raspberry pi 4 is even cheaper, smaller, and around as fast as an atom; around half as fast as this, and it uses *much* less power (7.6W under load!) . It's a considerable step up from from the pi 3; and it comes with usb3, so it's quite decent for a NAS too, and even for reasonable webbrowsing and 4k 60Hz video decoding. Frankly, it's I'm not sure why you've ever bother with an atom or something like this given the price and power difference if you're looking for a media center or NAS. And the whole thing is just 35$! And another advantage is the community; since there's relatively little pi hardware variation in the core bits, you can be sure your linux distro is being used by lots and lots of hardware nerds and likely very well supported for a long, long time. Seriously, it's just no competition.
However, if you want to run any x86 games or legacy office apps rather than say, google docs, then the atom or this thing makes more sense. But as a tiny home server / media center? The Pi is better in almost all ways: much cheaper, much less power hungry, much more likely to be long-term better supported, and almost as fast.
A Pi is far more limiting on I/O throughput even with USB3.
Don't get me wrong, a Pi4 is great for HTPC use, or other embedded computing, but it just doesn't have what I'd want for storage options for a NAS or microserver.
I'd be much more likely to look at something like this:
I had the Braswell one for a bit; while I'm not normally an Asrock fan, the product was quite reasonable, or would have been if Intel hadn't gimped the video a bit and not publicly disclosed it (fixed in Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake CPUs).
I don't have a PI4. Had use PI2 before I moved to a Zyxel NAS (with Arch Linux). I'm looking for replacing the Zyxel with probably my current PC (Core i5 4460).
Anyway, during my PI2 day, I found it has some stability issue (it crashes every now and then) and the transfer rate is not that impressed (single digit on SMB if I'm not mistaken).
I looked on newegg, none of the <$100 atom boards appeared to have support for an m.2 ssd. I did see one with the obsolescent mSATA standard that would let you either avoid spinning rust entirely or build a baby nas without putting the OS on a data drive. OTOH I did at least see a model with 4 sata ports instead of only 2.
Atom does not support this. However, mSATA is good enough for boot; you don't need massive I/O throughput, just a 128GB to boot the OS, and then use the SATA ports all for drives.
I'm not sure this will really play that well against Ice-lake ? We need to see the 3200ge/3400ge and then the next gen APU with Zen3/Navi Small on board, about 2020 q1. THAT should be something to write home about. i7 perf with 1060 gfx in a single sock. Interesting to see stuff from the lower end tho.
Most modern Atoms do have AES-NI. All current Gemini Lake Atoms support it, and all previous Apollo Lake and Braswell Atoms did as well. Intel is no longer segmenting that out, as it's highly useful for embedded scenarios like NAS and appliance processors
Probably use an LSI whitebox controller in the PCIe x16 slot for storage, or even a caching RAID controller. That said, I've seen far better Atom alternatives, including ones with dual-NICs that make them a better proposition in the ITX market.
Remember, with built in onboard video, that PCI-E slot could easily hold a RAID or SATAx4 connector for more drives for a NAS build.... At that point 4x 6TB drives would be good for almost a 20TB server using ZFS RAIDZ1
Independent computer stores that want to offer builds that can compete or even undercut the cheapest Office offerings from Dell and HP? Dell cheapest Inspiron is €379 with a Pentium G5400, 7200 rpm 1 TB HDD and 4 GB RAM.
Can't even use it as a good HTPC---unless i'm mistaken the Radeon 7 doesn't do hardware 4k hevc full decode. And the 8800P would choke on most intense HEVC 4k vids.
I *guess* you could add a cheapo 1030 or something to solve that problem, but why not start with a setup with integrated graphics from this century?
I would have loved to have such a board on the market four years ago when the CPU was released. This would have IMHO been a much nicer alternative to a Jaguar based APU for a SFF system.
But now for years later ? While not that terrible, it seems like this was released a few years too late.
Now it may be useful for Kiosk type applications and such but for home use ? Not sure about this.
I used this in a build for a friend’s kid they didn’t have much money but kid needed a PC for school work. This run Open Office and education software just fine.
Cheap kids gaming computer with something like a Radeon HD 7950, 7970, R9 280(x), 380(x), RX 550, 560, GTX 770, 960, 1050(ti). Cheap NAS, HTPC, media display computer, senior computer, etc. Granted you could also use older sandy bridge, ivy bridge, or FX builds for the same thing and have them be far more capable, but this gets you new components with somewhat of a warranty. Also, you could move the ram, gpu, ssd, etc to a new build if you ever decide it needs an upgrade.
