Just got my KPC Shuttle mini PC and within 30 minutes I had it running. This PC is perfect for many purposes or when you need a small PC. I bought a barebones K45 KPC for $100, installed a P4, some ram, and some hard drive I had laying around and I was ready to go. The biggest problem anyone is going to have with this PC is the 
power supply, it is green but only has 1 sata and 1 standard 12v connector for your hard drives. There are plenty of ports on the back: VGA, Parallel, serial, Ethernet USB… You can look this up for yourself!
Here is the hidden gem I found! Everywhere I looked, there was no mention of a CD-Rom drive bay in 
the front online or in any documentation. I have amazing news to report! Inside the KPC there is two slots for standard hard drives and one slot at the top for a laptop Rom drive. Unfortunately, you will have to take off the beautiful Plexiglas bezel that houses those pretty pictures in the front but with a little DIY fun, you can make your own.
Take a look at the pics.
April 14th, 2008 at 12:29 am
does this come with 1Gb/sec networking? did you say that there are two 3.5″ internal bays? cheers.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Unfortunately I have been so busy I had not checked but I just did and it does. There are two spaces for 3.5″ but possibly even 3. If you look at this pic http://www.bigpcgeek.com/images/blogimages/ShuttleKPCUnboxedReviewedRevealsHiddenGe_FCF/IMG_0477.jpg you can see there is a slot below the currently installed hard drive but you will not be able to fit one there with a current cpu fan. Hopefully shuttle will sell the ones that they offer with their full systems because the mounts are turned 45 degrees from standard socket mounts. There is also space on the top that looks like a third will fit but I am not sure. I installed a laptop CD-Rom drive there and made my own acrylic bezel for the front.
April 14th, 2008 at 2:59 am
Oh wait, sorry the cpu fan mounts are normal so getting a heat sinc should be ok but the cpu is tilted 45 degrees which does inhibit the heat sinc from completely covering a cpu. So again, you might want to look into a speacial heat sinc from shuttle (which I have not found) if you want to install two hard drives.
June 25th, 2008 at 12:12 am
[…] Though, any of you who like to mod your computers will be pleased to know that there’s a hidden slim drive bay in this thing. Later this year Shuttle will be releasing a model that comes standard with an […]
June 29th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
so, the official verdict is it could hold 2 sata drives? except you would need to change the psu? i’d really like to use this with a software raid 1 on two drives, boot from usb maybe, but i can’t get a good handle about how small it is inside. also, with the ICE genie from Shuttle, how would that change things? and lastly, did you put in a fan at the back or just run everything as is, and how has been running? loud, hot, etc? thanks again for the info, a nice cheap system everyone is wondering about it seems.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:51 am
Sorry about the delay. Since the newer kpc has the same power supply and advertises 2 hard drive bays and a cd rom drive bay, I would think the splitter might work with the 100 watt power supply. You can fit 3 hard drives not sure if the one of the top will be able to be secured with screws. You will need the the ice genie for mounting the bottom hard drive unless you get a ultra small heatsink and fan. Currently I am using a stock Intel fan with heatsink with a P4 and it runs a little hot. The power supply is louder than I would like but cant tell you exactly because I dont have a tool to measure db’s.