Thoughts
When the SB86i was announced, I had the thought that if anyone has the expertise to do BTX right in a small form factor system, which is the one of the reasons BTX was created, that Shuttle do. Masters of the diminuitive PC, Shuttle rarely put a foot wrong with their XPC models. But the SB86i is a sore disappointment. The size of a picoBTX mainboard, and a little extra since Shuttle's FB86 is larger than a 'strict' picoBTX spec board, defines the basic width and depth dimensions of the SB86i's i-Series chassis, while its requirement for a Type 1 Stacked Fin Thermal Module, one full 5.25" optical device bay and a hard disk cage defines the height.The resulting chassis dimensions are the first thing to sound alarm bells. It can take less hard disk devices, supports a slower set of CPUs (officially) and has decreased capacity for larger graphics cards, than Shuttle's own, smaller, P-series chassis. It's Intel's BTX specification that defines those lesser abilities, too. That a 1.26 kilo cooler is only rated to take the heat output from a 3.6GHz Pentium 4, making the hefty SB86i less able than other, smaller XPCs in Shuttle's range, leaves me fairly cold on the whole concept.
Given the entire ethos of a small form factor device is its size, the only reason Shuttle should have increased the size of the chassis compared to the P-series was to fit more in, and fit in in elegantly. The i-Series offers no spacial benefits to a P-series and while you wouldn't really want three hot hard disks in a P-series, two at the top, like an i-Series, is just fine.
On top of that, they've locked you into using their own mainboards for the chassis, with the use of a proprietary front panel and front-mounted device connectors. That Shuttle do not sell discrete XPC mainboards leaves your choices for swapping in a mainboard that's based around an open standard at zero. Zilch. Unless you buy a future BTX-based XPC and canibalise that mainboard. But then why would you, if it's going to be anything like the SB86i?
The media reader is a neat touch, but it's nothing you can't augment to all the other XPCs that Shuttle produce, often for little extra cost. A fixed media reader is an odd concept anyway, at least to me. Performance is derivative, although that wasn't to be unexpected, even with more scope for memory subsystem tweaks when the memory controller lies inside the mainboard's core logic, and not the processor.
Overall, I'm a fan of the SB86i's aesthetic, and I know that people buy Shuttle's hardware just on its looks, regardless of what's inside. But if the appearance doesn't float your computing boat, there are precious few reasons to seriously select the SB86i. Just to recap: it's too loud under heavy load, it's too big and offers you no extra capacity for devices compared to a P-series XPC, locks you into their own mainboards whilst using an open mainboard form factor and the range of processors officially supported is less than it could be due to the (massive) cooling solution.
That the VGA output is of poor quality leaves only its ease of construction as a plus point towards a recommendation, to pair with the looks, at least for this reviewer.
A very puzzling offering from the Taiwanese SFF giant and one I recommend you stay well away from. There are much better, and highly desirable, Pentium 4-based XPCs elsewhere in Shuttle's range. Shop for those instead, unless the looks really grab you.
