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  • Flunk - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    I'm confused as to why this needs an ATX 4-pin connector at all, they were introduced to provide more power to power-hungry CPUs. This doesn't need much power on the CPU socket so it seems unnecessary.

    It would also have been nice to see the gaming results with the IGP, most of these boards are going to be utilized with the IGP.

    Considering the price of this platform the performance seems really great, I think I would recommend something like this to people who just want a very basic desktop system.
  • TerdFerguson - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    This looks great, although I insist that the possibility of a $35 functional motherboard is far less astonishing than the possibility of a $200+ motherboard. Yet again, I challenge any honest, authoritative source to break down the build cost of a "high end" motherboard.
  • StrangerGuy - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Every industry tries to rip people off as much as they could get away with it...Why would mobos be any different? Most people don't need more than a $50 even for gaming purposes, let alone $100+.
  • Lonyo - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    The cost of a product is more than just the bill of materials.
  • kmmatney - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Maybe it cheaper to give the cpu it's own power, than routing it from the main connector? I'm sure every decision on this motherboard had cost in mind.
  • DanNeely - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Probably to feed the GPU slot if someone puts a card with a decent power draw. The 24pin connector dates back to when 3.3/5V were used to power most of the mobo and only has 2 12V wires.
  • MikeMurphy - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    Because when you plug in a 75w PCIe card you need all the power you can get.

    You make good points on the 770 but I think the point was to show which apps are CPU limited. The 5350 IGP is already well documented.
  • wrkingclass_hero - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    0.0 dat power supply...
  • Daniel Egger - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    The selection of comparison points is rather strange, why compare power consumption of completely different aimed Intel systems (Servers, Top End of Halswells and an Atom?) rather than a Haswell Celeron or low end i3 while the benchmarks have a completely different and partially also much larger set of systems.
  • ozzuneoj86 - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    It seems like this happens a lot, and there are usually reasons for it, such as a lack of hardware to test on or time constraints, but if the results don't really tell us anything in the end, it is a bit frustrating. I think I said this the last time we had a Kabini review. Basically, the results often only show us that the CPU is slower than far more expensive systems, and that the AM1 CPUs increase slightly in performance as the price goes up... exactly as you'd expect. We get very little in the way of comparison between competing products, or even between old and new products. I really hope Anandtech will start supplying the reviewers with some more low end platforms if we're going to keep getting reviews like this. I just feel kind of bad for the writers of these nice reviews when the readers walk away from a review in the end not really having any more information about how the product compares to similarly priced options, slightly more expensive options, or older options that they might be able to get cheaper. They can only run tests with hardware that is available to them... and clearly there's a lack of entry-level hardware available to the guys here. I'm sure someone would be willing to donate some stuff to make these reviews more helpful. We need some comparisons with ivy and sandy bridge celeron (847, 1037u), older APUs (E350, A4 3xxx), Haswell celeron (G1830), older Athlons (X2, II X2, X2 e low power chips), Core 2 (E4300, E8400) and 771 Xeons (like the L5240, L5420, since they can be had for cheap now and modded to 775). These are the options I think of when I think of systems like Kabini, and they are for the most part nowhere to be seen in these reviews.
  • fteoath64 - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    Yes and something different as well like the Asrock AM1 board that had a DC 19v input as well as 24pin psu connector but using the DC input instead!. This is where a cheap or sometimes existing adaptor block is already available for use and being used. Now that would be different. AM1 cpu is disappointing in total cost as BayTrial is way cheaper giving similar performance (though lesser a bit) at half the power consumption as AM1.
  • jospoortvliet - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link

    Every review I have seen shows the AM1 performance better per watt than the atoms, as AM1 idle usage is lower and performance is better.... but I have seen only a few. Care to link me to one showing the atom has higher performance and lower idle use than the AM1? Load performance matters little, as in typical usage you load these systems .5% of the time...
  • jabber - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Used a lot of Gigabyte boards with Dual BIOS over the years.....never used it.
  • bebimbap - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    I thought that dual bios might be marginal benefit of dual bios was nothing till one day I decided to change my Cpu from a k series to non-k. I reset the bios in between but it still became corrupted. Though I have other methods of recovvering from this, the board auto recovered and copied the second bios over the first. In the last eight years and over a dozen systems I have only encountered this once and it saved me time. If it were my only system it would have been much worse if I didn't have dual bios. Also I can imagine this happens to reviewers who test multiple chips on multiple boards and with multiple settings. I can see it now: "We would have loved more time on this board but, it's bios failed and we had other boards to review."
  • HardwareDufus - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    I look at this system and I think: $50 120GB SSD, $35 MB, $30 CPU, $50 4GB DDR2...
    Perfect drop in replacement for ancient PII or AMD K6 systems..... $170..... reuse your existing case, powersupply, keyboard, mouse, monitor.. Sell the old stuff (harddrive, cpu, motherboard, memory) for $20 to somebody. Your out like $150.... and you've got a cheap SSD... It will boot fast and feel fast relative to what you had...
  • jabber - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Is anyone really running such systems? It's pretty rare I get a single core box older than 2004 dropped in to me nowadays. 20th century computing is pretty much extinct.
  • wintermute000 - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    Its indeed a cheap system, but what person who knows how to build a PC, is still using something that old and worthless. The bother + risk on ancient PSU = just throw that PII/III away, but a new box. Which may very well be a cheapie with a 5350, but I don't think system building comes into it in any way shape or form.
  • jabber - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    Mmm yes running your new hardware off a 15 year old PSU and yellowed beige plastic PC case...like that'll work.

