Shuttle’s XPC SB86i mini-barebones system

Shuttle’s latest chassis is the i-Series, which makes its debut with the SB86i. The i-Series is Shuttle’s first new chassis in more than six months, and in many ways, it’s a big departure from XPCs of old. Based on Intel’s Balanced Technology eXtended (BTX) form factor, the SB86i could usher in a new standard in small form factor layout and cooling. And, of course, style. Can Shuttle make BTX work in a cube? Read on to find out.

Behold the SB86i’s striking new chassis

The specs
As always, let’s kick things off with a quick peek at the SB86i’s spec sheet.

The SB86i comes with an LGA775 socket and an Intel 915G chipset, giving it support for the latest Pentium 4 processors and DirectX 9-class integrated graphics. Of course, DX9 graphics support and acceptable performance in DX9 applications can be two very different things, so it’s a good thing the SB86i also sports a PCI Express x16 slot for discrete graphics cards.

Shuttle augments the SB86i’s PCI-E x16 slot with a plain old 32-bit/33MHz PCI slot. It’s not a particularly forward-looking move, but considering the dearth of PCI-E x1 peripherals, it’s a smart one.

At the south bridge, the 915G is paired with Intel’s swanky ICH6R. The ICH6R packs all sorts of goodies, including support for Intel’s tantalizing Matrix RAID, which combines the benefits of RAID 0 and 1 with only two drives. The ICH6R actually supports up to four Serial ATA devices; one more than the SB86i can accommodate. The ICH6R south bridge also supports Intel’s new High Definition Audio standard. Shuttle pairs the ICH6R’s integrated audio controller with Realtek’s eight-channel ALC880 codec, a chip that may become as popular as the venerable ALC650. Fear the crab.

Intel’s latest south bridge chips aren’t equipped with Gigabit Ethernet, so Shuttle turns to a GigE chip from Marvell. The chip rides on a PCI Express x1 connection, so limited PCI bus bandwidth won’t be an issue.

Outside the box
One of the first things you’ll notice about the SB86i is the fact that it’s actually a little bigger than Shuttle’s previous cubes. Here it is posed next to a G4 chassis.

As you can see, both cubes are about the same height. However, the SB86i is a little wider and a few inches deeper. It’s still a small form factor, but it’s not quite as small as some of Shuttle’s previous XPC chassis. The SB86i isn’t as light, either. Unlike Shuttle’s other XPC models, which are crafted from aluminum, the SB86i’s metal bits are steel. This makes for a sturdier chassis, but there’s also a weight penalty. Our fully assembled SB86i test system tipped the scales at 20 lbs.—50% heavier than an identically-equipped P-series XPC.

The SB86i’s heavy steel body is a bit of a chore to lug around, so it’s less than ideal for LAN party rigs and portable systems. The thick steel skin may also radiate heat less effectively than aluminum, making the SB86i more reliant on its active cooling components.

From the front, the SB86i looks like something from Apple’s styling department. The all-white face has an almost iMac feel to it, although the cube is otherwise dominated by smooth steel, making its aesthetic significantly less clinical than the iMac’s.

The SB86i’s most curious facial feature is a horizontal groove that runs across the top of the bezel. When I first saw pictures of the cube, I thought it might be a slot-loading optical drive. It’s nothing nearly that fancy, though—just a light bar that glows blue when the cube is powered up. The slot also houses an orange hard drive access LED.

Like most of Shuttle’s recent cubes, the SB86i neatly stealths optical drives behind a spring-loaded door. The door is triggered by an external eject button that can be reached regardless of whether the drive is open, and the trigger’s internals are adjustable to ensure compatibility with a wide range of optical drives.

Rather than hiding the SB86i’s front peripheral ports and card reader behind another spring-loaded door, Shuttle moves the ports and card reader to the left and right edges of the cube’s face plate. The side-mounted ports allow for a much cleaner look, especially when multiple external devices are connected.

Shuttle also lines the left and right side of the SB86i’s face plate with a generous amount of venting. These vents are part of the cube’s front-to-back BTX cooling system, which also relies on a series of larger vents located just under the bottom lip of the face plate.

Although the SB86i follows BTX’s cooling prescription in that air is channeled from the front of the case to the rear, it’s the only BTX platform I’ve seen whose air intakes are spread around the edges of the system. Most BTX systems have a large air intake right up front, but I guess Shuttle thought a more obvious intake would blemish the SB86i’s clean lines.

With plenty of air intakes at the front and little venting along the sides of the cube, it’s no surprise that the SB86i’s rear is riddled with exhaust holes. Air sucked into the front of the system is channeled right through to the back, aided by an 80mm exhaust fan that also cools the cube’s power supply.

