I just pulled the trigger on a ASRock J4205-ITX. After spending hours looking at cases on Newegg, I found a decent case and 60W 12V external Seasonic PSU from mitxpc.com. They don't advertise it as Seasonic, but it's this:
I find the lack of M.2 SSD connector on Atom boards disturbing - not even PCIe, SATA one would be sufficient. Because of this I jumped the gun on ASUS H110T. It ended up twice as expensive, even with 35W -T processor it eats 4x energy, but at least it uses external DC (12-19V, so as it happens most big-jack HP PSUs work just fine and connector is the same). Before that I used J1900DC-ITX, which is Baytrail with same DC jack.
Sourcing good quality 12V power bricks (especially for pico-PSU) is risky adventure, so far I have found that Delta and Sparkle make a couple, and you can get them without smashing your piggy bank. Getting a board that accepts 19V DC is even better, as laptop bricks are dirt-cheap.
I messed around with shady power bricks for a while and decided risking my $150 thin m-itx board and $300 i7-4790T wasn't worth it. I just got mine from Dell.com when they were having a sale. I just signed up for email updates and got a legit Dell 120W DC power brick for $50 when they were 50% off.
Why do you care about M.2 speeds on an Atom? If your application is that performance-sensitive, then upgrading to a performance-optimized CPU architecture will typically deliver more gains than faster storage.
I initially considered lack of a full-sized M.2 slot to be a negative, for the J4205-ITX, until I realized that for my purposes, GigE will generally be the bottleneck. And, SATA SSDs are cheaper, as well. Even so, if I use a 1 TB SATA SSD, it'd cost more than the PSU + everything else in the box, combined.
BTW, from what I can tell, these Goldmont cores should be roughly comparable to a Core2. Intel has said relatively little about them, but I found a pretty good resource:
For me, that's a pretty big deal - I want fanless and ideally NUC size. I'm already compromising by going with Mini-ITX. I wouldn't want to then use a big enough case to accommodate a passive 35W heatsink that doesn't at least need a case fan.
This is more than just getting info from the same source. One of these is clearly an exact copy of the other with some words switched for other synonyms. I'm guessing technewsdir is the copier. The words that are different make less sense in the context and who the hell writes things like one.3 instead of 1.3...
This is actually very common. Most companies put out press releases, large parts of which get copied & pasted into news feeds. In the case of reviews, the reviewers are often provided with sample text, images, etc. they can use, when pressed for time, etc.
Not saying Anandtech doesn't write all their own content. I'm just saying I was surprised to learn just how much companies try to spoon feed journalists.
First, I now see that even the i7-7700K supports only HDMI 1.4. So, this isn't a case of market segmentation. And they do kinda suck for the lack of HDMI 2.0.
However, I've gotta say, artificial market segmentation is like half of Intel's business model. However you feel about companies building products and then crippling them to sell into a lower market tier without cannibalizing their higher-margin offerings, Intel & many others have done quite well with this approach.
It's too bad such a board doesn't exist with an i5-6300U or something along the lines of a 15w CPU.
The J3455 is still 10w, and comparatively slow for a 10w CPU. The U-series i5's are at least double the performance in single threaded tasks and at least double the performance in multithreaded tasks (while having half the physical cores) all the while using 5w more power.
Like every ATOM, it's just too slow. It's substantially faster than the crap we had a decade ago, but not proportionately.
It is because the i5 costs at least three times as the Atom. The Atom has a high TDP so that it has decent performance despite being small and less advanced.
Most of the 10W TDP budget is probably for the GPU and dual-channel memory controller (which supports up to DDR3-1866). The GPU is a half-size, slightly down-clocked variant of the same architecture used in Skylake desktop CPUs.
I'd imagine if you just run CPU benchmarks in text mode, the SoC probably wouldn't even reach 5W. But, I think we're getting a bit beyond ourselves, given the form factor. I'm hard-pressed to find a Mini-ITX case with a PSU < 60W.
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nathanddrews - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
I have a tiny ITX case and PSU ready and waiting.mode_13h - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
I just pulled the trigger on a ASRock J4205-ITX. After spending hours looking at cases on Newegg, I found a decent case and 60W 12V external Seasonic PSU from mitxpc.com. They don't advertise it as Seasonic, but it's this:https://seasonic.com/product/ssa-0601he/
Vatharian - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
I find the lack of M.2 SSD connector on Atom boards disturbing - not even PCIe, SATA one would be sufficient. Because of this I jumped the gun on ASUS H110T. It ended up twice as expensive, even with 35W -T processor it eats 4x energy, but at least it uses external DC (12-19V, so as it happens most big-jack HP PSUs work just fine and connector is the same). Before that I used J1900DC-ITX, which is Baytrail with same DC jack.Sourcing good quality 12V power bricks (especially for pico-PSU) is risky adventure, so far I have found that Delta and Sparkle make a couple, and you can get them without smashing your piggy bank. Getting a board that accepts 19V DC is even better, as laptop bricks are dirt-cheap.
