There are many differences. The old Ion was an Intel CPU with an Nvidia chipset and GPU. Pretty straightforward. But the new Ion has a bizarre architecture. Its (slightly faster) CPU has an integrated GPU and a crippled Intel chipset which Nvidia has been forced to use by Intel's monopolistic practi...

Then now i'd have another (peculiar) question about these motherboards: is it possible to set the video output refresh rate at 50Hz or 75Hz? You can check the hardware's documentation. I didn't bother. There's also the issue of drivers. You didn't mention your OS so I assume you use Windows. I just...

This may be too late for gandrusz but, for reference... The answer depends on what you mean by "very small power requirements". I think the easiest and safest solution would be to get a D510 or D525 based barebone such as the Shuttle XS35. They're silent (until you put in a HD), fairly cheap and rea...

SPCR has a review on the D510MO. SPCR usually considers video performance. I have D510 boards (with Intel graphics) but I don't have a display with the right resolution on hand. If you have specific questions about these boards (as opposed to Atom in general) that aren't answered by SPCR's review, f...

What difference do you figure would the new 65nm SB would make? How hot do they get compared to the old ones? My understanding is that boards which do not support high-wattage CPUs also tend to waste less power, at least when you use low-wattage or undervolted CPUs. And I've not seen any ASUS board ...

Unfortunately, I don't know of a tutorial about designing suitable backup plans. It's probably too abstract. There are many technical tutorials about how to do this or that but these are only useful for those who know exactly what they want. If it seems too complicated, then don't be perfectionist. ...

If you didn't care about noise, you could simply buy powerful stuff (since you can obviouly afford that). But you presumably want low-power parts for silence. Less powerful hardware might not make a noticeable difference in real-world performance but I can't tell you since I don't know the specifics...

You should really ask someone who does some photography but it's the CPU/mobo and RAM which seem overkill to me. You won't need a fast quad-core with 4GB of RAM for playing music while browsing or bookeeping. You could do that with a fanless Atom. I'm of course not suggesting an Atom (you certainly ...

Hi, I'm no photographer so I don't know about that but this system is overkill for everything else IMHO. Make sure your motherboard fully supports the exact type of ECC RAM you plan to buy. ECC should help but I don't think it would be important for what you want to do. The most critical security st...

It ain't passive if your huge case fans are blowing on the heatsink!

I think it would be interesting to see what temps you get with the fans off. With the CPU underclocked and undervolted and a case that's vented at the top, it might work.

Do any of you know the low-wattage efficiencies of these PSUs?

Any experience or links for passive cooling experiments with that CPU? I doubt it'd work in every case, even with a huge heatsink.

Sure, the D945GSEJT ($100) + BCM970012 ($60) consumes less power making it easier to run passively cooled. However, I find the extra core on the Atom 330 to be quite useful at times. The D510 has two slightly faster cores and is cheaper while still consuming less power than the Ion. I might try a B...

It's called Intel Desktop Utilities. If the board supports it you can find it by going to the Intel web site and searching the downloads for that mobo. It's on the D510MO page but the program doesn't display temperatures. Is there really no easy way to get this information from within Windows? I do...

Ubuntu 9.10 works perfectly out of the box There's more drivers in the upcoming kernel though it might not matter for your purposes. I didn't realise the Intel Atoms don't have any frequency scaling - the D510 is fixed at 1.66GHz. With 2.6.33, cpufreq seemed to be able lower speeds but I don't know...

truckid wrote:I've read each HDD takes upto 20W when spinning up (potentially 3/4 HDDs in the future).

I wouldn't be surprised if they'd consume more than 20W actually given that the F2's spec says ~24W according to SPCR.

oops!

Anyone else unable to runV-mem @ 1.8V? I didn't check mem voltage prior to flashing to 0154... I was pretty sure I would have to play with the jumper afterwards if I tried but I figured: why not? And indeed it wouldn't work. There's something weird though: now I can't find the voltage setting anymo...

Well, the Intel board seems to be selling fast here, especially the bulk version. Meanwhile, the flashy Asus D510 board is in stock pretty much everywhere. It's got the legacy ports MoJo wants but it's more expensive. Maybe I should buy one and see how passive cooling works with that heatsink.

The idle power consumption is going to be down to the mobo and the PSU essentially as the rest should consume about 12 watts (assuming 3-4W for the memory but I might be wrong about that). I'd be interested in your rationale for choosing this case and PSU. And, if anyone has data on mainboard power ...

The Intel monitoring software is usually definitive. What's the name? Or where can I get it? CoreTemp is also pretty good. It looks like this would only show CPU temperature. Or am I mistaken? It does seem like an odd decision to only have an analogue output when there could be a combined digital/a...

Poulsbo (the lowest power Atom chipset) nettops definitely have the potential to be silent but some might have fans. I understand Dell has several Poulsbo nettops. Some other brands should have them too. You'll know them by the Z at the start of the processor designation. There's no reason they coul...

Is ECC even necessary for home server use, or is it just snake oil? What does "necessary" and "home server" even mean? The problem is real. See Schroeder et al., 2009 that's been making the rounds for instance. It may also been crucial depending on your application. Have you ever had a system that ...

Yeah, but you're ignoring the "If you're set on needing ECC" part. There's plenty of cheap AM2/2+/3 boards which officially support ECC (see Asus's catalog) if you think Biostar's unofficial support is too dicey. What bothers me is that I don't know how much power they'd burn at idle. you can't exp...

Although, Biostar also makes the T A760G , which does have four memory slots. This one seems available locally. Thanks Matt! I might go with that one if no one comes up with a better suggestion. I dont wish to start a BSD vs Linux war Of course not. I was trying to brainstorm server OS advantages w...

mentawl wrote:If you're set on needing ECC, I would consider something like a Supermicro, Intel or Tyan server board paired with a 35 watt single core Conroe CPU or something.

Wouldn't that consume more power at idle compared to a low-power board and a 240e or some such?

I'd also be interested in any answers you get. I don't need so many SATA ports or RAM slots and I'll likely be running Linux on it but otherwise my wishlist looks much like yours. Did you choose BSD because ZFS on Linux still ain't ready yet? My misgiving about ZFS is that is seems brittle on less-t...

It's certainly doable since there are passive 330+945GC systems for sale. But it looks like you'd have to built it yourself or possibly buy it second hand. You might also consider coupling a passive gfx card with a D510. If you decide you can live with a fan, consider an Asus instead of the Acer. It...

PS, it isn't too costly to purchase an external USB enclosure should you wish to diagnose either a 2.5 or 3.5" drive using a laptop. Do tell if you know of one wihch supports SMART... Some laptops (such as most Thinkpads) support direct SATA and/or IDE 2.5'' hotplugging to a faster and full-feature...

This is not a board you'd want to connect a display to except for troubleshooting I connected my test D510MO to a nice Samsung 1680x1050 monitor and, while I could tell there were issues with the analog connection by using test patterns, regular images and text were displayed without any flaw I cou...

ALL these chips use the same plastics, the same silicon, the same materials in general. I can't see the wisdom of saying that 75C is high for a typical CPU, but over 100C is fine for the SB. Many CPUs have a maximum temperature under 75C. Mobile CPUs tend to have 95C or 100C. Do you figure these te...