Apart from its ample venting, the SB86i looks pretty standard from behind. The port cluster is loaded with goodies, including digital and analog audio ports, a CMOS reset button, and a VGA output for the system’s GMA 900 integrated graphics. I suppose it would have been nice if the cube had a DVI rather than VGA output, but if you’re that serious about video, you probably want more pixel pushing power than the GMA 900 provides.

While we’re looking at the SB86i from the rear, note that the expansion slots are located on the left rather than on the right. This, combined with the motherboard layout, has interesting implications for graphics card cooling and compatibility. More on that in a moment.

Opening ‘er up
Sliding off the SB86i’s steel skin reveals an all-new interior that’s reminiscent of Shuttle’s P-series chassis.

Up top, the SB86i has a couple of hard drive cages that cry out for RAID. The drive cages don’t get much in the way of direct air flow, but they’re a joy to work with.

The cages are secured with a single thumb screw, and Shuttle has neatly arranged the cube’s Serial ATA data and power cables to be exactly where you need them. They’ve even equipped the hard drive cages with rubber grommets to dampen vibration noise.

Removing the SB86i’s hard drive cages yields access to the optical drive cage, which isn’t nearly as fancy. The 5.25″ cage is a simple affair that apparently wasn’t worthy of thumb screws or rubber grommets.

With the drive cages removed, the cube’s cooler can easily be popped out, and then things really start to open up.

To the right of the cube we have the PCI Express and PCI slots. PCI-E is on the inside, but since we’re on the right side of the board, the graphics card faces inward. This arrangement puts the graphics card cooler directly in the path of BTX’s front-to-back wind tunnel, which seems like a good idea, especially for passively-cooled graphics cards. However, the SB86i’s slot arrangement is such that double-wide graphics cards like ATI’s Radeon X850 XT and NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 Ultra won’t fit.

Around the left, the SB86i’s DIMM slots are easily accessible. The DIMM slots don’t get a lot of direct air flow, though. The cube’s side panels aren’t vented, and the memory modules are too close to the edge of the board to benefit from the front-to-back BTX air flow.

Popping out the SB86i’s motherboard gives us a better idea of how things are arranged. Note that the board is designed for left-to-right cooling. Cool air from the system’s intakes is blown over the CPU socket and across the passive north and south bridge coolers before being exhausted from the case. The motherboard layout conforms to Intel’s Pico BTX spec, although it’s unclear whether you’ll be able to swap it out for other Pico BTX boards.

Cooling and power
I promised I’d get to the cooler, and here it is.

ICE begone!

A departure from the ICE coolers of old, the SB86i’s cooling solution is a heavily-shrouded affair that screws right into the motherboard. Air intake is handled by a beefy, temperature-controlled 92mm fan that draws air into the case and across a heat sink that sits inside the cooling shroud.

The CPU heatsink is loaded with cooling fins that sit atop a thick copper base.

That copper base mates directly with the CPU socket and is rotated 45 degrees to line up with the angled CPU socket.

Interestingly enough, there’s more to the SB86i’s cooling shroud and intake fan than there is to the heat sink itself. Looking at the fan from inside the shroud, we can see what looks like a second cooling fan. That’s actually a series of stationary fins that I assume are designed to shape and direct air flow.

Before being exhausted from the rear of the case, air flowing through the SB86i hits the cube’s heavily-vented power supply. The PSU is a 275W model, which should be plenty of power for everything that one could actually cram into the system.

The BIOS
The SB86i’s new chassis is definitely full of new ideas, but what about the system’s BIOS?

Rather than spreading the most commonly-used tweaking options across multiple BIOS menus, Shuttle neatly consolidates them on a single page. Users have access to plenty of memory timing options, including a divider for DDR533 memory if your DIMMs are so inclined.

Overclockers will want to note that the BIOS serves up front-side bus speeds up to 355MHz in 1MHz increments, however, CPU voltages are only available as high as 1.45V. That should be enough for moderate overclocking, though; I’ve had my Pentium 4 520 2.8GHz stable at over 3.6GHz with just 1.4125V.

In addition to plenty of system tweaking options, the SB86i’s BIOS also gives users ample control over how much of the system’s memory will be cannibalized by the integrated graphics. Users can define not only how much memory is available to the GMA 900, but also whether that memory is fixed or dynamically allocated as needed.

Like most Shuttle cubes, the SB86i has plenty of fan speed options. The Smart Fan setting is easily the most attractive since it’s the only one that offers linear fan speed control based on the system’s processor temperature. Unfortunately, the BIOS doesn’t give you control over what temperature the fan starts to ramp up at.

Normally, the lack of temperature trigger control wouldn’t be a big deal, but our SB86i wasn’t 100% stable with the default Smart Fan setting. The cube would crash repeatedly in memory benchmarks, but oddly enough, not other applications. Tweaking DIMM voltages, timings, and even swapping out memory modules didn’t help, but using the Mid and Full fan speed modes rectified the problem, suggesting that adequate cooling was the issue. Unfortunately, the Mid and Full fan speed modes are rather loud and not temperature controlled, which makes them more difficult to live with than the Smart Fan.

