Gigabyte mini-DTX motherboard

rpsgc · Post by **rpsgc** » Wed May 16, 2007 1:24 am

Gigabyte today announced the first mini DTX motherboard catering towards home servers â€“ Churchill. The new Gigabyte Churchill mini DTX motherboard serves as a base for AMDâ€™s Live! Home Media Server platform. AMDâ€™s Live! Home Media Server platform allows home users to have their own server for data storage, media streaming, communications and home control tasks.

The new Churchill motherboard supports AMDâ€™s Socket AM2 Athlon 64 and Sempron single and dual-core processors. Gigabyte equips Churchill with a SiS761GX north and SiS966 south bridges. The SiS761GX features an integrated Mirage 1 graphics core with DirectX 7 support. Other notable features of the Churchill motherboard include one PCIe x1, one PCI, six SATA 1.5 Gbps/sec ports with support for native command queuing, eight USB 2.0 ports and high definition audio support. Gigabyte also equips Churchill with a header for an optional TPM chip for security purposes.

ETA: July
Price: N/A

Source: DailyTech

Motherboard

Prototype case

At least in one aspect it's better than mini ITX, you can use a "real" processor

jessekopelman · Post by **jessekopelman** » Wed May 16, 2007 2:19 am

rpsgc wrote:At least in one aspect it's better than mini ITX, you can use a "real" processor

There are mini-ITX boards that support Core 2 Duo . . .

Whether or not DTX is successful is going to come down to price.

rpsgc · Post by **rpsgc** » Wed May 16, 2007 3:43 am

Some... But most are VIA.

Hardtailed · Post by **Hardtailed** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:56 am

I find it funny that it has 6 SATA ports...
Where are you gonna put all those drives

andyb · Post by **andyb** » Wed May 16, 2007 5:07 am

Sweet

That looks cool, now all we need are decent sensible priced cases, ideally with power bricks and an internal transformer rather than a standard PSU or mATX PSU.

The graphics looks totally pants, I have no idea how fast the "Mirage 1" is, but high-res video might be a problem, and its only a DX7 part, a mobo with a single chip solution nVidia chipset would be great.

Andy

rpsgc · Post by **rpsgc** » Wed May 16, 2007 5:15 am

Hardtailed wrote:I find it funny that it has 6 SATA ports...
Where are you gonna put all those drives

e-SATA perhaps? That could be possible.

andyb wrote:The graphics looks totally pants, I have no idea how fast the "Mirage 1" is, but high-res video might be a problem, and its only a DX7 part, a mobo with a single chip solution nVidia chipset would be great.

Well... It's fast, really fast. You know? Like snail fast

I don't know why they went with SiS, maybe because of price. It's the same chipset as on the new Intel ITX motherboard. Maybe that has something to do with it.

pipperoni · Post by **pipperoni** » Wed May 16, 2007 5:22 am

This motherboard seems mildly bizarre. The back panel has only 4 USB, 1 LAN and 1 eSATA connector, no video connectors at all! There is a VGA header on the motherboard but it doesn't seem obvious how you're supposed to use it. Are they going to have a floating connector on the back plate? Maybe this is only an early revision....

Mini-DTX had better be on the cheap because the Albatron AM2 Mini-ITX motherboard does way more than this motherboard with less space.

rpsgc · Post by **rpsgc** » Wed May 16, 2007 5:46 am

Gigabyte announces "Churchill" mini DTX motherboard for AMD's Live! Home Media Server platform

Not HTPC

pipperoni · Post by **pipperoni** » Wed May 16, 2007 7:10 am

True, this board seems to be intended as a server platform. Call me old fashioned but I don't really understand server boards with limited expansion options (ie dual tuner setup would require some mix of PCI/PCIe/USB tuners).

CoolGav · Post by **CoolGav** » Wed May 16, 2007 7:10 am

I thought that this was targetting semi-enthuiasts who wanted to use the OEM version of M$s forthcoming homer server OS - the one that you administer remotly. If that's the case then the 6 SATA ports is good, but nowhere to put the drives isn't!

rpsgc · Post by **rpsgc** » Wed May 16, 2007 8:24 am

pipperoni wrote:True, this board seems to be intended as a server platform. Call me old fashioned but I don't really understand server boards with limited expansion options (ie dual tuner setup would require some mix of PCI/PCIe/USB tuners).

Dual TV tuner on a home server board...?

CoolGav wrote:I thought that this was targetting semi-enthuiasts who wanted to use the OEM version of M$s forthcoming homer server OS - the one that you administer remotly. If that's the case then the 6 SATA ports is good, but nowhere to put the drives isn't!

Like I said above, you could use eSATA

http://www.cooldrives.com/essaii3gbexp.html

Gigabyte mini-DTX motherboard

Gigabyte mini-DTX motherboard

Re: Gigabyte mini-DTX motherboard