The BIOS
So the form factor and motherboard are slick, but what about the BIOS?

It measures up, too. When it comes to memory and AGP tweaking, the SB77G5's BIOS has just about everything you'll need.

The BIOS's overclocking options are perhaps more impressive, though. In addition to supporting front-side bus speeds up to 355MHz, the SB77G5 also serves up three locked AGP/PCI/SATA bus ratios that should keep system components in spec when the front-side bus is running far beyond stock. Cubes generally aren't known for extreme overclocking, and considering a relatively low 1.5875V CPU voltage ceiling, the SB77G5 probably won't break any overclocking records. Still, it's well-equipped for the kind of overclocking most enthusiasts would consider reasonable for a system this size.

Like all of Shuttle's recent cubes, the SB77G5's BIOS can adjust the system's ICE fan based on processor temperatures. Users have two options here. They can either choose from a series of pre-defined profiles that oscillate between high and low fan speeds depending on the CPU temperature, or opt for linear fan speed control that starts to ramp up RPMs based on a user-defined CPU temperature threshold.

Linear fan speed control tends to be quieter, at least for systems that are under variable loads, so that's what I'd recommend for the SB77G5. With linear fan speed control, you don't need to worry about the cube annoyingly oscillating between high and low fan speeds as it flirts with the pre-defined temperature threshold, either.

Despite its plentiful overclocking and fan speed control options, the SB77G5's lack of a fan failure alarm or shutdown condition makes me a little wary. The cube is completely dependent on its single exhaust fan for cooling, and although the Pentium 4 will throttle if processor core temperatures get too hot, I'm not sure processor throttling alone would prevent other system components from overheating in such a cramped case if the ICE fan were to fail.