Plays World of Tanks just fine, and I assume that will hold true for about 90% of all games currently played, just not the AAA titles with the latest engines. Probably runs Minecraft and Rocket League etc. just fine as well. The definition of a gaming PC has hugely widened over the last 10 years.
page 4: "Comparing $88 vs $112 is an important point here - if you are tied for cash, you might go with the $88 option. But what performance uplift do you get from an additional $14?" That's $24 not 414.
And it continues through the next page. It means you're looking at 27% more price, and that's roughly fair given the performance differences seen. Both could be good buys depending on where you want to spend your cash on the build. (I kind of love planning REALLY cheap builds since the low budget makes you really work at trade offs - the $24 difference is a 120GB SSD or 4GB stick of RAM, for example. It's like a haiku, where you really need to strip things down to what matters.)
I think it would make for a good little multi media pc, its itx with an m.2 slot. can have a good little media player for under $200. the 200GE is with a micro atx board and is quite a bit bigger. when ever Newegg gets around to selling it, I will definitely buy one for the size its great I think
Fair, but there's always marginal cases where you just want something under a certain price. Say you're outfitting a community center or something with computers, the $24 you save might be significant when you look at the # of units you need. There's always ways to spend more money for better performance, but for a lot of applications, the speed difference might not be noticeable.
Plus, within any budget, there's smart and dumb ways to spend your money - the price difference between these is basically enough to get you a 120GB SSD at today's prices, for example, or go from 1 4GB stick of RAM to 2.
You can be tied for cash within a budget. If you have a budget for a computer, you almost certainly have budgets for food, utilities, transport, etc. So by not buying a cheap computer, you end up with possibly a few nicer meals but no computer.
Do a search in article for (insert model here) for the Audio Driver. Also listing the HDMI version would be critical to those looking to use this as a Media Server. One would hope it's HDMI 2.0 at least.
I'm wondering if no more were available. This is a mobile chip, and while I can't find IO specs, 4 each USB2 and USB3 (the other 4 USB are in a pair of headers) along with 2 SATA is about right for a laptop. 4 external 3.0 ports, 2x 2.0 ports for keyboard and touchpad, and 2 more for optional misc internal device connections.
There are, AMD had TONS of stock left over from carrizo and Llano, to the point where you can still find a lot new old stock Llano chips. We will be seeing these carrizo and honestly even Bristol Ridge parts for years.
Sure, for a handful of homebodies surfing the net, gaming etc. If you have a business environment, with layer 7 filtering, a mail server, multiple routed IPSEC VPN nodes, and come under moderate bot attacks (cuz server, road warrior access, etc) Pi's and other ARMs bog down. I've had one come under an attack on a Monday morning when everyone was logging in and checking email, and that morning VPN tunnel traffic burst, over heated and shut down. Until the attack stopped, I couldn't get it to stay up. 90 minutes of unhappy clients isn't worth the delta on sunk costs. Athlon GE setup with dual port intel giga nic are rock solid. Under similar circumstances it barely breaks a sweat, It also sustains bandwidth through the tunnels when the traffic is hundreds of smaller transactions from many users throughout the day(10-15%-basically full line speed), and had some 5-7% lower latency. Point is it depends. For ~$175-200 you've got a 5-8 year lifespan machine that's virtually trouble free. That's $22 to $40 a year, for a very flexible, highly configuarable router/firewall/dns/dhcp/proxy-server/layer7/VPN/Roadwarrior VPN/VLAN device (also compatible with IPSEC VLANs from Cisco, Juniper, Barracuda, Linksys, Netgear, Sonicwall etc/DynDNS compatability, BGP, even email gateway type filtering)
It seems like the obvious thing to do here would be A) put a bunch of SATA on it, or B) put multiple NICs on it. A nice home nas / router / microserver. But as it is, it doesn't quite fit either niche.
I bought the A68N-5600 instead. It has an A10-4655M 'Trinity' (4C/6CUs) but also has 4x Sata ports instead of the M.2 slot. Seems to recognise and use DDR3-1600 without a problem. Makes for a very nice mini-PC that costs next to nothing. TBH I'm quite surprised how snappy it is in Windows 10 with a $20 64GB SSD boot drive. I had a dual core Atom mini-ITX before, and this is waaay faster. Like night and day.
Looking at the photo, with the CPU in the center under a small ribbed heatsink with a fan on the top; except for the fact that the fan is rotated by 45 degrees, took me back to the days of my 486 builds, when CPUs were cooled that way, instead of by the elaborate coolers required for most of today's desktop processors.
