Shuttle SZ68R5 Review

Hi Brad... sorry I missed you on MSN... Wednesday night is Forza race night for me :)

I think there must be something wrong mate, my PSU is very, very quiet and the other two PSU's I have had (another 500W and a 300W) have been very similar. Also no one else i'm comunicating with who has an SZ68R5 has said the PSU is anything other than really quiet.

I think you have a rogue one by the sound of it. are you quite sure its the PSU and not the Case fan?

Try re-mounting the PSU maybe. Other than that get onto support and get them to send you a replacement PSU. It really should be very quiet.
 
Bradmax57 said:
Ok update, got totally fed up and have asked for an RMA which as yet hasnt been accepted or replied to but none the less i took it to work and put it back in the office in the warehouse where its nice and cool, probably somewhere around 12-15C with out my gpu in its now nice and quiet, the fan I put in the cooler is virtually silent as it doesnt make much difference if I unplug that or not, I can still here the psu fan however but its nothing like it was at home where the ambient temp must have been around 20C or more so all I can think is when ambient temp creeps up its the cause of the noise, i didnt even put any load on the system at all but the cpu was idling mid 50's which is no good, today in the warehouse office its 37C (case off)
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Well there is definitly something not right, probably a poor fan in the PSU as mine is used all the time in the home at 20+ ambient. I tried it again with the CPU fan un plugged and using internal graphics and could not really hear the PSU fan at all even under load.
 
No the new bios does not have ram timings yet, although it does now pick up my 4x4GB sticks at 1600MHz.

Having said the above, I did some digging and enabled some hidden bios stuff and have found both ram settings and PLL voltage overide settings. The bad news is that I can no longer find any power overides so its back to throttling.

On a much more positive note. I can now boot into windows at 5GHz, with that and the full ram speed / settings i'm getting much better performamce in single thread applications. Multi thread just causes throttling due to hitting the maximum power.

I shall have to keep looking for the power overide.
 
Sorted the power :)

Now runs at 5GHz nice and solid. Have run Prime95 for 1/2 hour and temps with the water are in mid 70's so well controlled. The CPU multi sits at x50 most of the time with the odd dip to x49 or x48 but these seen minimal.

Really please with this bios, although Shuttle are clearly not 100% on it yet hense the memory timings still being hidden away.
 
SX68R5_2600K@5100MHz_SuperPi1M.png


SX68R5_2600K@5200MHz_SuperPi1M.png


SX68R5_2600K@5300MHz_SuperPi1M.png
 
Been trying the 3770K Ivy Bridge in the SZ68R5 over the past 24 hours.
As with everyone trying Ivy bridge, its hot and does not overclock as well as my 2600K Sandy Bridge.

I'm seeing a very small improvement in benchmark scores clock for clock.

To my great pleasure, I notice that my Nvidia 680 is running pci-e 3.0 on the Z68 chipset with the 3770K and I am seeing a reasonable improvement in 3D benchmarks and games, which i put down to pci-e 3 in the main.

With the latest Bios my 2600K will run quite happily at 5GHz or 4.8GHz with sensible voltage. The 3770K will bench at 4.7 but its not totally stable... 4.6 is all the way and 4.4 sensible. In nearly every test the 2600K at 4.8 is better than the 3770K at 4.4GHz
 
Mab said:
Hi,

The new BIOS has been released:SZ68R000.201.

Problem: I did not find on Shuttle website any tutorial to explain how to upgrade it. Usually it is under "utilities". I sent a request to customer support but still no feedback.
So I was wondering: as the BIOS is an AMI BIOS, shall I use AFUWIN to flash the BIOS, as explained in the link below?
http://us.shuttle.com/SCGFaq/attachments/132/amibios.pdf

I could read that some of you did already upgrade their BIOS. It would be nice if someone could explain to me how to perform it?

I am running W7 prof. 64x. / BIOS current version is 1.05

Thank's.
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Hi there.

The file you download is a zip file and it contains 3 packages. One you can use to flash from windows 64bit, one windows 32bit and the other DOS.

Personally I prefer to flash via dos although it is more complex.

To flash via windows, simply extract the W64 files from the zip and run the application.

From DOS - copy the files onto a USB stick. Boot into dos and run the FLASH.BAT file from your USB stick.

Flashing back to 104 or 105 is a little more complex but can be done.
I am now using the SZ77R5 107 bios on my SZ68R5 and finding it rather good. It's a risk, but works well for me and gives higher power options and Ram settings control.
 
An Exception said:
@SimonMaltby

Just want to say thanks, I'm considering a shuttle, and this has been an invaluable resource indeed...
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Thanks for this... I don't get anything from the reviews so they are a labour of love. I was due to review the SZ77R5 as well but that seems to have gone wrong as the retailer that Shuttle sent the review unit to have not sent it on to me :(
 
With regards SATA ports...
You can
1) get an m-SATA SSD drive
2) Get an e-SATA to SATA cable and route from the outside back of the case inside

So you can use 6 SATA devices with whats already there.

I cant confirm the max resolution of the intergrated, but this should be determined by the CPU so do a search for the info based on the CPU u will use.

The other alternative is get a single slot pci-e gpu that will leave a pcie x4 slot free and useable for an SATA card. I have been working on a riser that would enable the x4 slot to be used with a double width GPU, but not getting on that well so far.
 
An Exception said:
^^^
I don't think so, I can't find a raid card that offers that kind of performance for a similar price, as I'll eventually like to hook up about 4 Samsung 830's in raid 0.
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If you want this level of RAID I question if a SFF machine is the right solution.
I'm currently running mine using 2 x Vertex 4's in Raid 0, a single Vertex 3, a single 1TB Mechanical all using the onboard intel raid. (V4's on the 6GB ports, the V3 and 1TB on the 3GB ports) and the DVD drive using the rear esata port.
 
Can take a photo over the weekend, not near the machine at the moment.
I took the Com port cover off the back of the case which is in a nice place and just run the esata cable (Esata to SATA was a couple of £ on the bay) through the hole. Its just below the PSU.

My V4's in Raid 0 fly, they are 128GB each. Using AS SSD bench I score 1992
 
An Exception said:
Ok great I have a much clearer idea now, so no need for a photo. Just curios what sort of throughput does the raid0 produce? is it limited to 600/650mb/s like my old ICH10?
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No not limited, we are talking SATA 6GB on tw channels. using ATTO it peaks at about 850 read and write - but bear in mind the Vertex 4 and ATTO do not go well together so actual throughput is at least that.

I would also like to point out that I have tried my SSD drives on several machines - all the ASUS motherboard take ages to load windows 7... The Shuttles are very, very fast - with or without RAID.
 
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