Shuttle releases barebone system with space for four 3.5″ HDDs

With the SZ170R8, Shuttle has announced a model in the XPC Cube series that fits four 3.5″ HDDs. A Z170 motherboard has been installed, which can accommodate a Skylake CPU and up to 64GB of DDR4 memory.

The Shuttle XPC cube SZ170R8 is a barebone system consisting of a housing, 500W 80 Plus Silver power supply and a motherboard. Users have to add a processor, memory and HDDs themselves. Until now, Shuttle has made its square barebones suitable for three 3.5″ drives and an optical drive. The new model fits four large HDDs, but there is no more room for a DVD or Blu-ray player.

The housing has dimensions of 33.2×21.6×19.8cm and a capacity of 14.2 liters. A custom motherboard with Intel Z170 chipset is placed in the case, on which an Intel Core processor of the Skylake generation with TDP of up to 95W can be plugged into it. There is room for four strips of DDR4 memory and support for up to 64GB of RAM. The motherboard also has an M2 2280 slot with support for PCI-e x4 and SATA for SSDs and four SATA600 connections for HDDs or SSDs.

With space for four HDDs, the box can be used as a storage server, but according to Shuttle, the SZ170R8 is also interesting for gamers who want to build a small system. There is a pci-e-x16 slot and a video card that takes up two slots fits in the case. Shuttle mentions a number of cards on its website that fit in the system, but that seems to be an old list, because there are no copies with new GPUs on it.

Inside the case is a cooling system that uses a heatpipe and two fans. There are also more air entrances compared to previous Shuttle barebones. This should ensure that the components remain cool even when using four HDDs. The XPC Barebone SZ170R8 is available now and has a suggested retail price of 390 euros.