    A system to be proud of.
  • HardwareDufus - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    Although I am Irish/American, I have lived 8 1/2 years in Mexico. So yeah.... $170 to build a system, even if it has an old powersupply and a beige case is a fantastic idea. You need to understand just how much of the world's population lives on the edge of poverty.

    I personally am an odd one because I build a new Mini-ITX rigs for myself about every 2 years. The last was with an 3770K, IGP for video on 2 24" LCD 1920X1200 monitors. (No discreet video cards for me)... SSD and 16GB of ram.... and I spend too much in the process each time.

    However, I truly see the value in recycling old stuff... everytime I build a new system... I pass on the old stuff. I know of an elderly couple in upstate NY that is still using my AMD k6-III+ build overclocked to 600Mhz with 768MB of Ram on Windows2000 Professional with Office2000 Professional. THey turn the computer on... then go start brewing coffee... Eventually the coffee and the computer are ready. There was a time when I was buying up every K6-III+ I could find on EBay, overclocking them to upgrade ancient Socket7 machines for people for almost Zero money.

    My old Server machine with Dual PIIs overclocked to 400Mhz (B21 tape trick), 1GB of Ram and 4 4GB UWSCSI drives is still running (WinXP Pro) at another person's house. What a ridiculous machine to surf the web and check email... but I passed it on for free!

    Last year I purchased 13 Dell Optiplex755s with 13 Planar 18" LCDs (1280X1024) at less than $120usd a piece. These boxes all had leagal copies of WIndows7 Professional. Yeah, they've only got 2GB of Ram... and 40GB harddrives.... but they are perfect for teaching Physical Computing with Arduino microcontrollers..

    Nothing like putting 13 PCs on a couple of plastic coca cola tables and connecting them up to a single 16port Netgear switch and uplinking to your 5mbs DSL that cost you $349mxn a month (About $30usd) and letting folks check email, surf, learn to use Google Docs... learn to program in C/C++ using Arduino software and $15 microcontrollers...All for free.

    I grab up all of the obsolete netbooks I can find with WindowsXP on them.... stick on Arduino Software and Adobe Reader... Stick on a bunch of downloaded PDFs on Basic Electronics, C Programming with Arduino in Spanish, etc... and put it all a plastic OXXO (think SevenElven) with an Arduino UNO clone microcontroller, usb cable, handfull of LEDs and Resistors.... and send them off with young people. Too slow for browsing content on the internet kids shouldn't be browsing... but more than they need to learn programming and electronics.

    I know a poor family that is using the composite video of the Rasberry Pi (overclocked to 1Ghz) hooked up to their old TV using a usb keyboard, mouse and 2GB microSD to surf the internet and check mail. Cost me $25usd to gift that to them (keyboard, mouse and coax were freebies I got). (I have 2 rasberry pi...I haven't found a thing to do with them excpet to show off really slow $25 computers)..

    Yes, I'd rather be handing out Surface 3 Pros to everyone... But in the meantime... $30 cpus, $35motherboards and $50SSDs..... that's good stuff. Cheap SSDs can make the slowest system feel adequate!!
  • jabber - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    I put far newer stuff than that in the trash. There comes a point in the civilised world where it just becomes a liability and a dust trap.
  • HardwareDufus - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    I couldn't imagine trashing perfectly good CoreDuo machines. Maybe someday you could gift some of that stuff to the uncivilised world.
  • jabber - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link

    A C2D machine is a very different beast to the pre 21st century trash being talked about here.

    For me if its single core and single core only it gets trashed. No exceptions. Ahh well actually PentiumD machines get trashed too.
  • Dark Zero - Wednesday, August 20, 2014 - link

    Don't undestimate Pentium D. Using a SSD makes it useful again.
  • jabber - Thursday, August 21, 2014 - link

    Yes as a toaster oven I guess. Hot junk.

