BIOS

Like all Shuttle PCs we have reviewed so far, this one, too, comes with a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) BIOS named Aptio Setup Utility. Although a UEFI BIOS, it doesn't feature a modern interface that supports mouse control; it, on the contrary, has the old, classic interface you can only interact with through your keyboard. That said, it has all basic options, though overclocking ones have been excluded, but such options could be dangerous given the restrictions the PSU and the cooling system set.


You will find the most interesting options, like CPU Configuration and Frequency & Voltage configuration, in the Advanced tab.


The Power Management options allow you to enable or disable the EuP Function, which will have the system consume less than 0.5 W in standby.


The CPU Configuration setup screen varies depending on the installed processor.


You can set either SATA or AHCI mode here; AHCI is preselected.


The USB 3.0 Controller of the mainboard can be enabled or disabled here.


While the unit's preselected fan mode is Smart Fan, you can also set CPU fan speed to ultra-low, low, mid, or full speed. We highly advise you to leave it in Smart Fan mode.


All onboard devices can be configured through these options.


You have some RAM options at your disposal; play with these as you wish.


This is the Boot Options menu.


All available BIOS security options can be found here.


The Save & Exit tab allows you to exit the BIOS by either saving your changes or not. You can also opt to reset the BIOS to its default setting here.

Performance

PC Mark 07

The overall PC Mark 07 score was high enough for a system of this category because of the Haswell i5-4570T CPU and SSD we used.

3D Mark 06

The weak VGA sets the limit in 3D Mark 06. The HD6450 we used might be completely silent because of its passive heatsink, but its 3D performance is really poor. You should install a better and most likely noisier VGA if you want to play 3D games.

Power Consumption

The SH87R6 consumes less than 0.5 W in standby, so it is ErP Lot 6 2013 compliant. Power consumption was good in its other operational modes because of the highly efficient CPU we used.

CPU Utilization

The i5-4570T's registered utilization was very low during even very high bit-rate multimedia content playback.

Temperatures

The low TDP processor allowed for very low temperatures at even full load. The passive GPU also never reached dangerously high temperatures irregardless of the stressful benchmarks we ran.

Noise Output

We used a high-quality CEM-8852 Sound DB Meter that was installed 50 cm away from the SH87R6 for these measurements. The ambient noise in our lab during noise measurements was a little below 30 dBA, and the ambient was around 24.5°C. We took measurements with the SH87R6 in idle mode and while the 3DMark06 benchmark was running. The unit's output noise was 31.5 dbA in both cases since our low TDP CPU ensured an incredibly quiet operation.