Ej24 - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
I messed around with shady power bricks for a while and decided risking my $150 thin m-itx board and $300 i7-4790T wasn't worth it. I just got mine from Dell.com when they were having a sale. I just signed up for email updates and got a legit Dell 120W DC power brick for $50 when they were 50% off.mode_13h - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
Why do you care about M.2 speeds on an Atom? If your application is that performance-sensitive, then upgrading to a performance-optimized CPU architecture will typically deliver more gains than faster storage.I initially considered lack of a full-sized M.2 slot to be a negative, for the J4205-ITX, until I realized that for my purposes, GigE will generally be the bottleneck. And, SATA SSDs are cheaper, as well. Even so, if I use a 1 TB SATA SSD, it'd cost more than the PSU + everything else in the box, combined.
BTW, from what I can tell, these Goldmont cores should be roughly comparable to a Core2. Intel has said relatively little about them, but I found a pretty good resource:
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/microarchitectu...
mode_13h - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
BTW, at 35W, is it fanless?For me, that's a pretty big deal - I want fanless and ideally NUC size. I'm already compromising by going with Mini-ITX. I wouldn't want to then use a big enough case to accommodate a passive 35W heatsink that doesn't at least need a case fan.
woggs - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
This article makes me wonder who plagiarizes who...http://technewsdir.com/gigabyte-lists-ga-j3455n-d3...
JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
It's possible both sources get the same info form Gigabyte and therefore publish the same news.FanlessTech - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
From Gigabyte or elsewhere ^^'ezridah - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
This is more than just getting info from the same source. One of these is clearly an exact copy of the other with some words switched for other synonyms. I'm guessing technewsdir is the copier. The words that are different make less sense in the context and who the hell writes things like one.3 instead of 1.3...mode_13h - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
This is actually very common. Most companies put out press releases, large parts of which get copied & pasted into news feeds. In the case of reviews, the reviewers are often provided with sample text, images, etc. they can use, when pressed for time, etc.Not saying Anandtech doesn't write all their own content. I'm just saying I was surprised to learn just how much companies try to spoon feed journalists.
abhaxus - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
Looks like everything from that contributer is a blatant copy of AnandTech's front page.http://technewsdir.com/the-msi-gt83vr-titan-assess...
cerberusss - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
I'd love a motherboard from Gigabyte with just USB-C connections.cbm80 - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
Why is Intel still on HDMI 1.4? Pathetic.mode_13h - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
Because it's low-end. They're trying to maintain differentiation between this and their Kaby Lake SKUs.cbm80 - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
Making products that suck because you don't want to compete with yourself...yeah, that always ends well.mode_13h - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
First, I now see that even the i7-7700K supports only HDMI 1.4. So, this isn't a case of market segmentation. And they do kinda suck for the lack of HDMI 2.0.However, I've gotta say, artificial market segmentation is like half of Intel's business model. However you feel about companies building products and then crippling them to sell into a lower market tier without cannibalizing their higher-margin offerings, Intel & many others have done quite well with this approach.
Samus - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
It's too bad such a board doesn't exist with an i5-6300U or something along the lines of a 15w CPU.The J3455 is still 10w, and comparatively slow for a 10w CPU. The U-series i5's are at least double the performance in single threaded tasks and at least double the performance in multithreaded tasks (while having half the physical cores) all the while using 5w more power.
Like every ATOM, it's just too slow. It's substantially faster than the crap we had a decade ago, but not proportionately.
zodiacfml - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
It is because the i5 costs at least three times as the Atom. The Atom has a high TDP so that it has decent performance despite being small and less advanced.mode_13h - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
Most of the 10W TDP budget is probably for the GPU and dual-channel memory controller (which supports up to DDR3-1866). The GPU is a half-size, slightly down-clocked variant of the same architecture used in Skylake desktop CPUs.I'd imagine if you just run CPU benchmarks in text mode, the SoC probably wouldn't even reach 5W. But, I think we're getting a bit beyond ourselves, given the form factor. I'm hard-pressed to find a Mini-ITX case with a PSU < 60W.