486s didn't have coolers - they just had bare ceramic packaging. The more elaborate AMD and Cyrix 486-compatible processors usually had passive heatsinks, but Pentiums were the first to be actively cooled.
I was able to run 16 GB of dual rank DDR3 2133 at 9-11-10 CR1 with an overclocked FX 8 core with full stability on a cheap motherboard. It seems truly unfortunate to witness a newer-generation memory have far worse performance on the roughly the same CPU architecture.
Yeah, but you can't put that in a 1.5L mini-itx box with a pico-PSU and make a tiny little PC can you ? It's the low watts and low cooler height that make these type of boards so attractive.
I bought one of these a little while ago as it seemed to fit with a bunch of leftover parts collected over the years and wanted to play with it for comparison as a living room PC. It seems okay, but perhaps not the best value. The biggest flaw I had at least with the personal unit I had was it would regularly thermal throttle (95C) even with the fan profile on aggressive or manual full. Sitting at the BIOS alone for an hour seemed to be too much for it. I tried different thermal paste, new springs/pins, screws etc for mounting and eventually tried different heatsinks. It seems in general this one is relatively poor. I ended up taking an drill and angle grinder to an old stock Socket AM2/AM3 heatsink to make clearances and went with that. I used nail polish on the surface mount components around the die, then covered it in thermal paste as well as the die then epoxied the heatsink down (as my drill/tapping skills weren't up to the task). It seems to peak at 49C now and maintain full clocks.
What I want know, how is anyone else's thermals with these boards? I would personally go with the 320GE if I had a do-over purely because of the annoyances of cooling.
I want to know why the author used the word two and not the number 2 in the chart for the quantity of SATA ports on the board? It is just really inconsistent and frankly annoying. If the reason is that is how the manufacture did it and they just cut and pasted it, shame on you.
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krumme - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Wsa vs wsaFight!
Smell This - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Wafer Supply Agreements ?I'm thinking AT missed the boat on this one. Show us a 'head-to-head' with the 'old' AMD Carrizo against the Gemini/Apollo 'Mistakes by The' Lakes ...
cen - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Not sure who this is for?DanNeely - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Entry level DIY NAS would be one possibility; 4x sata would be much better fit for the use case though.My current NAS is build around a 2015 equivalent of this board 4 sata ports (3 used, 2 for storage one for the OS).
cen - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
CPU is fine for a NAS, everything else is not really suitable. I guess it's cheap tho.MDD1963 - Friday, August 30, 2019 - link
Yes, who needs more than 2 SATA ports anyway! :)Flunk - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Atom-based alternatives are cheaper and pull less power.emn13 - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
raspberry pi 4 is even cheaper, smaller, and around as fast as an atom; around half as fast as this, and it uses *much* less power (7.6W under load!) . It's a considerable step up from from the pi 3; and it comes with usb3, so it's quite decent for a NAS too, and even for reasonable webbrowsing and 4k 60Hz video decoding. Frankly, it's I'm not sure why you've ever bother with an atom or something like this given the price and power difference if you're looking for a media center or NAS. And the whole thing is just 35$! And another advantage is the community; since there's relatively little pi hardware variation in the core bits, you can be sure your linux distro is being used by lots and lots of hardware nerds and likely very well supported for a long, long time. Seriously, it's just no competition.However, if you want to run any x86 games or legacy office apps rather than say, google docs, then the atom or this thing makes more sense. But as a tiny home server / media center? The Pi is better in almost all ways: much cheaper, much less power hungry, much more likely to be long-term better supported, and almost as fast.
LoneWolf15 - Monday, August 26, 2019 - link
A Pi is far more limiting on I/O throughput even with USB3.Don't get me wrong, a Pi4 is great for HTPC use, or other embedded computing, but it just doesn't have what I'd want for storage options for a NAS or microserver.
I'd be much more likely to look at something like this:
https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J5005-ITX/index.as...
I had the Braswell one for a bit; while I'm not normally an Asrock fan, the product was quite reasonable, or would have been if Intel hadn't gimped the video a bit and not publicly disclosed it (fixed in Apollo Lake and Gemini Lake CPUs).
mr_tawan - Thursday, September 12, 2019 - link
I don't have a PI4. Had use PI2 before I moved to a Zyxel NAS (with Arch Linux). I'm looking for replacing the Zyxel with probably my current PC (Core i5 4460).Anyway, during my PI2 day, I found it has some stability issue (it crashes every now and then) and the transfer rate is not that impressed (single digit on SMB if I'm not mistaken).
