At first we would like to thank Shuttle Europe for offering a sample of their latest XPC Nano NC02U Barebone for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About Shuttle:

 

"Shuttle Inc, founded in Taiwan in 1983, is specialised in development and production of innovative mini PCs. The joint-stock company is represented worldwide by a network of branch offices in Germany, the US and Japan. Since 2001 the attractive cube-shaped PCs have conquered nearly any field of application and have become the core business of the company headquartered in Taipei / Taiwan. Widely acclaimed by customers and press across the globe, Shuttle founds its success on effective management and long-term experience in making mainboards of highest quality standards. Since years Shuttle's mini PC barebones and fully-configured systems are the first choice of many system integrators, VARs, OEMs and ODMs banking on the high reliability and build quality. With appealing mini PC solutions Shuttle meets the requirements of consumers excellently and seeks to provide further user-friendly solutions of consumer electronics for the digital home environment."

 

Product Features:

 

Product Specifications:

Just recently, Shuttle started refreshing their XPC Nano series by including the NC02U generation, which is available in multiple configurations. While the NC01U was based on the Broadwell-U processors and was available with Celeron, Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 models, the NC02U is now housing the latest generation Skylake-U CPUs (Celeron 3855U, Core i3-6100U, Core i5-6200U, Core i7-6500U). This new generation brings micro-architectural improvements but also the clocks are bumped higher versus the Broadwell-U gen. Besides the increased CPU clocks, we do also get an optimized integrated graphics with 12 execution units (HD Graphics 510) which does also feature H.265/HEVC decoding completely in hardware.

 

The NC02U XPC Nano does ship inside a similar packaging design as we have seen with the previous generation, which does sport the usual Shuttle box art:

 

 

 

For easy manipulation, a plastic handle is also included:

 

 

 

Users which are interested in checking out the hardware specifications right away can look at the sticker on the lateral side; here Shuttle has also placed the product serial numbers:

 

 

 

Inside the enclosure we will be able to spot the main product surrounded by foam material, but also a separate cardboard box which holds the rest of the bundle:

 

 

 

 

 

The first bundle components we are going to enumerate are the power supply, the power lead, one 2.5’’ HDD/SSD drive tray, two aluminum stands, mounting screws but also a set of rubber feet:

 

 

 

The power adapter was manufactured by Asian Power Devices Inc. and delivers on the output 19V at 3.42A:

 

 

 

A two-part VESA mount set is also supplied with the product:

 

 

 

The Quick Start Guide is accompanied by a driver CD:

 

 

 

The manual is well-written in multiple languages and explains every step of installation:

 

 

 

NC02U does sport 141 x 141 x 42 mm dimensions, while the NC01U did have a lower height of only 29mm; despite this fact, we found the NC02U easier to work with inside; the top cover made of glossy plastic which did scratch pretty easily has now been replaced with a brushed aluminum layer which looks considerably better and is more durable at the same time:

 

 

 

You will see that the middle frame of the unit along with the bottom layer have a gunmetal grey finishing -> this color was available only with initial designs (samples mostly), but the retail version has been switched to a matte black. In the frontal area of the unit we can spot one USB 3.0 port, an USB 3.0 Type C port, one SD card reader, HDD/SSD activity LED, one Power LED but also a black Power button:

 

 

 

The left side is provided with a COM port, a ventilation grill, but also holes for mounting the aluminum stands:

 

 

 

The right side comes with a larger ventilation grill, placeholders for installing optional Wi-Fi antennas but also one Kensington lock port:

 

 

 

In the back side, we’ve got one DC-IN port, a HDMI 1.4b port, one full-sized DisplayPort 1.2 port, a Gigabit LAN port, two USB 2.0 and also one Audio Combo port:

 

 

 

The bottom area does hold some additional product stickers, central mounts for the VESA and also two screws (marked with “S”) which permit maintenance:

 

 

 

After removing the two previously mentioned screws, we were able to remove the bottom area of the enclosure; Shuttle was nice and populated the unit with a 2x4GB DDR3L 1600MHz kit, along with a Transcend 128GB M.2 SSD, but we will talk about these later:

 

 

 

The internal PCB is held to the rest of the chassis with three additional small black screws:

 

 

 

We will begin the system disassembly by first removing the supplied RAM kit:

 

 

 

The barebone by default does also ship with a Realtek RTL8188EE 1T1R 802.11n card, which is linked to an internal wireless antenna; we can, of course exchange it with a more powerful M.2-2230 Wi-Fi card and install external antennas:

 

 

 

There is no need actually to remove the whole motherboard from the enclosure in order to access the secondary RAM and M.2 slot; we do only have to lift up the top cover and all will become accessible! This is something we could not say on the previous gen:

 

 

 

For cleaning purposes or other types of maintenance, we can surely remove the motherboard completely from the chassis:

 

 

 

Besides the secondary RAM module, we have found the pre-installed M.2 SSD which does not ship with the barebone when bought from retail; we are talking about a Transcend TS128GMTS400 model:

 

 

 

If you remember well from the previous NC01U review, the secondary memory slot was accessible only if we did remove the daughter-board which was present in the upper layer; with the new model, both memory slots are much more accessible to the user, in order to ease the installation process:

 

 

 

Between the M.2 slot, the COM port and the memory slot, we have found the CMOS battery, which is held secure with an adhesive tape:

 

 

 

Near the SoC heatsink, we will be able to spot the Intel WGI211AT component, which is a Gigabit Ethernet controller:

 

 

 

The ASMedia ASM1442K IC placed nearby is a high speed TMDS level shift ICs for High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) and Digital Video Interface (DVI) video application, supporting the feature of Deep Color and 3D video format and high video 4K resolution:

 

 

 

Near the memory slot, we are instructed with bold fonts that we should only use DDR3L memory with this system:

 

 

 

The Super I/O chip on this board is an ITE IT8772E:

 

 

 

Near the SD Card reader, we do also have the populated PWM fan connector:

 

 

 

Near the CMOS battery connector, we do have an additional header available, named DBG1:

 

 

 

The CMOS chip is very close to the COM port:

 

 

 

The supplied cooling system for the SoC does sport a similar design to the one which can be found in low-powered laptops:

 

 

 

Besides the M.2 and the secondary memory slot, we can spot on the other side of the PCB a SATA Data/Power interface for connecting a 2.5’’ HDD/SSD:

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of the SATA interface, we also went ahead and installed a SSD with the supplied bundle; first we have to pick up the aluminum drive tray and install the product onto it by using the supplied screws:

 

 

 

 

 

The drive gets installed right on the bottom cover of the NC02U, with four additional screws:

 

 

 

Then, we only have to plug the interface onto the drive and close the unit up; it is a really simple process if we do follow the written instructions!

 

 

 

 

The NC02U does sport three mounting possibilities: horizontally if we do use the supplied rubber feet, vertically if we do use the aluminum mounts but also in the back of the monitor/TV with the supplied VESA mount. Installing the black aluminum feet is also a simple process:

 

 

 

 

It is also needed to mention that when using this type of mount, the COM port will basically become inaccessible, but the product will take up very little space on the desktop:

 

 

 

 

The NC02U XPC Nano comes with a plain-looking Aptio Setup Utility as the previous version; in the Main menu we are able to check out the current BIOS revision and build date, installed processor and its currently operating speed, installed memory but we can also adjust the current date/time:

 

 

The Advanced area comes with multiple sub-sections:

 

-TPM Configuration

-CPU Configuration

-SATA Configuration

-USB Configuration

-Onboard Device Configuration

-Power Management Configuration

-Hardware Health Configuration

 

 

The support for security devices can be enabled or disabled:

 

 

CPU Configuration menu is giving us more details regarding the SoC, which features it supports and so on; in the same menu, we are able to select how many CPU cores should be available, enable/disable Intel VT, EIST or turn off C State Support:

 

 

 

SATA Configuration menu does only show the connected storage drives:

 

 

 

Same goes for the USB Configuration menu, where we are shown the connected devices on this bus:

 

 

 

The Onboard Device Configuration menu does allow the user to turn off different interfaces when not needed like the onboard audio, LAN, configure the M.2 port function, adjust the integrated graphics reserved memory and so on:

 

 

 

The serial port can be also configured from the same menu:

 

 

 

Power Management Configuration area allows us to enable the Wake Up by USB function or enable/disable EuP:

 

 

 

Hardware Health Configuration allows the user to select a fan profile, but also display the live system temperatures, CPU fan speed and voltages:

 

 

 

The Security menu allows us to define passwords for increased security, but also enable Flash Write Protection:

 

 

 

The Boot area allows us to boot from different interfaces, but also select the boot mode and device priority:

 

 

 

Finally, we do have the Exit menu which permits the user to save settings, discard or load factory defaults:

 

 

 

First hardware monitoring program we have fired up is CPU-Z, with its multiple information tabs:

 

CPU

 

 

Caches

 

 

Mainboard

 

 

Memory

 

 

SPD

 

 

GPU-Z will give us a summary on the integrated GPU:

 

 

We have also fired up the latest AIDA64 for finding out more details regarding the internal components:

 

CPU

 

 

 

Motherboard

 

 

 

CPU IMC

 

 

 

PCH

 

 

Integrated Graphics

 

 

 

 

We have also tested the performance of the supplied Transcend SSD (thanks to Shuttle):

 

In the first testing stage of the XPC Nano NC02U Barebone from Shuttle, we equipped it with one Samsung 4GB DDR3 1333MHz 1.35V SODIMM memory module, but also a Hitachi Travelstar 5K250 250GB HDD in order to have a fair comparison with the previously tested systems.

 

In the second testing stage, we have replaced the 4GB RAM with the 8GB dual-channel Samsung DDR3L 1600MHz SODIMM kit and also switched the Hitachi Travelstar 5K250 250GB HDD for a TS128GMTS400 Transcend M.2 SSD as a boot drive, both supplied thanks to Shuttle.

 

3DMark 2001

 

3DMark 2003

 

3DMark 2005

 

3DMark 2006

 

PCMark 2005

 

PCMark 7

 

CrystalMark

 

SuperPI 1.5 XS 1M

 

CineBench R10

 

CineBench R11.5

 

x264 Encoding

 

CounterStrike Source

 

 

While the chassis design of the XPC Nano NC02U is taller versus the NC01U, we have found during testing that it is easier to work with in order to perform maintenance and for accessing the secondary memory slot, the M.2-2280 slot or for clearing up the fan, thanks to the removable top cover. Shuttle has also revised the top cover material in order to make it more durable than before, while the cooling system did remain very silent even at higher loads.

 

The new series does feature the next Intel generation of CPUs and while we do see bumps in speed, the power consumption has remained the same, thanks to the updated architecture. The 9th generation of Intel iGP is now DirectX 12 compatible, supports Dual Display and seems to respond very well when we do have a dual-channel memory setup installed in our NC02U. 4K 60Hz output is supported via the DisplayPort 1.2 interface, while the HDMI 1.4b can only output 4K at 30Hz.

 

Storage-wise we do also have improvements versus the previous model, meaning that the new placement of the 2.5’’ drive allows 15mm SATA models to be installed (NC01U was limited to a height of 7mm). We can also opt-in to install a secondary storage device thanks to the supplied M.2-2280 slot, which will increase the total storage space on this small device considerably.

 

The NC02U Barebone is supplied with a Realtek RTL8188EE 1T1R 802.11n wireless card, which is connected to an internal antenna. We can also opt-in for a replacement when needed, and Shuttle was thoughtful to include pre-drilled holes inside the chassis for external, more powerful wireless antennas.

 

Since this product can be used for multiple applications like Digital Signage, POS, control, office and multimedia, the manufacturer did include a RS232 COM port, an Always-on-Jumper, but also no less than three mounting modes: horizontally thanks to the supplied rubber feet, vertically via the aluminum stand (with screws) but also in the back of the monitor/TV thanks to the VESA mount (also supplied and not optional).

 

If the storage we have installed into the unit is not enough we can always make use of the two USB 2.0 ports in the back, or the two USB 3.0 in the front (one of them sporting the Type C design).

 

In order to check out the maximum temperatures of the system, we have used the AIDA64 Stress Test utility, while monitoring the output values via HWiNFO64; the system has reported a maximum of 56 degrees Celsius on the CPU cores, which is ideal in our book, considering the low noise levels of the cooling system. During testing, the ambient temperature was fixed at 21.3 degrees Celsius.

 

 

 

Regarding the power consumption, you can surely “set it and forget about it” since this mini-PC does draw about 16.32W in IDLE, while at maximum stress we have recorded a total of 35.89W.

 

The NC02U Barebone featuring the Celeron 3855U processor has a MSRP of 136 Euros (not including components like the M.2 SSD or RAM). We would like to remind again that the retail products are offered in matte black, while the early models as the sample we have taken a look at did feature a gunmetal grey finish.

 

Shuttle XPC Nano NC02U Barebone is Recommended for:

 

 

 

We would like to thank again to Shuttle Europe for making this review possible!