Shuttle SH67H3 review

Shuttle’s SH67H3 is a Socket LGA1155 barebones, so will accept any of Intel’s latest generation of Sandy Bridge processors. It’s almost exactly the same size and shape as other barebones systems in Shuttle’s XPC range, but packs in a comprehensive specification and room for upgrades.

The SH67H3 is a smart brushed black metal box, with a slightly different design from Shuttle boxes designed for Intel’s previous-generation Core processors such as the SH55J2. There’s no flap covering either the optical drive or the ports at the bottom of the unit, which are now recessed slightly, possibly to make them less vulnerable to spills when the box is sitting on your desk.

When building the barebones, we preferred not having a flap over the optical drive – it made fitting a DVD writer much easier. The barebones itself is very easy to build. The heatsink screws in over the processor, and heatpipes connect the chip’s cooling block to a fan on the rear of the case. The optical drive and up to two hard disks screw into a cage which you slide into the top of the chassis, and two SATA cables route around the top of the chassis so are out of the way. There’s only room for these two cables in the dedicated cable tidy channel, though, so if you have three drives you’ll have to make sure the last cable doesn’t block your airflow.

The barebones has two SATA3 and two SATA2 ports and supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10, so if you fit multiple hard disks you’re free to choose between speed, data redundancy or a compromise between the two. You’re also spoilt for choice for fast external storage, with two USB3 ports on the front and the rear – one of the USB2 ports on the front and rear also doubles as an eSATA port. To set up RAID you’ll have to use the old-school BIOS, though – there’s no fancy UEFI-based setup here.