So how does the PI4 performs in those area then?
DanNeely - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
I looked on newegg, none of the <$100 atom boards appeared to have support for an m.2 ssd. I did see one with the obsolescent mSATA standard that would let you either avoid spinning rust entirely or build a baby nas without putting the OS on a data drive. OTOH I did at least see a model with 4 sata ports instead of only 2.LoneWolf15 - Monday, August 26, 2019 - link
Atom does not support this. However, mSATA is good enough for boot; you don't need massive I/O throughput, just a 128GB to boot the OS, and then use the SATA ports all for drives.bananaforscale - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
Not all Atoms have AES-NI tho. Excavator does.MASSAMKULABOX - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link
I'm not sure this will really play that well against Ice-lake ? We need to see the 3200ge/3400ge and then the next gen APU with Zen3/Navi Small on board, about 2020 q1. THAT should be something to write home about. i7 perf with 1060 gfx in a single sock. Interesting to see stuff from the lower end tho.LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, August 27, 2019 - link
Most modern Atoms do have AES-NI. All current Gemini Lake Atoms support it, and all previous Apollo Lake and Braswell Atoms did as well. Intel is no longer segmenting that out, as it's highly useful for embedded scenarios like NAS and appliance processorsLoneWolf15 - Monday, August 26, 2019 - link
Probably use an LSI whitebox controller in the PCIe x16 slot for storage, or even a caching RAID controller.That said, I've seen far better Atom alternatives, including ones with dual-NICs that make them a better proposition in the ITX market.
bill.rookard - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
Remember, with built in onboard video, that PCI-E slot could easily hold a RAID or SATAx4 connector for more drives for a NAS build.... At that point 4x 6TB drives would be good for almost a 20TB server using ZFS RAIDZ1Martijn ter Haar - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Independent computer stores that want to offer builds that can compete or even undercut the cheapest Office offerings from Dell and HP? Dell cheapest Inspiron is €379 with a Pentium G5400, 7200 rpm 1 TB HDD and 4 GB RAM.blppt - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Can't even use it as a good HTPC---unless i'm mistaken the Radeon 7 doesn't do hardware 4k hevc full decode. And the 8800P would choke on most intense HEVC 4k vids.I *guess* you could add a cheapo 1030 or something to solve that problem, but why not start with a setup with integrated graphics from this century?
emn13 - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/06/26/raspberry-...Like the max 7-8W much, much cheaper raspberry pi 4?
emn13 - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
Actually, the name AMD uses for their HW video decoder is UVD, and carrizo is @ v6, and that supports 4k hevc.Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decode...
blppt - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
Did not know that. But, it is worth noting that there is no 10 bit nor HDR support in hardware.Better than I thought it was, but still short of what you would want for an HTPC setup.
John_M - Friday, September 13, 2019 - link
According to the article, "the FX-8800P represents a more modest option and has built-in hardware HEVC and H.265 decoding abilities".Irata - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
I would have loved to have such a board on the market four years ago when the CPU was released. This would have IMHO been a much nicer alternative to a Jaguar based APU for a SFF system.But now for years later ? While not that terrible, it seems like this was released a few years too late.
Now it may be useful for Kiosk type applications and such but for home use ? Not sure about this.
AlyxSharkBite - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
I used this in a build for a friend’s kid they didn’t have much money but kid needed a PC for school work. This run Open Office and education software just fine.artk2219 - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
Cheap kids gaming computer with something like a Radeon HD 7950, 7970, R9 280(x), 380(x), RX 550, 560, GTX 770, 960, 1050(ti). Cheap NAS, HTPC, media display computer, senior computer, etc. Granted you could also use older sandy bridge, ivy bridge, or FX builds for the same thing and have them be far more capable, but this gets you new components with somewhat of a warranty. Also, you could move the ram, gpu, ssd, etc to a new build if you ever decide it needs an upgrade.mckirkus - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
This is for emulator/retro gaming builds most likely.ShieTar - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Plays World of Tanks just fine, and I assume that will hold true for about 90% of all games currently played, just not the AAA titles with the latest engines. Probably runs Minecraft and Rocket League etc. just fine as well. The definition of a gaming PC has hugely widened over the last 10 years.equalunique - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
I have a ThinkPad sporting one of these APUs. It'll run Half Life 2 & TES Oblivion/Morrowind just fine.yankeeDDL - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Well ... I have a laptop with the FX-8800P and I am pretty much convinced to move to a 3750H... Thanks.DanNeely - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
page 4: "Comparing $88 vs $112 is an important point here - if you are tied for cash, you might go with the $88 option. But what performance uplift do you get from an additional $14?" That's $24 not 414.sing_electric - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
And it continues through the next page. It means you're looking at 27% more price, and that's roughly fair given the performance differences seen. Both could be good buys depending on where you want to spend your cash on the build. (I kind of love planning REALLY cheap builds since the low budget makes you really work at trade offs - the $24 difference is a 120GB SSD or 4GB stick of RAM, for example. It's like a haiku, where you really need to strip things down to what matters.)The_Assimilator - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
"...Biostar believes there is a new market out there for mobile-class gaming machines"There is, but not for gaming machines that suck.