    Pay the extra $2 and get the C2D on Ebay. You'll get the $2 back in energy savings in no time.
  • Oxford Guy - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    I just put Xubuntu Linux on a Shuttle SK-41G with an Athlon XP 2400+ and 768 MB of RAM. I stuck an ATI 2400 Pro in it to get working video. It was running XP but since there are no more patches I switched it over. Xubuntu was the only thing I could get to work, other than Windows. No other Linux I tried (or even FreeBSD) would boot. Someone I know is using the machine as his main computer, along with one of those really old super loud IBM keyboards.
  • Dirk_Funk - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    I'm picturing you as a kind of Johnny Appleseed of computing.
  • MikeMurphy - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    Very motivating. Thanks for sharing this.
  • Phillip Wager - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    i just wish there was an AM1 mini itx board that had dual lan for teaming im looking to build a NAS by the end of the year and the low power consumption from the kabani quad cores really intrigues me but i dont want to go micro atx sized an then buy a lan card. (the pci-e slot will be taken up by a RAID card) the lack of dual lan has me considering going intel because they have haswell celerons/i3/i5 processors coming out soon that will consume only 35watts and that should get the job done. and although it will only be dual core honestly the am1 jaguar quadcore was overkill in the first place so its not that big a deal.
  • WatcherCK - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    I wonder if the board supports unbuffered ECC RAM? The Asus AM1M board supports ECC unofficially:
    http://www.overclock.net/t/1495837/ecc-works-on-am...
    Add a cheap LSI from ebay and low power NAS at a lower cost than the C2550 and 2750 Atoms, you dont get dual (or even) Intel LAN or dual channel memory however.
  • wintermute000 - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    If you have enough requirements for dual LAN/teaming then you're probably going to want more grunt than AM1 can provide anyway. In any event bay trial (cheap) / avoton (expensive) are perfectly viable options NOW.
  • DanNeely - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link

    Is this board full length mATX? It doesn't look like there's quite enough room below the 3rd PCIe slot to fit the 4th and still have room for the edge of board headers.
  • DanNeely - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    Confirmed. Gigabyte lists it as 22x17cm. A full height mATX board would be 24.6cm tall.
  • HigherState - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    I think it would be very interesting to see what using a R7 260X with Mantle enabled would do for gaming. I know thats not exactly what this platform is all about, but this is kinda what Mantle is suited for, I think. From what I could tell from a quick google search, it helps. Would like to see some up-to-date numbers, not ones from 4 months ago where Mantle and Kabini drivers were still being fleshed out.
  • hojnikb - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    Or you could just get the cheapest 1150 mobo and celeron for a little bit more. it will be faster and much much more upgrade friendly.
  • zodiacfml - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    too bulky and complex for any signage use. this is plain cheap mobo for emerging markets or business such as internet shops in some countries.
  • hojnikb - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    damn, those green caps really spoil the looks of this thig.
  • Per Hansson - Saturday, August 23, 2014 - link

    Those are Japanese Sanyo capacitors (now Suncon)
    Please stop complaining about a $35 board using high quality Japanese caps!
  • jardows2 - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link

    What does $35 get me on this board? Too much in my opinion. I can see this platform working well as a media player +, in a very small (think thin mITX) platform, but all the motherboard offerings I have seen are too bulky. What I want is:

    2x USB 2.0 rear connectors for KB and mouse
    2x USB 3.0 rear connectors for external hard drive
    HDMI video/audio (don't need standard audio jacks for this)
    Gigabit Ethernet.
    SO-DIMM slots for RAM
    mSATA slot
    1 SATA connector for possible optical drive
    1 mini-PCIE for wireless.

    Unfortunately, I am in no position to purchase 10,000+ of these to have an OEM make such a board for me. Hopefully there are enough people requesting this type of board for someone to make it a reality.
  • Arnulf - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    WTF happened to the DE-15 connector, is blue too expensive compared to black or did we somehow land in 1993 ?
  • yannigr2 - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    @Anandtech Your spam filter is NOT working properly. And there is NO way to get help.
    My apologies for this post that is a result after 1+ month trying to find a way to fix my account other than just making a new one.
  • FriendlyUser - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    I can think of many, many friends who would be perfectly happy using this kind of system for everyday tasks. This is truly "good enough" computing.
  • Arbie - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link

    Ian's comment on "unreality" resonates with me. In fact I'd feel bad paying only $35 for a motherboard. Just to think what is involved in producing such a thing makes my head spin. The people doing it deserve more than they are getting from this. Even $100 is cheap. Approaching $200 brings it more in line with my personal reality, though it's still pretty amazing - and you get one heck of a board for that.

    It is somehow wonderful that the world can have $35 mobos and the low-cost PCs built on them. I just don't look there.
  • fanofanand - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link

    Must be nice living in your world. This guy helps out those less fortunate and all you can do is brag about how you would just throw it in the garbage? You sir, suck at life.
  • fanofanand - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link

    That was supposed to be a reply to the dude trashing HardwareDufus, not sure how it landed at the end....either way, I think it's fantastic that he helps out those less fortunate with your "trash"
  • jabber - Wednesday, August 20, 2014 - link

    Well what do you do with tech junk when no one wants it? This is my job, not a hobby. I have a wife, that means you cant hoard stuff. I live in the first world, people don't want it any more. A friend of mine sells old Dell single core PCs. He sells 10 of them for like $90 on a pallet and no one wants them. It's junk.

    I'll say it again...junk.

    Plus if you give old slow computers to people...they expect you to support it. I have a life.

    Quit being so dippy and sentimental and get with stark modern reality. It's just some crappy 12 year old CPUs and PCs. Not like I'm throwing food in the trash in front of staving kids.

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