Had the SB86i’s BIOS provided control over the Smart Fan’s temperature trigger, we might have been able to get the cube stable with a more aggressive Smart Fan temperature trigger. Shuttle’s XPC Tools Windows software could have also provided access to the temperature trigger, but XPC Tools doesn’t currently support the SB86i.

While I’m nitpicking about the BIOS, I should also point out that the SB86i lacks CPU temperature-based shutdown and alarm conditions. The Pentium 4’s clock throttling should keep a CPU from torching the system, but I’d still like to have a CPU temperature-bound alarm or shutdown condition available, especially since there’s no control over the Smart Fan’s temperature trigger.

Although the SB86i’s fan speed controls are a little lacking, the BIOS gets a couple of bonus points for allowing users to adjust the brightness of the cube’s LEDs. Many cases and small form factor systems come with blinding lights that can be a little garish for home theater systems, but the SB86i’s BIOS lets users tone the brightness down to a gentler glow.

Our testing methods
All tests were run three times, and their results were averaged, using the following test systems.

We’ll be looking at the SB86i’s performance against that of Abit’s AG8 and Fatal1ty AA8XE, Albatron’s PX915P-AGPe, and a couple of DFI’s LGA775 LANParty boards.

Because the LANParty UT 915P-T12 supports two memory types, we’ve tested its application performance with both DDR and DDR2. For our peripheral performance tests, we stuck with DDR400 memory on the LANParty board. Similarly, we tested the SB86i’s application performance with and without its integrated GMA 900 graphics. The SB86i’s peripheral performance was tested with a discrete graphics card.

Thanks to OCZ for providing us with memory for our testing. If you’re looking to tweak out your system to the max and maybe overclock it a little, OCZ’s RAM is definitely worth considering.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

• SiSoft Sandra Standard 2004
• ZD Media Business Winstone 2004 1.0.1
• ZD Media Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2004 1.0.1
• TCD Labs HD Tach v3.01
• Futuremark 3DMark03 Patch 340
• DOOM 3
• Far Cry v1.2
• Unreal Tournament 2004 v3270
• RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.3
• RightMark 3D Sound 1.02
• NTttcp
• Cinebench 2003
• Sphinx 3.3

The test systems’ Windows desktop was set at 1280×1024 in 32-bit color at a 75Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests. Most of the 3D gaming tests used the Medium detail image quality settings, with the exception that the resolution was set to 640×480 in 32-bit color.

All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.

Memory performance

The SB86i is a little behind in our memory bandwidth and latency tests, especially when using the cube’s integrated graphics.

Office productivity

The SB86i is quite competitive in the Winstone tests, although to be fair, scores are pretty close across the board.

Gaming

Our gaming tests show the SB86i to be a capable performer, at least if you’re using a discrete graphics card. While the system’s GMA 900 integrated graphics technically supports DirectX 9, I certainly wouldn’t want to play any real DX9-class games with it.

Cinebench rendering

The SB86i continues to perform well in Cinebench, at least when we’re using a discrete graphics card.

Sphinx speech recognition

Sphinx performance is a little less impressive, although all the scores are pretty close.

Audio performance

High CPU utilization plagues the SB86i in RightMark’s 3D sound benchmark, which is a little alarming. Realtek’s HD Audio drivers may need some work.

Audio quality
For RightMark’s audio quality tests, I used a Terratec DMX 6fire 24/96 for recording. Analog output ports were used on all systems. To keep things simple, I’ve translated RightMark’s word-based quality scale to numbers. Higher scores reflect better audio quality, and the scale tops out at 6, which corresponds to an “Excellent” rating in RightMark.

Fortunately, the SB86i’s audio quality is at least as good as the rest of the field in RightMark Audio Analyzer.

ATA performance
ATA performance was tested with a Maxtor 740X-6L ATA/133 hard drive using HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone setting.

The SB86i’s ATA performance is consistent with other ICH6R-based platforms.

Serial ATA performance
Moving to Serial ATA, we tested performance with a Western Digital Raptor WD360GD SATA hard drive. Again, we used HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone test.

Serial ATA performance is right where it should be, too.

USB performance
Our USB transfer speed tests were conducted with a USB 2.0/Firewire external hard drive enclosure connected to a 7200RPM Maxtor 740X-6L hard drive. We tested with HD Tach 3.01’s 8MB zone setting.

Although its USB transfer rates are competitive with other platforms, the SB86i’s CPU utilization during those transfers is a little high.

Firewire performance
Our Firewire transfer speed tests were conducted with the same external enclosure and hard drive as our USB transfer speed tests.