JWade - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
I think it would make for a good little multi media pc, its itx with an m.2 slot. can have a good little media player for under $200. the 200GE is with a micro atx board and is quite a bit bigger. when ever Newegg gets around to selling it, I will definitely buy one for the size its great I thinkDug - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
"if you are tied for cash, you might go with the $88 option"If you are that tied for cash you might consider buying food instead of buying new computer parts.
sing_electric - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Fair, but there's always marginal cases where you just want something under a certain price. Say you're outfitting a community center or something with computers, the $24 you save might be significant when you look at the # of units you need. There's always ways to spend more money for better performance, but for a lot of applications, the speed difference might not be noticeable.Plus, within any budget, there's smart and dumb ways to spend your money - the price difference between these is basically enough to get you a 120GB SSD at today's prices, for example, or go from 1 4GB stick of RAM to 2.
Tams80 - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
You can be tied for cash within a budget. If you have a budget for a computer, you almost certainly have budgets for food, utilities, transport, etc. So by not buying a cheap computer, you end up with possibly a few nicer meals but no computer.digitalgriffin - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Do a search in article for (insert model here) for the Audio Driver.Also listing the HDMI version would be critical to those looking to use this as a Media Server. One would hope it's HDMI 2.0 at least.
sandtitz - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
As stated in the article:Realtek ALC887
HDMI 1.4
Flunk - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Carrizo doesn't support HDMI 2, you need to go newer.YukaKun - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
I'm still using my A8-3850 as my HTPC, so... :shrug:Cheers!
Ro_Ja - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
They could've at least added more USB ports.DanNeely - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
I'm wondering if no more were available. This is a mobile chip, and while I can't find IO specs, 4 each USB2 and USB3 (the other 4 USB are in a pair of headers) along with 2 SATA is about right for a laptop. 4 external 3.0 ports, 2x 2.0 ports for keyboard and touchpad, and 2 more for optional misc internal device connections.eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Wow, there must be a lot of unsold and unused Carrizos in somebody's warehouse!artk2219 - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
There are, AMD had TONS of stock left over from carrizo and Llano, to the point where you can still find a lot new old stock Llano chips. We will be seeing these carrizo and honestly even Bristol Ridge parts for years.jamesb2147 - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Use case: Open source hardware router (with PCIe network card, natch).Fight me.
evernessince - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Consumes too much power for that. The ARM chips inside many modern routers are far more efficient.RMSZaphod - Friday, September 27, 2019 - link
Sure, for a handful of homebodies surfing the net, gaming etc. If you have a business environment, with layer 7 filtering, a mail server, multiple routed IPSEC VPN nodes, and come under moderate bot attacks (cuz server, road warrior access, etc) Pi's and other ARMs bog down. I've had one come under an attack on a Monday morning when everyone was logging in and checking email, and that morning VPN tunnel traffic burst, over heated and shut down. Until the attack stopped, I couldn't get it to stay up. 90 minutes of unhappy clients isn't worth the delta on sunk costs. Athlon GE setup with dual port intel giga nic are rock solid. Under similar circumstances it barely breaks a sweat, It also sustains bandwidth through the tunnels when the traffic is hundreds of smaller transactions from many users throughout the day(10-15%-basically full line speed), and had some 5-7% lower latency.Point is it depends. For ~$175-200 you've got a 5-8 year lifespan machine that's virtually trouble free. That's $22 to $40 a year, for a very flexible, highly configuarable router/firewall/dns/dhcp/proxy-server/layer7/VPN/Roadwarrior VPN/VLAN device (also compatible with IPSEC VLANs from Cisco, Juniper, Barracuda, Linksys, Netgear, Sonicwall etc/DynDNS compatability, BGP, even email gateway type filtering)
kadoo - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
yes, it's windows 7 time!obama gaming - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Is the M.2 NVMe or SATA?_Rain - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
BothArbie - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Whatever this board *can* do, not being human it can't "opine". And even humans can't "opine to be".Rocket321 - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
