Mini Motherboard

Asus AT3IONT-I Deluxe reviewed

admin — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 21:47:14 +0000

Just a few days ago I have been writing about new mini motherboard from Asus called ASUS AT5IONT-I. But we can not forget that the previously introduced Asus AT3IONT-I Deluxe is already on the market and is a real good piece of hardware for every HTPC enthusiast. So if you do not want to wait any more for AT5IONT-I and you are considering buying its previous version (that I may highly recommend by myself) I have a good news for you! Thanks to “neoseeker” you may read a review of AT3IONT-I Deluxe and see some performance tests.

But this is the end of good news. Unfortunately it looks that guys that wrote this review have never seen any Mini-ITX motherboard designed for building HTPC before. Sorry to be so cruel but they have no idea what are real benefits and best features of this mini motherboard as they have not highlighted any! They have not written anything about heat (this motherboard is supposed to work fanless) and completely nothing about HD video performance!

Anyway if you are considering buying one of those. It is always good to read one more detailed specification as you may still learn something new (like this that this motherboard is not good for POV-RAY rendering or massive files UN-RARING…). Full article may be found on neoseeker under this link.

ASUS AT5IONT-I

Mini-ITX Hot Swap Home Server Case

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:19:08 +0000

When I firstly saw this case I decided that i must write about it. It has been introduced by people from LinITX.com and it looks for great choice for building mini home storage server (NAS) with huge capacity for all your media. This case will let you to build a storage server based on 4 Hot Swap 3.5″ SATA drive bays. Moreover there is one internal 2.5″ drive bay too for your OS. As you can see on the photos it looks like a professional server case that is different from its big cousins only by size.

According to LinITX – CFI A7879 Mini NAS Server Case brings you great functionality combined with quiet, low power performance. Case has been designed to work well with AHCI (NCQ) and RAID functions from your Mini-ITX motherboard. 4 HDD bays are hidden behind front panel that makes it look more like a black cube with some leds.

The case looks to be really good and functional choice for people looking for a huge captivity and/or other RAID benefits (instant backup). If I would be looking for case for my personal storage it would definitely be worth considering.

Specifications:

Case Dimensions: 7.88″(W) x 9.85″(H) x 11.82″(D)
Power Supply:
- 200W Internal FlexATX Power Supply w/US Power Cord
- 20/24-pin ATX Power Connector
- 4-pin 12V-P4 Power Connector
- 2 x Molex Power connectors for SATA Backplane
Chassis Cooling: 1 x 120mm Rear Cooling Fan
Expansion Slot: 1 x Standard Height PCI Expansion Slot
Drive Bays:
- 4 x 3.5″ Removable SATA-II Drive Trays w/backplane – Backplane supports AHCI (NCQ) and RAID function
- 1 x Internal 2.5″ HDD Mounting Bracket
Front Panel:
- 2 x USB 2.0 Ports
- Power On/Off Button
- Power and HDD Activities LED

CFI A7879 is available via LinITX.com and E-itx.com.

[source]

GIGABYTE announces Mini-ITX contest without prizes?

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:46:37 +0000

Gigabyte has decided to promote their H55 Mini-ITX mini motherboard… so they has announced a contest. They have informed in their press release published on August 2, 2010 about overclocking competition in conjunction with HWBOT.org called the H55 Mini-ITX Contest. I am sure that a lot of over-clockers might be interested in it and it is a great way to make Gigabyte’s motherboard more popular. It can show potential buyers how powerful it may be. But there is a one catch…

Usually when you hear that someone announced a contest you may expect some great prizes. Especially when it is over-clockers contest – where you risk your expensive hardware that may got broken! But Gigabyte know you better… In their press release they are writing “Since most of you are in this sport for the love of overclocking, and not for the love of prizes, we’ve decided not to announce any”. LOL!

In next statement they say that they may announce some prizes when the contest will end… and happily add to all of this that “it gives you the chance to show the community you are doing this for fun…”. Sorry Gigabyte but I am not in…

But if you are interested they want you to show them how far you can push your GA-H55N-USB3 and submit your Super PI 32m scores on HWBOT. Since not everyone has access to LN2 they made categories of the competition; Stage 1 CPU speed limited to 4000 MHz, and Stage 2 has no CPU speed limit.

To learn more about the GIGABYTE H55 Mini-ITX Contest, you may visit:
http://hwbot.org/competition/gbt_h55_mitx.

[source]

Mini-ITX Gigabyte H55 with USB 3.0 – First pictures

ASUS AT5IONT-I – Make your dreams come true!

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:36:19 +0000

It looks that a perfect HTPC motherboard that all of us have been waiting for is almost here! Asus AT5IONT-I is passively cooled mini motherboard that may be ideal for building powerful multi purpose computer for your living room! The heart of this motherboard will be powered by dual-core, hyper-threaded 1.8GHz Intel Atom D525 processor!

Moreover it will be paired with a second generation NVIDIA ION chipset armed with 16 CUDA cores, 512MB of video memory hooked up to a 64-bit interface, hardware video acceleration and support for DX10.1! It is more than enough for playing your Full HD media and even for basic gaming!

As mentioned before it is cooled by huge passive heat sink that makes it totally noiseless (it won’t disturb you during watching movies or even if you will want to sleep in your living room!). Motherboard is equipped with two DDR3 SODIMM slots that let you use up to 4GB of memory!

