The DL20N series from Shuttle is an impressive jump in performance versus the older DL10J, while the choice to have installed a Pentium N6005 4-core SKU while retaining the 10W TDP is great! The whole system is passively cooled, so it is virtually noiseless if we do install only SSDs as storage devices. We have found that using the chassis horizontally is not stellar for the nearby M.2 SSD, because it tends to share a bit of heat from the Intel SoC heatsink, but in vertical position the issue is fully solved so purchasing the vertical stand is a must in our book!

Plenty of RAM can be installed in single channel or dual channel; installing higher than 2400MHz frequency modules does seem to bring little benefit in terms of CPU horsepower, the most improvement we will get to see from the 3D aspect of the SoC.

However, during prolonged use the processor temperatures will rise, and the frequency will drop gradually, as seen from the AIDA64 stress test:

(click to enlarge)

Besides the mentioned vertical stand (code name PS02), we can purchase more bundle, useful in small-business and large corporation environments as well: the CXP01 cable for the external power button, the PRM01 2U rack-mount kit, the DIR01 DIN-Rail mounting kit, the WLN-M WLAN kit with external antennas but also the WWN03 LTE kit for the 2.5’’ drive bay.

The power consumption is very low for the rendered performance; we have recorded about 8.05W in IDLE and a total of 35.6W in Full Load.

While the DL20N6 can be successfully used in client/server setups for network-based applications, it can be successfully purchased for having a dedicated Plex server, as a media center connected to our TV or for working with office documents and browsing the web. Windows 11 compatibility is not an issue and the more RAM we install on it, the better.

The DL20N6 is priced fair at just about 340 Euros including taxes.

Shuttle XPC slim Barebone DL20N6 is Recommended for:

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