The SB86i is based on the Intel 915G/ICH6R chipset and has integrated video through Intel’s GMA900 which supports Direct-X 9. An x16 PCI-E expansion slot is also provided along with a standard PCI slot. The chipset provides support for four SATA and two IDE drives of which the SATA can be configured in a RAID mode. Shuttle also provides four USB ports and a header for two more while two are dedicated for the 8-in-1 card reader on the right side of the unit.

For onboard connectivity, you are provided by Gigabit Ethernet as well as two firewire ports. We think 802.11g wireless networking should’ve also been built on the XPC. For audio, Shuttle uses a Realtek ALC880 codec providing 7.1 channel high definition audio along with SPDIF connectivity.

The BIOS on the SB86i is pretty straight forward offering all the options you find on a typical motherboard nowadays. Almost all of the onboard features can be enabled/disabled from the BIOS. The memory timings and frequencies can also be adjusted to match your modules.

Shuttle also provides some overclocking options which include changing the FSB and providing higher voltages to CPU, memory and chipset. We were able to overclock the SB86i to about 240MHz higher which is certainly not a record but its decent for an XPC- you wouldnt wanna overclock it much because of the size/heat issues.

Testbed

We've used a 3.4GHz/800MHz Pentium4 CPU along with two 512MB DDR400 Corsair modules with 2.0-2-2-5 timings. Along with that, we used the 6800GT graphics card and a Maxtor 80GB 8MB/7200RMP drive for all the motherboards. For comparsion, we've selected Gigabyte's 925X motherboard and MSI's 915P mothebroard with the same 3.4GHz CPU as well as the MSI K8N Diamond board with an Athlon64 3500+ CPU. Windows XP SP2 and the latest official drivers were used for all tests.