Moreover it has PCIe x4 expansion slot, integrated 7.1 channel Realtek ALC887 audio, two SATA connectors, Gigabit Ethernet and built-in Wireless N. The rear I/O provides a choice of HDMI or DVI outputs, as well as optical S/PDIF for your audio, and you get eSATA and four USB ports – two of which are of the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 variety.

It looks like an ideal motherboard for building super small, totally silent and very powerful media center or even multi purpose living room pc!

ASUS tells the board should be showing up at retailers any day now priced at around £125.

Sugo SG07 – “Cool” case from SilverStone

admin — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:19:34 +0000

SilverStone has provided more info about their new Mini-ITX computer case that is supposed to keep all your mini computer components cool thanks to giant 180mm fan that is even bigger than standard Mini-ITX motherboard. Case will has a 600W PSU included with a single +12V rail.

We have informed about this case prototype after it was presented During CES 2010. Now it has been introduced on SilverStone webpage and it looks it should be available for sale very soon.

It has been designed with a special VGA fan duct to allow the chassis to keep the video cards cool and to run long cards up to 12.2-inches long. The chassis also supports up to 400W thermal envelope video cards that are overclocked.

The area for the CPU cool accommodates units up to 117mm high and a pair of storage drives are supported in 2.5-inch size or a single 3.5-inch drive. Pricing on the chassis is unknown.

Fractal Design Array R2 Reviewed (Mini-ITX)

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:38:47 +0000

Do you like this cool and smooth look of great multi-disk arrays from Fractal Design R2 series? Aren’t you still sure about getting one? If you still need more information about this case now thanks to bit-tech you may read a six pages long detailed review. They have included a lot of detailed photos and of course described it with every detail.

They have divided they review into following parts: General informations, exterior, interior, building, cooling and of course conclusion. So do you need to connect up to 6 hdd drives and tv tuner card to your Mini-ITX motherboard and keep it looking really good? First read the review and I am sure you will really love this chassis!

ASRock A330ION – world’s first ION board with DDR3 support reviewed

admin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:18:01 +0000

It looks that more and more services take seriously all Mini-ITX formatted motherboards. This time we can read a huge review of ASRock A330ION motherboard. First NVIDIA ION based mini motherboard with DDR3 support. As many of you may know this motherboard is ideal for building HTPC because of its high performance, video hardware decoding and low power consumption.

In review provide by “PC Perspective” you will learn almost all that is possible about this piece of hardware. They have even rated the cardboard box design… Moreover you may learn very detailed specification, see great quality photos and of course what is most important watch their benchmarks.

Thank you guys for great review! Bring us more like this. And here is the link to the review…

Echo III – little powerful computer?

admin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:42:15 +0000

Puget Systems has announced their new computer in Mini-ITX form factor called Echo III. It has been packed into Lian-Li’s PC-Q08 Mini-ITX case to fit small but powerful ZOTAC H55ITX-A-E mini motherboard and keep it cool. Computer may be equipped with Core i3, Core i5 or Core i7 processor. Moreover it may be configured with up to 8GB of memory, powerful Radeon HD5970 or GeForce GTX 480 and up to 2TB of standard HDD or 256GB SSD drive (or even both!) + a Blu-ray player or writer.

This computer may be a good solution for anyone that needs good performance and want to keep their workplace tidy. It is small, silent and good looking so it may work as a powerful work computer/gaming machine/media center (choose what is right for you). As mentioned before the case by Lian-Li let all hot computer components to keep its performance thanks to Hydro CL1 closed loop liquid cooling system.

You may read more details, configure your own Echo III system and check exact pricing on Purget System Echo III configuration webpage.

Thermaltake Element-Q Reviewed… Again?

admin — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 11:11:23 +0000

Some time ago (in this post) I have been writing about a review of great Mini-ITX case – Thermaltake Element-Q. As I have been writing about it already and linking to previous review I will not repeat the specification now. Just if you do not want to surf and read all my previous posts this case is a quite and very comfortable to use Mini-ITX case I can truly recommend… But… if you still want more and/or are unsure about buying this case I have a great news for you!

There is a new very long and detailed review posted by “Benchmark Reviews”. It is as long as 7 pages with detailed features, specification and a lot of photos. As usual you may check all pros and cons as seen by another reviewer. It got final score of 8.85 out of 10. So it is really not bad result. For a full review you may want to visit this page.

Mini-ITX in your Hi-FI tower?

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:06:48 +0000

A few days ago there was post about great looking Mini-ITX Hi-Fi like cases on bit-tech. I believe that their article was a paid advertisement but who cares until it is something really worth of your attention (I am not paid for this)… Cases they were writing about have been produced by Taiwanese manufacturer called “SEED“. Unfortunately I have not seen them in any shops yet (not even on my favorite Amazon) but as they have paid for the ads it should be available in shops soon.

Case I am writing about is “SEED MY-380″. It is available in two colors (black/silver). The one I prefer a lot more is silver. It is small (315 x 215 x 63mm) great looking HTPC case that can fit in your HI-FI tower. It has attached fanless 60W power supply (noisless!) at is cooled by low noise 5×5 cm fan. For more details you may visit producer website. And here are some photos of this beauty:

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