Shuttle Zen (ST62K) XPC - P4

What you get

The Zen XPC unit has extras with it, some are included and some are optional.  The included ones are a driver CD, manuals, ribbon cables, S-Video cable, power cord, extra 3.5" bay cover and a power supply.  Yes, I said power supply.  On the Zen XPC the PSU is an external unit.  This allows for more breathing room within the Shuttle chassis. 

One of the ribbon cables I mentioned is only a couple inches long to minimize cable clutter when connecting your HDD to the board.  The cable itself is reminiscent of the old Voodoo2 VGA cards when run in tandem.  As far as the extra 3.5" drive bay cover, I have zero idea why it's here.  I'm tending to believe it is there by accident because what are you going to do with an extra tiny drive cover??

  

Some nice optionally accessories are also available.  A Shuttle wireless dongle, colored front bezels and covers, remote control unit, 3.5" USB 2.0 card reader, XPC carrying bag and XPC backpack.  I have to say I wish Shuttle had sent over their optional backpack.  From some of the pictures and materials I've seen, it looks to be able to handle not only the XPC but your keyboard and everything you would need to go to a LAN party.

The unit

As you saw in the specs and now in the pic below, the Shuttle box is one small little fellow.  Having observed dimensions of 280 x 190 x 175mm you may not realize right off how small this actually is.  Look at the second pic with the MX700 mouse on top and you really get the idea. 

  

One the front bezel we find a single 5.25" and a single 3.5" bay.  Now before you go thinking, we'll I'm not going to be installing a floppy drive anyway, you need to know that you can't.  Well at least a standard floppy.  The Shuttle FT62 mainboard does not have a floppy connector.  No huge deal for 95% of us.  The folks who run RAID arrays will need to come up with some external workarounds for this.  The only reason you would ever use this externally accessible drive bay would be to install a card reader or some type of smaller thermal control panel.

The lower half of the face are two USB ports, mic, line in and speaker jack.  Next to these are the hard drive activity lamp and power indicator light.  The reset button is on the far left of this line of ports and indicators.  It is about the same size as the LEDs next to it.  I actually could not depress it with my fingers and had to opt to use the head of a pencil. 

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Pg 1 - Introduction
Pg 2 - What you get
Pg 3 - The unit
Pg 4 - The ICE Cooling System
Pg 5 - Layout
Pg 6 - BIOS / Overclocking
Pg 7 - Productivity and Gaming Benches
Pg 8 - Gaming Benches continued
Pg 9 - Conclusion