CPU utilization isn’t a problem with Firewire, but the SB86i’s transfer rates aren’t quite as quick as some of the competition. The Albatron PX915P-AGPe doesn’t have Firewire, so it can’t compete in this test.

Ethernet performance
We evaluated Ethernet performance using the NTttcp tool from the Microsoft’s Windows DDK. The docs say this program “provides the customer with a multi-threaded, asynchronous performance benchmark for measuring achievable data transfer rate.”

We used the following command line options on the server machine:

ntttcps -m 4,0,192.168.1.25 -a

..and the same basic thing on each of our test systems acting as clients:

ntttcpr -m 4,0,192.168.1.25 -a

Our server was a Windows XP Pro system based on Chaintech’s Zenith 9CJS motherboard with a Pentium 4 2.4GHz (800MHz front-side bus, Hyper-Threading enabled) and CSA-attached Gigabit Ethernet. A crossover CAT6 cable was used to connect the server to each system.

Ahh, the joy of PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet. The SB86i’s GigE throughput is excellent. Note just how much faster the PCI-E Gigabit solutions are than their PCI-bound competition.

Update 6/13/2005 — We recently discovered that the ntttcp CPU utilization results included in this review were incorrect. The CPU utilization results have been removed, but they didn’t factor prominently into our overall conclusion, so that remains unchanged. A full explanation can be found here.

Overclocking
For our overclocking tests, we swapped our low-latency OCZ PC3200 memory out of the SB86i in favor of some of the OCZ’s PC4400 sticks, which are rated for higher clock speeds at more relaxed latencies. PC4400 memory is designed to operate at speeds of up to 550MHz, so it shouldn’t bottleneck our overclocking efforts. However, running the PC4400 memory at more relaxed timings could result in lower overall performance if we can’t crank the clock speed high enough to compensate.

In testing, we were able to get our Pentium 4 520 2.8GHz stable at 3.36GHz on a 240MHz front-side bus. Given Intel’s efforts to hamper overclocking on its 900-series chipsets, that’s actually a pretty decent result; many 900-series platforms tend to hit an overclocking wall at 220MHz.

Our overclocking efforts translate to impressive performance gains in Sphinx and Unreal Tournament 2004. However, as always, overclocking success is never guaranteed.

Noise levels
We measured noise levels 1″ from the SB86i’s front, side, and rear using an Extech Model 407727 Digital Sound Level Meter. Measurements were taken after 10 minutes of idle, and then after another 10 minutes of a Folding@home CPU load. We also measured noise levels on an identically-equipped Shuttle SB95P V2 for comparison.

Since the SB86i wasn’t completely stable with the Smart Fan setting, I measured its noise levels with both the Smart Fan and the Mid fan speed. The Mid fan setting isn’t temperature-controlled, but it’s the quietest option that was completely stable through all our tests.

From the front, the SB86i’s Smart Fan noise levels are impressively low. It’s really too bad that we needed the louder Mid fan speed to achieve perfect stability.

The same is true at the side of the system, where the SB86i would be quieter than the SB95P V2 if it were stable with the Smart Fan setting.

Around the rear, the SB86i is actually louder than the SB95P V2 regardless of what fan setting we use. Given the system’s wind tunnel cooling design and ample rear venting, that’s not surprising.

Conclusions
Shuttle’s new i-Series chassis is full of good ideas, including dampened hard drive trays, adjustable LEDs, clean cable routing, and BTX compatibility. BTX has caught a lot of flak from the enthusiast community, perhaps because it’s incompatible with Athlon 64 systems. However, the Pico BTX spec makes a lot of sense for small form factor systems that don’t currently adhere to a common layout standard. If manufacturers embrace Pico BTX, it could become a lot easier to mix and match small form factor motherboards, enclosures, and cooling solutions, at least on the Intel side of the fence.

Despite all Pico BTX’s potential, Shuttle’s SB86i implementation needs a little work. The big issue is stability with lower fan speed settings. With the Smart Fan and lower fan speed settings, the system consistently crashed in memory benchmarks. Interestingly, it was perfectly stable otherwise. No amount of stress testing could invoke CPU throttling, suggesting that while processor cooling is sufficient, memory cooling is not.

Fixing the SB86i’s stability problems may be as simple as adding a few extra vents along the side of the cube or tweaking its Smart Fan profile. The Smart Fan profile is actually something that users should be able to change themselves, either through the BIOS or XPC Tools, but Shuttle has yet to expose that functionality in either. Until then, users are stuck with the Mid fan speed setting’s annoyingly loud noise levels.

Cooling and noise issues aside, the SB86i is really quite attractive. The system offers a good mix of expansion options, the internals are tidy and surprisingly easy to work with, performance is generally competitive, and aesthetics are clean and stylish. If Shuttle can rectify the SB86i’s memory cooling issues and retain the Smart Fan’s low noise levels, they’ll have another winner on their hands.