Outside the box
We've seen a lot of Shuttle's G-series chassis over the years, so I won't belabor the obvious. As we take a photo tour of the SN95G5, I'll point out the cube's most important features, and probably make a few smart-ass remarks.

Ports and bays hidden from view

Despite being based on the older G-series chassis, the SN95G5's exterior is all new. Everything about the updated skin is subtle, including muted hard drive activity and power LEDs, Shuttle's name embossed on the side panel, and hinged doors to stealth the cube's drive bays and front port cluster.

Open sesame!

Opening the SN95G5 front doors reveals an array of audio and expansion ports and an external 3.5" drive bay that's ripe for a memory card reader. Shuttle has integrated card readers into previous XPCs, most notable the G4 series, but card readers are sold separately for the SN95G5.

The 5.25" drive bay door's as slick as can be

In addition to hiding the cube's 3.5" drive bay behind a stealthy door, the SN95G5 also masks its 5.25" drive bay. It's taken Shuttle what seems like forever to release cubes with stealthed drive bays, so I couldn't be happier. The spring-loaded drive bay door swings up and down as an optical drive tray opens and closes, and best of all, the external eject button even works when the optical drive tray is out. The drive bay door won't work properly with slot-loading drives, though.

Baby got back

Around the back the SN95G5 packs the usual port cluster and exhaust grills for the power supply and ICE cooling system. Although it's unmarked, there's also a CMOS reset button off to the right of the port cluster. There's room for a parallel port, too, but Shuttle doesn't include one. The SN95G5 does serve up both TOS-Link and Coaxial digital S/PDIF outputs, though.