Shuttle AB60/RS (865PE) Motherboard

Company: Shuttle
Product: AB60/RS
Street Price: Unknown
Date Reviewed: June 30, 2003
Reviewed By: Joey Chao

Board Layout:

Overall, the board layout of the AB60/RS is good but there are a few issues that we would like to point out. We are very pleased to see the 20-pin ATX connector at the upper right edge of the motherboard. This keeps the power cable from crossing over the heatsink which could lead to a potential problems with mounting or getting proper contact with the CPU. Another thing that we are glad to see is that the IDE connectors are on the right edge of the motherboard below the ATX connector. This is high enough to where all cables will be able to reach them. Depending on how much room you like to have spaced between the IDE connectors might be an issue. They are almost touching, which somewhat makes inserting cables a problem. We see the same issue with the spacing between the ATX connector and the floppy connector. They are also right next to each other with the ATX connector being on the outside.

There are only three 3-pin fan headers on the motherboard. This may not be quite enough for users who use lots of case fans. Most people use air-cooling on their CPU so this automatically leaves only two fan headers left for case fans. Also, one of the fan headers is placed in a very awkward position in-between the AGP slot and the PCI slot directly below it. If you use an aftermarket cooling solution on your video card, it might be a little difficult reaching that power connector.

A passive cooling solution is used to cool the 865PE chipset. Since this is not exactly an enthusiast board, we like the passive cooler. It will help to keep the Northbridge cool but not add any excessive noise that is not needed. The chipset does get hot but the cooler should be good enough to even allow for some overclocking. Sometimes it is nice to have the active cooling like we see on the ABIT IS7 but it is not a necessity.

The AGP slot is just low enough in respect to the DIMM slots to be able to remove memory without having to pull out the video card. It is a tight squeeze but it can be done. We usually see the common mistake of the AGP slot being too high with respect to the DIMMs, forcing the end-users to have to pull out the video card to be able to remove or insert memory. Depending on how often you are inside your case, this may not be a big issue.

Our favorite features we see with the layout are the addition of onboard power on and reset switches. These switches allow users to be able to reset and/or power on the system just by pressing the corresponding button on the motherboard. For people who do a lot of testing and like to be able to not have to rig up a switch or use something else to short the pins, it is a really nice feature. The button marked JP11 is the power on and the JP12 is the reset. During the course of this review, these buttons were used and it made things much easier and we find them really nifty.

It pleases us to see that Shuttle has clearly marked the pins for the connection of the buttons, LEDs, and speaker. Not only have they labeled them but they have marked the positive and negative pins for much easier connection of the front panel buttons and lights. It is a nice feature to have because it does get annoying having to refer back to the manual every time you are plugging in those connectors. The only other thing that Shuttle could have done to make the connectors better is to color code them like Gigabyte and MSI have done.