* mATX. * 6 SATA (or 5 int SATA + 1 ext SATA). * 4 memory slots so that 4x2GB is possible. * Supports ECC detection and correction as ill be running 3x1.5TB disk in raidz (ZFS). * BIOS undervoltable board (min 0.8v). As ill be running FreeBSD I havent found any undervoltable software. * Some form o...

matt_garman, have you played around with undervolting for additional power savings? Is there really that many watts difference between your LE-1250 and the X2 250? I did a little bit of playing with undervolting, but not much. Basically, it looked like I'd have to underclock considerably if I wante...

Do you mind checking the power usage? The Kill-A-Watt says 42/43 Watts at idle. Not bad, but it looks like the CPU's voltage only goes down to 1.1 Volts at idle (800 MHz). I might try tweaking that to see if I can get it lower. For comparison, the 5050e I have in my other Biostar A760G drops down t...

My wife and I recently moved out of an apartment and into a house. This gave me an excuse to build a new computer, as we now have a basement, and: wanted to be able to play music from the media server; wanted to have another Biostar A760G board as a spare; wanted Internet access in the basement; I h...

Has anyone looked into the Asus M3A76-CM yet? I have no personal experience with it, but one comment from looking at the pictures of it on newegg: it appears it has a four (maybe five) phase power supply (VRM). This probably uses more power than the Biostar's three-phase VRM. Because of the Biostar...

Simulated testing platforms are the worst idea ever. Why? Because even cpus from the same batch differ in overclocking characteristics and heat output what good will you achieve if you consider all of them equal to a piece of heated metal. Its like talking about how a car drives without owning a dr...

Another random thought... what about an "artificial CPU"? For example, take a large piece of steel or wood, and in the center, cut a hole exactly big enough for a real CPU headspreader. Mount (somehow) that headspreader, then drill holes in the surrounding structure where you can mount a heatsink/fa...

Any chance of getting the Xigmatek HDT-S1283 retested? Another vote for this... based on the previous review of this heatsink, my conclusion was that it was a definite stand-out, given its price relative to other heatsinks of similar performance. It seems unmatched in the "cooling performance per d...

stevejones wrote:I'm still confused with last point you've mentioned.

To which point are you referring?

A C.F. PATA adapter does only link the C.F. pins to the PATA pins and adds a power connector for powering up the C.F. So the speed only depends on the quality of your C.F. Are you sure that's completely true? Honest question, not trying to be argumentative. My understanding is that both the CF and ...

Boot drive: 8 GB Compact flash via PATA-to-CF adapter Curious about your boot drive. I tried the same thing with a SATA to CF adapter using a Kingston 133X 16GB CF. It took ~3 hours to load XP SP2 on the card and I was never successful booting from it. Any suggestions or comments? I've only used th...

I just saw this SuperMicro X7SPA-HF mentioned on another forum. This is a MiniITX Atom D510 (Pineview) motherboard, with six SATA ports (Intel ICH9R), 2x Intel 82574L LAN ports, and a PCIe x4 slot. This will probably be an ideal low-power NAS platform for many people. Unfortunately, it does not supp...

Sadly, this board has been deactivated on newegg (although you can still buy it open box; also available on plenty of other online retailers). Perhaps Biostar is stopping production of them? Anyway, I looked at the BIOS manuals for a few other Biostar motherboards as well. All the boards based on th...

I doubt most people do that. Ripping, maybe... but that isn't CPU intensive. Have you actually ever ripped a DVD to mp4? Using Handbrake (which is multi threaded) I ripped a typical full length movie to the HD and all 4 cores of the Q9550, running at 3.2 Ghz, were pegged at 100% for an hour. Depend...

Another awesome review. Does anyone know if Intel intends to release an Xeon version of this chip? I.e., one that supports ECC memory? Looks like another potential fileserver/NAS platform. It also looks like a potential HTPC platform. Sure, not as good as e.g. NVidia 9300 or AMD 785G, but good enoug...

