The P-series chassis
The SB81P, featuring Shuttle's all new P-series chassis, seeks to offer all the style and functionality of previous XPC designs, while allowing a little more internal space for more disk drives and bigger graphics cards.The design of such a chassis has required a little more thought than just expanding the external dimensions of something like the G2-chassis. The internals have required a significant redesign too. If you're giving the user the opportunity to add a bit more hardware internally, heat becomes a paramount requirement.
Bearing that in mind, Shuttle have been sensible in their creation of the P-series, following a couple of well trodden thermal paths. Splitting the P-series interior up into three distinct sections, focussed on the major heat-producing parts of a computer system, has allowed Shuttle to create a motherboard for the P-series chassis that helps them in the thermal department. With the CPU and main HDD bay areas getting their own discrete cooling setups, the P-series appears well equipped to deal with heat issues as they arise.
The SB81P's P-series design also brings some oft-demanded stylistic enhancements to the XPC, such as stealthed drive bays and a consistent colour scheme across the entire XPC.
Without delving too much into the fine details, it's bigger, the thermal issues are top priority and they've kept it nice and clean on the exterior.
Able to fit three hard disk devices (two of which must be SATA) without modifications, or two (SATA) plus a floppy drive, along with an optical device and an integrated card reader as standard, internal and external file storage is well catered for.
The optical device and floppy drive (should you choose to install one) are held behind stealthed bay coverings. The optical bay cover is spring-hinged and slides gracefully open and shut with the action of the drive tray. You can't use a slot-loading drive, but that's no big deal.
The floppy bay cover is a push action cover, one push to open, one push to close, on a slick hinge. With the card reader sitting exposed (as it should be really) and the front expansion ports for audio, USB2.0 and FireWire400 behind another push action cover, almost everything is hidden away on the SB81P's P-series implementation.
Internally, Shuttle have gone tool-free, with no tools required for installation of any hard disk, optical drive or floppy drive, bar your hands. You'll need a screwdriver for installing the brand new ICE cooler, but that's seriously it as far as poking around inside with pointy metal objects goes.
But as someone would undoubtedly say if this was a thread on an online forum, TTIUWP. To grasp the full scope of Shuttle's changes with the P-series, and the SB81P in particular, we need photographs. Lots of photographs.
