Here's a nice opening shot of the box itself. True to the "G2" in the model number, the SB61G2 uses Shuttle's newer brushed metallic look instead of the earlier "Lucite" design. I like both designs, but between the two I prefer the metallic; the round buttons and lights in the middle of the front face give it a nice retro look. Speaking of the front face, it's time for a close-up:

Starting from the top and working down, we have the standard 5.25" and 3.5" drive plates, followed by a row of indicator lights and switches. Moving from left to right, there's the orange hard drive light, the blue power light, the reset button and the power button.

Across the bottom of the front panel are line-in, microphone and headphone jacks, two USB 2.0 ports and a mini (4-pin) Firewire port. Previous models have featured a full-size (6-pin) Firewire port up front, so this is a new addition. I noticed it particularly because my new iPod requires the full-size port in order to recharge itself.

Moving around to the rear of the cube, the first thing that grabs your attention (well, my attention, anyway) is the new placement of the digital in and out connectors in the upper right corner. I found that the connectors barely kept me from getting a straight-up-and-down shot at the expansion card screws, but simply pulling out the digital connector plug solves the problem. To the left of the digital connectors is a knock-out for the optional parallel kit, which adds a parallel port to the box for those of you with an older printer. Alternately, you could always buy a USB-to-parallel adapter.

Situated in the center of the back panel is the opening for the main cooling fan. Look through the holes, and you can see the fins for Shuttle's ICE cooling system, which uses a heatpipe design to cool the CPU. The bottom portion of the back panel, meanwhile, is devoted to various I/O ports. In the upper left is a lone serial port, with the VGA port for the on-board graphics directly underneath.

The two ports to the right of the COM port are Firewire (6-pin full-size, in case you were wondering) and 10/100 LAN. Directly under those are four USB 2.0 ports. Working further right, we have PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, and finally on the far right are the audio outputs: right/left front, right/left rear, and center/bass.