Here's another related product: Zotac MAG HD-ND01. My guess is that's it just one of their IONITX boards in a cutom-fit case.

I wonder if these types of devices will follow a path similar to the netbook: explosive popularity, and a million suppliers offering slightly different versions?

Typical awesome SPCR writeup, thank you! Any chance of taking the case apart and showing what it looks like "under the hood"? In particular, I'm curious about the fan. Is it a "system" fan, attached to the case, or a cpu/chipset fan? Most of the Ion + Atom 330 standalone motherboards I've seen have ...

Here's Intel's page on the 3210 , which I believe is practically the same as the 3200. The power consumption numbers should be roughly the same. I have some notes on this I gathered a while ago, which say: 3200 Max TDP = 20.0 W, 3210 Max TDP = 21.3 W. Both have an idle TDP of 11.3 W. I believe the 3...

Anyone ever go into a store that has a sign that reads something like this: We do three kinds of work here: (1) fast, (2) cheap, (3) high quality. Choose any two. It's kind of the same with computer hardware. (1) fast, (2) low power, (3) cheap. Pick any two. The Biostar gets you low power and cheap....

You can save X watts at some cost you would never recoup. Fundamentally, I did not want an L3426, I wanted a fire breathing server but it was the only Xeon I could find in Akiba. It cost about 31000, for that I could have got the 3450, which has a rated TDP of 95W, (as opposed to what, 45W?) but in...

-- update :shock: replaced the 2x4g with 4x2g, 2 hitachi 500g drives, removed the cdrom, installed W2k8 R2, its ticking over doing nothing now: 56W. the 4 pin fans are nice, with those, it calms down quite a lot. I wouldn't put this in the louge, but its not too bad in an office, except the ALMIGHT...

I just bought this board and cpu and 8g of ram (hynix) Survey says 75W. Total cost around 100000y (4g ecc rdimms hurt most) You're using the Xeon L3426 CPU and Intel S3420GPLC motherboard? What frequency is the memory? Can you post the rest of your system specs? I.e., number and make of hard drives...

Why do you need ECC RAM? It's arguably overkill for a simple home NAS/media server. However, ECC RAM doesn't cost much more than non-ECC, and, in theory, should make for a more stable system. If nothing else, it's another toy/feature to play with. :) Why not get a decent RAID card? Like Adaptec 516...

Here's the Load_Cycle_Count data from my four WD RE2 GP 1TB drives. The columns are as follows: Date - YYYY/MM/DD Drive - One of four LCC - Raw Load_Cycle_Count value obtained from SMART Delta - LCC difference compared to the previous week's reading Per_Hour - Averaged number of LCCs per hour Hours_...

Bump. Still for sale. Send me an offer if you're interested.

I started to research this a while back, but got sidetracked, ran out of time, and haven't revisited it since. Anyway, I posted my findings in this thread on the linux-raid mailing list (subject: "linux disk access when idle", started August 20, 2009). Another point, that I didn't mention in the lin...

Matt, that's definitely out-of-the-box thinking. But what is the real advantage? The A760G+4850e config you documented before got down to ~30W before disks and it can currently be purchased for about $109. I don't know what the power minimum would be on this new one, but even if you saves 10-15W wo...

Xeon souns total overkill, but I don't know much about them. How expensive does that system become with it? I don't even know if that Xeon L3426 is available yet, but IIRC, the price was $280 or so---for a one thousand lot purchase. So I would expect retail pricing to be over $300. The Intel mother...

Not too long ago, I built ( and documented ) what I would consider a very capable but also low-power NAS system based on the Biostar A760G motherboard. In that same post, I documented my personal requirements for a NAS system: Ability to host at least six SATA drives on a fast bus (i.e. motherboard ...

Hello, I have a gently used Antec P182 in "Gun Metal Black" for sale. The condition is excellent; I am the original owner, and it has been used in a non-smoking home. Ordinarily, I would list this on ebay, but I don't have a box for shipping. As such, I'm hoping to find a local buyer who can pick it...