT install a video card that takes up both PCIe slots, then you should be able to buy a micro PCIe card and pop that in. This defeats it being a gaming machine however as no high end video card will only take up one slot. Other than that, the no issues.

Overall Review: The system specs are: Intel Core i5-2500k @ 3.6ghz Crucial DD3 8GB WD Raptor 300GB (O/S) Seagate 1.5TB (secondary) Pioneer Blu-Ray burner @ 12x EVGA GTX 560ti w/ 448 cores