Review of Commell Pentium M desktop board

aidanjm2004 · Post by **aidanjm2004** » Sat Aug 14, 2004 9:16 am

Here's a review of the Commell Pentium M "LV-671" mini-itx motherboard (Beware, it's from a Japanese webpage -- the English is shocking):
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/w ... N&wb_dis=2

There is a comment in the review on the wattage used by the test system, compared to a Pentium 4 system. I think the claim is that it is using only 30 W compared to 90 W, but I might be misinterpreting (as I mentioned, the English was very poor).

..

There are some pictures of the "IP-4MTI2H" IPox microATX Pentium M motherboard here (MikeC mentioned this board in another thread):
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/w ... N&wb_dis=2

The heatsink/ fan unit pictured is rather odd -- it seems to have a double-width configuration, maybe in order to cool the chipset as well as the CPU?? It certainly doesn't look like a standard P4 heatsink mounting mechanism.

Here's another pic. of the IPox board close-up:
http://www.epox.com/USA/product.asp?id=IP-4MTI2H

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Here are some pics of the Fujitsu Pentium M desktop motherboard, including pictures of the heatsink for this board, along with the heatsink retention mechanism:
http://www.excite.co.jp/world/english/w ... N&wb_dis=2

Is this a standard P4 heatsink mounting mechanism?

I think the Fujitsu is the most flexible of the three boards; it's the only one with an AGP slot.

JazzJackRabbit · Post by **JazzJackRabbit** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 6:39 am

Hm... Not bad, not bad at all... Finally, a pentium M for PC. For a moment there I actually thought that I could probably build a completely fanless PC: huge copper heatsink, fanless PSU, fanless videocard (something along the G400/450 lines), but then I remembered that I would still need to cool my harddrive and remove all that hot air from PC case which means that I would have to have at least one 80mm fan pulling the air out of the case.

Oh well... my rig is extremely quiet as it is, three fluid bearing hard drives amount to 50-65% of the noise so silencing other components won't accomplish much.

rjm · Post by **rjm** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 3:56 am

Maybe the solution is to disassemble a pentium M laptop that was going spare - broken display or something.

My laptop is issentially fanless: with the processor in Speedstep, the fan never comes on. With it on set at 1.3 Ghz, it will only come on on high stress loading, DIVX movies and so forth, and then intermittently.

Remember laptops have fanless PSUs by default, and quiet, cool hard drives. Not a bad starting point!

-rjm

mb2 · Post by **mb2** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 8:00 am

only problem with that idea rjm, is the lack of an AGP slot. fine if u dont want games, or are happy with a mobility radeon or similar

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Wed Aug 18, 2004 8:58 am

Yeah, I tried unsuccessfully to order a Radisys LS855 Pentium M mobo.

-Ed

krage · Post by **krage** » Sun Aug 22, 2004 9:03 pm

Found this link today in HardOCP's news: Translated Review
Note that its a french site run through google's translator.

These guys are trying out a mini-ITX Pentium M setup from DFI. They do a fair bit benchmarks with overclocking and underclocking/undervolting. They even try out the pentium M running fanless and heatsinkless!

robinwood · Post by **robinwood** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 1:33 am

I see the review, and they make the first Pentium M motherboard that support the Speedstep

, I don't know if it's possible with the LV-671 or other Pentium M motherboard

Fanless/power and zero db it's a dream

pentium M+ DFI G5M100-N + fanless PSU + Samsung MP0402H+ PCI VGA

TomLevy · Post by **TomLevy** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 2:43 pm

That DFI board really seems to provide a "cake and eat it too" type solution. I was shocked that they ran the processor without a heatsink. A bold manuever.

http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/cm/g ... txpm-9.htm

1700mhz passive cooled. Wow.

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 3:31 pm

Wow, makes me want to go mod a Heatshink for passive cooling.

-Ed

aidanjm2004 · Post by **aidanjm2004** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 3:32 pm

TomLevy wrote:That DFI board really seems to provide a "cake and eat it too" type solution. I was shocked that they ran the processor without a heatsink. A bold manuever.

http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/cm/g ... txpm-9.htm

1700mhz passive cooled. Wow.

The lack of availability of heat-sinks to fit the board might be a problem. Not everyone can just slice up an old heat sink & drill holes to get it to fit.

aidanjm2004 · Post by **aidanjm2004** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 3:41 pm

TomLevy wrote:That DFI board really seems to provide a "cake and eat it too" type solution. I was shocked that they ran the processor without a heatsink. A bold manuever.

http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/cm/g ... txpm-9.htm

1700mhz passive cooled. Wow.

Wouldn't that level of cooling performance be available on pretty much any Pentium M board?

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 3:48 pm

Yes, that is if they actually offered it.

Lippert offers only passive cooling on their 1.1GHz model. :rolleyes:

-Ed

aidanjm2004 · Post by **aidanjm2004** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 6:39 pm

Edwood wrote:Yes, that is if they actually offered it.

Lippert offers only passive cooling on their 1.1GHz model. :rolleyes:

-Ed

Have you been tempted to try running your Lippert board without the fan turned on? Given the results presented in the review, you might be able to get away with it, don't you think?

Mats · Post by **Mats** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 7:14 pm

The Kontron JRex-PM motherboard is one of the smaller I've seen for PM, 102x147 mm.

Edwood · Post by **Edwood** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 7:45 pm

aidanjm2004 wrote:
Edwood wrote:Yes, that is if they actually offered it.

Lippert offers only passive cooling on their 1.1GHz model. :rolleyes:

-Ed
Have you been tempted to try running your Lippert board without the fan turned on? Given the results presented in the review, you might be able to get away with it, don't you think?

Not without significant throttling kicking in. Unless Dothan is THAT much more efficient, I think they are exaggerating. I yanked the fan for a bit, and the heatsink temps were rising to dangerous levels before I hooked the fan back up.

-Ed

Pate · Post by **Pate** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 8:50 pm

If I understood correctly (which might not be the case as I don't read French), they adjusted the CPU voltage before running it heatsink-less.

http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/cm/g ... txpm-8.htm

Pate

krage · Post by **krage** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 9:30 pm

Pate wrote:If I understood correctly (which might not be the case as I don't read French), they adjusted the CPU voltage before running it heatsink-less.

http://www.x86-secret.com/articles/cm/g ... txpm-8.htm

Pate

I think that's correct, they had it significantly underclocked and undervolted before those tests. The first graph on page 9 shows the speeds at the bottom, the temps as the bars and the voltages as lines. So they'd clocked it all the way down to 600MHz and 0.85v to achieve 47.5 C heatsink free. From the previous tables it looks like speedstep would normally set the voltage to 0.988v for 600MHz operation so they were able to achieve stability with almost a 15% drop in voltage, not too shabby.

HammerSandwich · Post by **HammerSandwich** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 5:22 am

While the results are certainly impressive, it looks like there were no benchmarks with the fanless and sinkless tests. How do we know that the CPU wasn't throttling?

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