The Unit - Outside

It's been a while since we've seen an XPC in the flesh and this particular unit that is at the TweakTown labs at the moment follows a very cool Dusk and Dawn theme. The SG33G5 out of the box looks pretty elegant, it doesn't have anything that's an eye sore and generally just looks pretty good.

The front of the unit has some logos like DTS, HDMI, Glamor XPC and Shuttle along with the usual line-up of buttons that help us power on our system and reset it. The top right corner has a button that lets you eject the ROM drive behind the stealth cover.

Down the bottom at the front we have a little flap that can be opened which reveals some handy ports. Behind the cover we find a headphone and microphone jack for audio, two USB ports and a mini Firewire port. Really these are the only connectors you need at the front for that ready to go gamer, two USB ports for the keyboard and mouse and the audio jacks for your headphones.

Moving around the case the sides and top don't offer us anything out of the ordinary at all, we have some vents on the side of the case along with the Shuttle logo embedded into it.

Moving to the back we are greeted with the normal lay out that we have become so used to, but with a few extra connectors. The top right corner gives us an optical-out port for people who want to make use of digital audio.

Heading downwards a large portion of the rear is taken up by a number of holes for the fan which helps push the hot air out of the case. The left of here has our little power supply and the right two brackets for some extra cards.

When we hit the bottom we have all those important connectors, since the G33 has onboard video we have a standard D-SUB VGA port and below that the ever growing popular HDMI port. If you're on a DVI monitor you can use the HDMI to DVI connector that is included in the package. Four USB ports are found on the back bringing the grand total to six, a single standard Firewire port, gigabit network port, our standard audio plugs for surround sound along with two eSATA ports.

In the connectivity department we have everything we need and a little bit more thanks to the added option of HDMI. The good news is if you plug the device directly into your TV using HDMI but have a separate AMP for audio you can use the optical out port.

Overall the outside of the whole case looks and feels great and continues to have the feel of a high quality unit.