AMD finally going the ITX way (2)

And a newcomer last week:

#3: J&W MiniX 890GX-USB3

They seem to be pushing hard for this segment, with official 95W TDP support:

With pretty much everything cleared up: no useless IDE or PS/2 connectors and, of course, some USB 3.0 love

AMD finally going the ITX way (1)

Long time, no see…

In my quest of splitting my main workstation into a Mini-ITX Home Server and an eATX Supermicro DP board, here’s how things are settling for 3Q:

#1: Gigabyte GA-2AIEV-RH (v1.0)

Gigabyte GA-2AIEV-RH

Pro: 6 SATA2 ports, also onboard RAID-5 – Home Server codename “Vail” would do nicely with that

bootable CF card – I’d go for a 32 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro here

industrial LVDS connector, nice to reuse an old laptop LCD panel, perhaps?

last but not least, PCI Express x16 operating @ x8 gen. 2.0 – your choice, video, RAID, or even OCZ Colossus

Con: 65W TDP CPU limitation. From the looks of the PCB and phases this won’t work with 95W CPUs.

Of course, availability

Wish: If only gigabyte R&D would redo this with SO-DIMM DDR-2 to save space for extra circuitry to support 95W power to CPU

#2: J&W MiniX 785G-SP128MB

Very nice industrial feel for this board:

MiniX 785G-SP128MB

Pro: best capacitors and MOSFETs on a AMD ITX board I’ve seen so far

onboard Radeon HD 4200 with sideport memory is a great choice

Realtek 7.1+2 audio (ALC885)

SO-DIMM DDR-2, very nice fit in ITX format

Unoficially works with 95W TDP CPUs. Phenom II X2 555 anyone?

Con: PCI Express x16 operating @ x4 gen. 2.0. Mainstream video cards shouldn’t have trouble though

Nowhere to be seen in Europe

Wish: How about replacing the useless IDE connector with 2 extra SATA ports?

Art of OEM

The Art of OEM has moved to sourceforge, at Art of OEM (rev. 2)

Enjoy!

Captain Pr0n’s Corner (#1)

Some Post-CES analysis to reflect upon:

For those of you who are not familiar with the captain, you can always find him here.

CES 2010 Ponderings (#3)

Here’s another tasty treat that leaked from CES and reached my eager ears, this time from SuperMicro:

SuperMicro X8SIL-F

I don’t know about you, but this looks like a great HTPC to me (or at least a NAS, like other rumours here)

This should work with both (up to) Core i5-670, unconfirmed yet, or something like Xeon L3426

Xeon L3426 for LGA1156

45W TDP and 3.2 Ghz Max Turbo looks very tempting…

And another tip for the day:

How to save space and add a SSD

If you have an unused 2,5″ backplate the holes are matching the length between two screws of a normal 3,5″ drive. I’ve done some space in my El Diablo case for adding UPS battery.

CES 2010 Ponderings (#2)

Latest refresh from Zotac (that I’ve been waiting for some time now)

Support for the latest generation of Intel® Core™ i3, Core™ i5 and Core™ i7 takes the ZOTAC H55-ITX WiFi to performance levels previously unattainable by the mini-ITX form factor. The ZOTAC H55-ITX WiFi supports Intel® QuickPath technology for lightning-fast communications to high-speed dual-channel DDR3 memory for superior bandwidth and quicker memory access that delivers the chart-topping performance enthusiasts and performance-hungry users desire.

General details

• New ZOTAC H55-ITX WiFi
• Intel H55 Express chipset
• Intel Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 compatible
• LGA1156 socket
• Intel QuickPath bus
• Intel Clear Video HD technology
• HDMI x.v.Color, xvYCC Color & Deep Color technologies
• Video de-interlacing, sharpness detail and noise reduction technologies
• Hardware MPEG2, VC-1 & H.264/AVC decode
• Dual-video decode for Blu-ray picture-in-picture
• High-quality 8×8 polyphase DVD upscaling
• PCI Express 2.0 x16 expansion
• Dual-link DVI output (up to 2560×1600)
• HDMI output
• HDCP compliant
• 6 SATA 3.0 Gb/s + 1 eSATA
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Onboard 802.11n (300Mb/s) WiFi
• Microsoft DirectX 10 with Shader Model 4.0 compatible
• OpenGL2.1 compatible
• Mini-ITX form factor

Best part? Six SATA ports and eSATA included.

Visual comparison of design, compared with previous model based on LGA775 and GeForce 9300

Visual Comparison - H55-ITX vs. GF9300-I-E

2 extra SATA ports added

WiFi card is now horizontal to save vertical space

Lower profile chipset heatsink

Extra antenna and connector moved at the other end of the board to prevent cable clugging

HDMI instead of VGA connector for the Intel 5-series video

Full HD audio back panel connectors, with optical included

CES 2010 Ponderings

There comes a time of year where the joy of new discoveries compels us to think of new upgrade paths.

This year, I have decided that my desktop is destined to become two desktops.

The plan:

DFI LANParty MI P55-36

Core i5-670 @ 3.46 Ghz

And a nice HTPC chassis:

Antec NSK2480

Side note:

Streaming/downloading from a 1000-watt system is not very friendly with the electric bill. I’ve managed to pull yet another terabyte of traffic in 3 and 1/2 days. My ISP is not very happy with me.

Network traffic

Going to 200 or 300 watts should keep the costs lower this year

Windows 7 Experience Index (#2)

This is the final score of my (finally balanced) desktop. Latest is a 40 GB Kingston SSDNow.

Windows Experience Index

Windows 7 Experience Index

Windows 7 Experience Index

I’ve been waiting for ages now for Microsoft to update their scores – here they are, finally!

Be aware that this is still work in progress, according to JCXP we still have gaming graphics and disk capped at 6.0. Feel free to post yours there.

Why not Quad-Disk?

Outside

Inside

From top

I was wondering last week, why not go for a quad RAID-0 solution too? So, here it is:

And this is what Sandra has to say about it:

Physical Storage

Filesystem

With all this being said, why pay more for Raptors?