BIOS
Recent XPC BIOSes have been anything but boring. If anything, they've been just as tweakable as any full-size board's.
Classic Phoenix AwardBIOS. It's easy to navigate and simple to use. Our attention is immediately drawn towards the frequency / voltage section on the right.
Clock ratios will only present themselves if you're in possession of an unlocked CPU. Springdale boards have shown a tendency to hit 250FSB+ with utter stability. Shuttle now allows stepless FSB choices from 100 - 355MHz. That's not as crazy as it at first sounds. There's little point in allowing sky-high FSB clocks if sensitive buses cannot be locked to certain speeds. Shuttle allows AGP/PCI/SATA fixing at the default 66/33/100MHz, 73/36/100MHz and 80/40/100MHz. SATA bus clocks never change. We're more than happy to keep it at what's shown above.
Voltage-wise, the FB65 doesn't disappoint. 1.1v - 1.85v CPU voltage provides enough scope for enthusiasts. DDR voltage tops out at a reasonable 2.75v. We wonder why there's never been chipset voltage manipulation for Intel dual-channel-based motherboards.
Forget the FB65 as the motherboard that's housed inside a cute Shuttle. It has all the options of its full-size brethren. HEXUS benchmarking uses default memory latencies of 2-6-2-2, helped by some excellent Corsair RAM. The i865PE is designed foremost for the new-ish 200FSB P4 CPUs, but it also supports every Socket-478 CPU currently available. Memory frequency is best run synchronous to the FSB, which is DDR400 in this case. One can also choose DDR320 and DDR266 if system RAM isn't quite up to the job. Incidentally, the 'Turbo Mode' made very little difference in benchmarks.
Wireless support and FireWire connectivity are automatic, that is, they cannot be toggled on or off. There's limited scope in the features' section. SATA support is available in another subscreen. Note that the FB65 / SB65G2 doesn't support on-chip SATA RAID, so there's little to comment on in that regard.
We're not sure why Shuttle refuses to adopt an automatic shut-off feature in the BIOS. Surely overheating inside a small case is of paramount concern. The Sunon fan's speed is governed by a number of settings which include 'Ultra Low', 'Low', 'Mid', 'Full' and 'Smart Fan'. The slowest setting is whisper-quiet in operation, with a fan speed of less than 2,000 RPM. Full speed hovers at around 3,500RPM. The Smart Fan feature intelligently controls the speed in relation to CPU temperature, and it can be set to speed the fan up at pre-selected temperatures, ranging from 40c - 80c. The fan will automatically engage full-speed mode if the CPU is deemed to have hit 80c. But what if the fan fails ?.
Here's a quirky aspect. The CPU's fan was initially plugged into the wrong header. There's two that sit side-by-side on the PCB. This disabled any form of fan control, even though it was shown as active in BIOS. The CPU's fan needs to be plugged into the Fan 1 header for the variable-speed fan feature to work correctly.
Another robust, decent BIOS. Voltage levels are excellent, too.
