The DS50U7 barebone from Shuttle did impress us in terms of performance, considering we are talking about a fanless design. PL1 is limited to 15W, while PL2 is limited to 17W, while in the case of the ECS LIVA Z5 Plus with active cooling and the i5-1335U SoC, we noted PL1 set at 20W and PL2 set at 39W, which is considerably higher; despite that, we see the i7-1355U winning in some cases, due to the implementation of DDR5 memory, higher boost on the iGPU clock, more execution units, but also a higher boost on the CPU, helping quite a bit in low to medium loads, a situation which is frequently found when using the device like 90% of the time.

When all cores are loaded to 100%, the speed will decrease on the P-Cores from 5GHz to 1.6GHz, while on the E-Cores, we have a drop from 3.7GHz to 1.2GHz, so quite identical as we have seen with the ECS unit. No matter the load, the SoC remains at very manageable temperatures, without any signs of throttling, at least in our test room, with the ambient temperature of about 26.3 degrees Celsius:

In terms of power consumption, we noted as little as 13.2W with the computer in IDLE and only 41.1W with all cores and GPU fully loaded!

The XPC slim DS50U7 is approved for 24/7 operation and needs little to no maintenance due to no active cooling. We could think of multiple usage scenarios for such system, like a Plex Media Center, a light gaming machine (including for running emulators), Thin Client, Kiosk, POS, Digital Signage and more!

The connectivity options are good, allowing no less than two M.2 SSDs, one 2.5’’ drive, we have 2.5Gbit + 1Gbit LAN connectivity, wireless connectivity via the optional WLN-M1 kit, we can connect to it up to 3 displays, and can attach many external devices thanks to the multitude of USB ports and the Serial port.

As for the accessories, we have the PCP11 COM port adapter, the CXP01 cable for attaching the external power button, PRM01 to be used as a 19’’ Rack Mount (2U), DIR01 which is a DIN-Rail mounting kit but also the WWN04, an expansion 4G/5G kit with four antennas.

The XPC slim DS50U7 can be currently found online for about 773 Euros, which is a good pricing for what we get.

Shuttle XPC slim DS50U7 Barebone is Recommended for:

We would like to thank again to Shuttle Europe for making this review possible!