Comments Locked

32 Comments

Back to Article

  • solarisking - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    Why in holy hell is there a parallel port on this thing???
  • nightbringer57 - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    Probably for industrial-ish purposes, I guess?
  • DanNeely - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    That's probably the main reason; with being a cheaper way to fill out the IO panel to keep it from looking like it has a lot of wasted space than 4 or 6 modern IO ports being a secondary one.
  • Significant - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    The text says com-header, så it is a DB-25 serial-port connector. Very useful for many embedded applications.
  • Mr Perfect - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    Nope, the article says the back panel port is an LPT. A header is just a double row of pins on the PCB you can plug a cable into. If you look at the very bottom edge of the board, right in the middle, there's a header labeled COM.
  • hrga - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    Because they have nothing better to place on this board ;) Anyway this is ultrabudget SoC on premium rip-off price. And These kind of nettopPC are placed to be ubiquity in everyday life and most sys integrators still need that port rather than to waste space on some expansion gadgetry ... But most ludicrous thing are TWO DIMM SLOTS ... What Atoms still dont support 8GB DIMM MODULES? No even to think anything more as 8GB is specs maximum as it seems
  • friedrichfw - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    this is more or less a carbon copy of this https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/J1800MA/

    what would be the use-cases for these boards?
  • meacupla - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    I would guess supporting legacy products
  • Einy0 - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    There are tons of industrial applications that still require serial and parallel ports. Mostly serial ports but I almost have a usage scenario already. At work we have an old vision system that looks at welds as they pass by, it uses a software application that has a parallel port based HASP. Now I just need to swap out one of those PCIe slots for an old fashioned PCI slot and some Windows XP drivers. Then I can replace the aging P4s that are somehow holding up still. The vision system and software itself would cost about $10-15k to replace. This could keep the old equipment running for another 5-10 years with a minimal investment.
  • ZeDestructor - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    Something like this http://www.ebay.com/itm/131305618951 or this http://www.ebay.com/itm/331555731241 should be right up your alley then
  • friedrichfw - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    this is more or less a carbon copy of this https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/J1800MA/

    what would be the use-cases for these boards?
  • friedrichfw - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    sorry for repost :(
  • toyotabedzrock - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    Someone hired a PR person to decide what gets silk screened.
  • jed22281 - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    Would this board, totally smash this one:
    http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATO...
    What about power consum, much higher?
  • jed22281 - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    N.B
    It's for a fw/gw/router/proxy/vpn/etc build, most likely using pfsense.
    Or vsphere with pfsense on top, + a few other VM's...
    I'm guessing the C2758 is much better suited....
  • wintermute000 - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    yes - the cores are around Core2Duo and you have 8 of them, @ 20W, makes sense.
    I have the 4 core earlier variant (C2550D) and it runs great for NAS.
  • jed22281 - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    I meant will the board in this article totally smash the one I linked.
    I think you meant the other way round?
    Like you, I suspected it wouldn't...
  • DanNeely - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    Totally different markets; all they have in common is approximate TDPs. The Asus is a basic low power board suitable for a low end desktop or potentially controlling some sort of industrial hardware via the legacy IO ports. Although that market probably would want a longer warrantied lifespan.

    The SuperMicro board is aimed at the data center. With 4 regular and 1 management network ports it could serve as a small router/firewall as you suggested. With 6 on board sata ports and an x8 electrical PCIe slot it could also serve as a storage server. Quad ethernet and 64gb of ram would help it scale out here too.
  • DCide - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    I don't know why people are so perplexed by this thing. There must be literally dozens of PS/2s in industrial warehouses installations which are about due for an upgrade.
  • DCide - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    I was joking, of course, but just after I wrote that it struck me that the truth could be something even more pathetic: This could actually be for companies like Home Depot, so they can get their POS terminals off of insecure Windows XP and stop letting our credit card information be stolen.

    They can actually replace them with something less than a decade old!
  • nathanddrews - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    Throw a Titan X in there. Because reasons.
  • olafgarten - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    Totally agree with this plan. I'll chip in £0.02
  • nathanddrews - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    That's worth more than my $0.02.
  • wicketr - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    Could someone tell me why no one will make a motherboard/case where the PCI x16 card goes in at a 90° angle. I want a HTPC that can actually fit among my other Home Theater devices. A Receiver, DVD player, VHS, and DVR all have roughly the same footprint. They are stackable.

    Why can't these PC vendors make anything that is compatible for the Home Theater footprint?? /rant
  • wicketr - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    And the reason i say that the PCI card should go in sideways is so that the height of the case could be kept extra slim, while supporting a full height card. Plus, increasing the width would work better with stacking in the home theater environment.
  • DanNeely - Monday, May 18, 2015 - link

    A few months ago there was a sidebar article about a company selling a system with an off the shelf sideways GPU case. The case was, IIRC really pricy, had very gamery styling, and had ventilation that the peanut gallery was skeptical would be able to keep a higher end GPU cool. I suspect it's a combination of being too niche of a product meaning it would have to be prohibitively expensive to break even combined with cooling/noise problems.

    If some idiot can stuff a 300W GPU in, and then will massively flame it when either the low power slimline PSU gives up the ghost, or the GPU cremates itself. Reviewers who test cases cooling with space heaters that don't have fans on them like the CPU/GPUs they're supposed to be simulating and whose cooling the case was designed around using to maintain safe temperatures trashing it wouldn't help either. (I wonder where we could find one of those sites. /sarc)
  • ZeDestructor - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    For those uses, and servers (because of the rackmount form factor), they use simple risers to angle the cards as needed. Usually these are supplied with the case, or you can custom build your own.
  • mr_tawan - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-o7s/

    Is this something you're looking for ?
  • wicketr - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    Interesting case, but that thing is pretty big. A full size ATX board with a GPU sticking out even further is going to be quite large. I think the micro-ATX with the horizontal GPU would be more ideal for a living room.

    I think the other problem is there needs to be an alternative/slim style power supply. Or either external style.
  • Kakti - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    Check out the Fractal Design Node 605 case. Full ATX and blends in perfectly with home theater equipment. I have the case sitting in my office waiting for a skylake HTPC build. It should easily fit a full size card, although I'll probably go with the shorty version due to increased airflow and more room for cable routing.
  • Kakti - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    Also I'll probably go with an ITX mobo for additional room/airflow, as I'll only need one or two PCI-E slots
  • yannigr2 - Tuesday, May 19, 2015 - link

    Ian,

    if ASUS is the first, then what are these boards from MSI?

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/9147/braswell-msi-la...

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now