It seems like the obvious thing to do here would be A) put a bunch of SATA on it, or B) put multiple NICs on it. A nice home nas / router / microserver. But as it is, it doesn't quite fit either niche.Haawser - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
I bought the A68N-5600 instead. It has an A10-4655M 'Trinity' (4C/6CUs) but also has 4x Sata ports instead of the M.2 slot. Seems to recognise and use DDR3-1600 without a problem. Makes for a very nice mini-PC that costs next to nothing. TBH I'm quite surprised how snappy it is in Windows 10 with a $20 64GB SSD boot drive. I had a dual core Atom mini-ITX before, and this is waaay faster. Like night and day.quadibloc - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
Looking at the photo, with the CPU in the center under a small ribbed heatsink with a fan on the top; except for the fact that the fan is rotated by 45 degrees, took me back to the days of my 486 builds, when CPUs were cooled that way, instead of by the elaborate coolers required for most of today's desktop processors.John_M - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
486s didn't have coolers - they just had bare ceramic packaging. The more elaborate AMD and Cyrix 486-compatible processors usually had passive heatsinks, but Pentiums were the first to be actively cooled.Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
For the price, Biostar should have included a better fan to support a BIOS switch to go between 35W and 15W.Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
Also, the latency settings are terrible for the RAM. Is there no way to tighten the timings via the BIOS?Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
I was able to run 16 GB of dual rank DDR3 2133 at 9-11-10 CR1 with an overclocked FX 8 core with full stability on a cheap motherboard. It seems truly unfortunate to witness a newer-generation memory have far worse performance on the roughly the same CPU architecture.vowif - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
nicehojnikb - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
I bet there must be a ton of leftover chips, that amd is selling for peanuts.DominionSeraph - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link
Now compare it to an i5 2400 system you can get off ebay for $90.Haawser - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Yeah, but you can't put that in a 1.5L mini-itx box with a pico-PSU and make a tiny little PC can you ? It's the low watts and low cooler height that make these type of boards so attractive.John_M - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
It's also available new, unlike the i5 2400 from ebay.skomo - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link
I love this kind of "things".Will this "combo" ideal to run various emulators? Psx, ps2, Dolphin (NGC/WII)?
I'd love one under my TV.
versesuvius - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link
They probably made this motherboard 3 years ago but forgot to sell it.RuthLMartinez - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
hypraeses - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
I bought one of these a little while ago as it seemed to fit with a bunch of leftover parts collected over the years and wanted to play with it for comparison as a living room PC. It seems okay, but perhaps not the best value. The biggest flaw I had at least with the personal unit I had was it would regularly thermal throttle (95C) even with the fan profile on aggressive or manual full. Sitting at the BIOS alone for an hour seemed to be too much for it. I tried different thermal paste, new springs/pins, screws etc for mounting and eventually tried different heatsinks. It seems in general this one is relatively poor. I ended up taking an drill and angle grinder to an old stock Socket AM2/AM3 heatsink to make clearances and went with that. I used nail polish on the surface mount components around the die, then covered it in thermal paste as well as the die then epoxied the heatsink down (as my drill/tapping skills weren't up to the task). It seems to peak at 49C now and maintain full clocks.What I want know, how is anyone else's thermals with these boards? I would personally go with the 320GE if I had a do-over purely because of the annoyances of cooling.
pc start - Friday, August 23, 2019 - link
eu particularmente não gosto de cpu integrada.lwatcdr - Saturday, August 31, 2019 - link
I want to know why the author used the word two and not the number 2 in the chart for the quantity of SATA ports on the board? It is just really inconsistent and frankly annoying. If the reason is that is how the manufacture did it and they just cut and pasted it, shame on you.John_M - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
"powered by a Realtek (insert model) audio codec"Apparently it's an ALC887. Isn't Google amazing?
John_M - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
"AMD Athlon 200GE 35W2 Cores, 4 Threads, 2.1 GHz (3.4 GHz Turbo)"
The Athlon 200GE has a base clock of 3.2 GHz and no Precision Boost, which you seem to insist on calling "Turbo" for some reason.
John_M - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
"despite having half the number of cores as the AMD Athlon 200GE, the AMD FX-8800P is pipped out..."Half? Shouldn't that be "twice"?