Shuttle SX58H7 Pro review

We’re all familiar with Shuttle systems: they’re about compromise, with the benefit of such a tiny chassis balanced by slower components and an inflated price. At £1,400 the SX58H7 Pro looks to fit that pattern, until you open it up and see what’s inside. With a Core i7-950 and a full-sized Radeon HD 6950, this Shuttle is vastly more powerful than its image suggests.

It’s testament to Shuttle’s expertise that the layout has barely changed. The processor, for instance, lacks the kind of hefty cooler we’re used to seeing on a Core i7. Instead, it’s topped with a low-profile metal heatsink barely two centimetres high, with four pipes peeling off towards another heatsink at the rear with a 90mm fan.

Shuttle’s proprietary motherboard occupies most of an enclosure that’s littered with neat touches that justify the Pro suffix. The cooler on the Intel X58 chipset has its own heatpipe that loops around the processor to a dedicated heatsink. A daughterboard provides a pair of USB 3 ports and eSATA for the front panel. Four DIMM sockets are neatly slotted between the processor and the front of the case, and unlike 2009’s standard SX58H7 there’s SATA 6Gbits/sec, too.

Both sides of the chassis are jam-packed, with the graphics card on one and Shuttle’s long, thin power supply on the other. The large cavity in the middle has a removable caddy for storing up to two hard disks and a single optical drive. There’s a modicum of upgrade room, with one free DIMM socket and a second PCI-Express x16 slot, although the latter is blocked by the double-slot HD 6950.

There’s no denying we were impressed by Shuttle’s high-end cramming, but we had fears about the heat such a fast and cramped machine would surely generate. There are no case fans to speak of, and air can only enter the system through two thin vents down the side of the busy chassis. Our tests bore out some of our concerns: the processor peaked at a toasty 87°C during our stress tests, with the graphics card climbing one degree higher. Neither signals imminent danger, but without good room ventilation we can see that heat rising.