Outside the box

It's taken them a while, but Shuttle finally has drive bay and port stealthing all figured out. With the drive bay and port doors closed, the SB775G5's clean, stylish appearance make it one of the most visually appealing cubes in Shuttle's stable.

Dropping two of the cube's front-panel doors exposes an empty 3.5" drive bay and a handful of audio, Firewire, and USB ports. If you simply must have a floppy drive in your system, the SB775G5 can accommodate it.

The SB775G5 also has a spring-loaded 5.25" drive bay cover that smoothly swings open and closed with a system's optical drive tray. Slot-loading optical drives won't work with the door, though.

Perhaps the slickest part of the SB775G5's optical drive bay door its external eject button. The button's internal trigger lines up perfectly with all the optical drives I have on hand. For those who prefer to close optical drives by hitting the eject button rather than pushing the drive tray, the button is easy to reach regardless of whether the drive bay door is open or closed.

From the rear, the SB775G5 looks much like any other XPC. The port cluster is loaded with goodies, including digital S/PDIF input and output ports. Shuttle also sneaks a convenient CMOS reset button into the port cluster, which will save users from having to crack open the case just to clear the BIOS.

While we're viewing out the SB775G5 from behind, I should say a few words about the cube's power supply. The PSU is a 250W unit that has no problem handling graphics cards like the GeForce 6800 GT, at least when paired with a Pentium 4 520 2.8GHz. While it's nice to have a 250W PSU in a cube like the SB775G5, I'm not crazy about the power supply's tiny exhaust fan. While these tiny power supply fans tend to start off silent, in my experience, they can develop a high-pitched whine over several months of consistent use. The PSUs in some of Shuttle's other cubes use a larger internal fan that seems to maintain lower noise levels over time.