Shuttle XPC SH170R6 Barebone Desktop review - Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

The Shuttle XPC SH170R6 barebone is a great and fun product for those that want to build a SOHO, net or HTPC quickly and easily. Next to that the people who will buy this product will find the small 12 liter design pretty fantastic. It is light-weight, easily to place in any location and yeah it just offers heaps of features at a competitive price (depending on processor/memory/storage choices of course).

Features

Now make no mistake, this is not a Z170 comparable product and yes, the performance was a notch off. You'll definitely have very little to tweak with the Shuttle XPC SH170R6 either. However you also need to understand that tweaking and overclocking is not for everybody. For this unit you plug in a processor of your choice, two memory DIMMs (you do want two for dual-channel bandwidth) and a storage unit. The performance and features will be close to what Z170 offers, but without the x-factor enthusiast grade stuff that many of us like so much.

The Shuttle XPC SH170R6 can become quite a powerful PC, but admittedly things get easily more complicated if you have a desire to add-in a dedicated graphics card as the standard 300 Watt PSU will not be sufficient if you want something spicy. Opting the 500 Watt model PSU adds a price premium and once you start adding and including options, you might as well look into building your own Z170 based platform as things rise up and beyond pricing wise easily. So gaming is possible, but you will have to adapt to extra options you need to purchase. 

For a bare-bone in this price range we do see a lot of value, a bit of a miss however is the lacking WIFI. Sure again an optional but anno 2016 AC WIFI should be mandatory with the internet of things. The same can be said about the missing support to mount even one 2.5" storage unit. If you opt a regular SSD you'll need to seat it unsecured inside the chassis. Again, you can purchase an optional 3.5" to 2.5" storage tray converter, but really it should be supported as standard. Also lacking is a card reader.
 

On the opposite and positive side of things, you get a gigabit Ethernet jack (Intel), four SATA3 ports, plenty of USB 3.0 ports with even a 2AMP USB port to quickly charge your smart-phone or tablet. The icing on top of the cake however for me was the fully function PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 lane configuration of the M.2. slot. Just pop in a NVMe SSD like the Samsung 950 Pro (make sure you install the driver for full speed), and you'll be rockin' & rollin' at 2GB/sec. Crazy stuff, excellent performance.

Performance

Processor performance is fine, albeit we did notice it to be a tad slower opposed to the beefed up Z170 platforms we have tested. The same goes with the memory performance albeit that difference is extremely small. Memory wise go with volume over higher-frequency, just pick cheapo 1.2V 2133MHz DDR4 memory as it is more then plentiful for a system like this. Like any PC, we do recommend 8GB as standard these days. Also with any PC mandatory would be an SSD. As you have noticed, SATA3 and M.2. units can be installed, and removing that traditional HDD bottleneck from your PC will make all the difference. Combined with Windows 10 the experience is very fast, the OS doesn't feel too slow and again if combined with a SATA3 or M.2 SSD storage unit everything will speed up the OS and your end-user experience. This small CUBE unit is a perfect SOHO / NET / HTPC as well.  The cooler then, with our Core i5 6600K the included ICE cooler from Shuttle was more than sufficient, It kept the CPU under 50 degrees C at all times, no-matter how we stressed. No complaints here. We could hear the fan softly though. If that bothers you, it is a starndard 92mm mount so it should be fairly easy to replace, but other then that we can't argue anything on this front either.

Concluding

At a price-tag of 265 EURO, you receive a lot of value for money. Remember that price-tag entails a chassis, the 300W Bronze certified power supply, the cooler and the motherboard. Everything inside has been installed and connected, you only need to insert a CPU (and reseat the cooler), memory and storage unit.  Before you assemble a build like this you do need to decide what the purpose of the PC will be, a HTPC ? A work and internet PC ? Do you photoshop all the time or perhaps transcode videos ? It's the purpose that defines the functionality and thus choice in processor and memory amount. 8GB of memory is adequate, but of you transcode a lot we assume 16GB would be a better choice. For content creation or heavily threaded work go with that Core i5 6600 or Core i7 6700, the power supply and cooler certainly can take it. But if you use this PC as SOHO, HTPC or even file server, any Core i5 processor will do fine. For just an Internet PC, go with a dual-core Core i3, though we do recommend 4 core systems these days. Remember, this is H170 and thus the system only can take 6th generation processors (Skylake) based on socket 1151. We do miss AC compatible WIFI or any WIFI at all, but you do get Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, DisplayPort and HDMI connectivity really the product is as versatile as it needs to be. Overall, for mid-range purposes the Shuttle XPC SH170R6 definitely comes recommended. Please do take my remarks about graphics cards into consideration if you plan on adding a dedicated graphics card, the standard power supply is not capable enough, the 500W would be. But do check out your PCIe graphics card power connectors and compatibility of them with any other PSU you opt. The Shuttle XPC SH170R6 is a versatile and fun product, for a certain kind of end-user in both the consumer and business space. We can definitely recommend it, gamers not so much though as things can get complicated easily pricing wise. But as HTPC, Net PC of office / work PC the sky is the limit with these easy to install and tuck away cube units, we like them very much.

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