Shuttle XPC SH170R6 Barebone Desktop review - Introduction

Shuttle XPC SH170R6 CUBE Barebone
Build yourself an affordable (HT)PC barebone on socket 1151

Shuttle has a long history with many kinds of pre-configured PCs and barebones, in many flavors, features and options. In this article we review their all new XPC SH170R6 Barebone Desktop from their CUBE series. A barebone basically entails a chassis/casing, motherboard, power supply and Shuttle I.C.E. heatpipe cooling system. On your end you add storage, memory and a processor, and you are good to go. 

The advantage of a product like shuttle offers is to be found in value and hey, you can build yourself a spiffy and quite powerful PC for work/net/htpc usage. The (HT)PC barebone we test today is the all new model XPC SH170R6, it is a socket 1151 product meaning you can fit it with the latest dual and quad core Core i3, i5 and even Core i7 processors, they ned to be from the Skylake generation. Yes you could insert say a Core i5 6600 or Core i7 6700 in this setup, creating an incredibly powerful system. In fact we'll do exactly that, we'll house the Skylake Core i5 6600 in this product. 

The XPC SH170R6 motherboard is based on a H170 chipset, meaning you get most of the features and functionality from the Z170 platform, yet scrap the tweaking and overclocking functions. That also means that K model processors is not something you should spend you money on as you cannot OC them anyway. The H170 chipset absed motherboard however offers plenty of features for both internal and external connectivity. For example you will spot two DisplayPort 1.2 connectors (1x support for one Ultra HD display), an HDMI port, six USB 3.0 ports, four SATA3 ports, an eSATA 6 Gb/s port, Gigabit Ethernet, and 8-channel HD audio. There's also space a for an 1x Mini-PCIe Half-Size slot for a WLAN card (optional though). Very interesting is the inclusion of a 1x M.2 2280 supports PCIe 3.0 x4 slot. Meaning you can even fully use say an NVMe enabled  Samsung 950 Pro M.2. SSD in there,  which we'll test at full speed. The chassis itself offers room for a 5.25-inch optical drives, and two 3.5-inch drives (one optical externally accessible). The unit is pretty far out and comes fitted with a SFF 300 Watt power supply (rated 80 PLUS Bronze) as well. So try to imaging you purchase a PSU, motherboard, cooler and chassis. How much would you spend ? Well, easily over 300~350 EURO I guess. The Shuttle XPC Barebone SH170R6 you will spot already for € 264,99. 

The end-users who might be interested in a product like this need to be found in the SOHO, Net PC or even HTPC space. The Shuttle XPC SH170R6 with its small size and Cube design will fit anywhere in your work space, and if you arm it with Windows 10 you can assemble a powerful box that is easy to install and use. Armed with 6x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0 and M.2. you can easily maximize your PC experience. Let's have a peek first, and then head on on-wards to the next page.