SPCR

Anyone heard of these guys before? It's also Mini-ITX but it has HDMI for 1080p !

http://www.bcmcom.com/bcm_product_mx965gme.htm

Yes! It has GM965, DVI and even HDMI, which is a first I found.
Their store does not list it though
I've sent them an email asking where I can buy one.

I'm waiting for the socket P mini-atx variants to hit the market - should be good considering what the 965 chipset is capable of.

Mini-ATX? you mean micro-ATX?

I got a reply from BCM Advanced Research, they say a couple of weeks. I hope I can buy it from, their store estore.bcmcom.com

Dear Jon,

Thank you for your inquiry on our MX965GME motherboard. BCM Advanced Research specializes in the design and manufacturing of industrial ATX, Mirco-ATX, Flex-ATX, Mini-ITX, and 5.25" system boards. Our products are available for purchase through our authorized resellers Avnet, Arrow and Bell Micro. At this time, our MX965GME has not yet been released and therefore not yet available for purchase. We expect this product to be within the next couple weeks, and I will keep you inquiry on file and notify you when it is available for purchase.

i've found this thread out of desperation... and thankfully it's on my favourite forums! it's 1:30am now but i'll read all the posts first thing tomorrow morning.

i've just been a victim of intel's confusing socket scheme... bought a t7100 (socket p) and abit il-90mv (socket m) this week, expecting them to fit together. was about to drop the cpu in the socket when i realised... "oh $#*($&(@"

that'll teach me for thinking i know everything about the txxxx processors when my expertise obviously stops at the exxxx processor level...

seems aopen has a socket p barebones system... looks quite nice too.

personally i'd rather wait until a proper uatx mobo w/ hdmi comes out

I have an AOpen 945-D, and it's a nice little system for occasional use. It's not quiet, and I think it would be hard to make quieter. I imagine the 965 series will be similar. An Intel Mini Mac is much quieter (although not silent), if you're looking for this kind of a system.

DarkUltra wrote:Mini-ATX? you mean micro-ATX?

I got a reply from BCM Advanced Research, they say a couple of weeks. I hope I can buy it from, their store estore.bcmcom.com

Dear Jon,

Thank you for your inquiry on our MX965GME motherboard. BCM Advanced Research specializes in the design and manufacturing of industrial ATX, Mirco-ATX, Flex-ATX, Mini-ITX, and 5.25" system boards. Our products are available for purchase through our authorized resellers Avnet, Arrow and Bell Micro. At this time, our MX965GME has not yet been released and therefore not yet available for purchase. We expect this product to be within the next couple weeks, and I will keep you inquiry on file and notify you when it is available for purchase.

Sounds good! Keep us posted!

Has anyone bought/received the MX965GME yet?

Has anyone looked at the thermal properties of this board to see if passively cooling it is an option?

Does the bios support booting from USB such as flash?

Why would you want to wait until a micro-atx board comes out when this does everything you need now (or perhaps it doesn't).

The AOPEN option looks kind of good, except it has a harddrive and a CD drive and fans.

All I want is a passively cooled MX965GME system, that has CPU, RAM, and FLASH memory to boot. is that really too much to ask?

Any news?

I just got a t7700 but its difficult to find a socket P mobo. The plan was to build a HTPC with T7700, 8600GT Silent, M-audio 7.1, 2.5" HDD, but without the mobo it's hard to get going.

H.Andersson
Sweden

AOpen has the i965GMt-LA socket P board that appears to be available at PC Connection.

derekva wrote:AOpen has the i965GMt-LA socket P board that appears to be available at PC Connection.

It looks now like it's "On Order."

Anyone that has heard or seen m-atx or atx boards for socket p?

Right now it seems that going for the t7700 as cpu for a HTPC was completely wrong..

i haven't found one yet...

i ended up just getting a core 2 duo and regular 775 motherboard for my htpc... surprisingly the cpu fan doesn't spin all the time, even in windows

Looks like the new Aopen board is ITX instead of Micro-ATX. I can't believe its taking this long for someone to release a mATX Socket P board. I've given in as well and gone for a Conroe S775 based machine recently.

I've finally found a MicroATX motherboard for Socket P!! It's made by Commell, called the PMSA. Here's the link: http://www.commell.com.tw/product/SBC/PMSA.HTM

One small problem, I can't find anyone that sells it yet! If anyone finds a supplier, please post, as I can't wait to get my hands on one, as I have a T7500 just sitting here doing nothing!

darylw wrote:I've finally found a MicroATX motherboard for Socket P!! It's made by Commell, called the PMSA. Here's the link: http://www.commell.com.tw/product/SBC/PMSA.HTM

One small problem, I can't find anyone that sells it yet! If anyone finds a supplier, please post, as I can't wait to get my hands on one, as I have a T7500 just sitting here doing nothing!

Dear god in heaven! It has an ISA card slot!

<mumbles incoherently for a bit>

Commell needs to put the crack pipe down NOW. I mean, seriously, it looks like they built that board a la Voltron out of several series of motherboards ("Form Northbridge and Southbridge! Form expansion slots and memory slots! And I'll be the CPU socket!")

-D

holy crap an ISA slot

it seems to have CF and PCMCIA slots as well, although the latter seems to be blocked by some other ports... very interesting design

that said it is the best we've found so far, well done darylw!

Brilliant! Somewhere deep inside I knew I was not saving that Soundblaster AWE32 for nothing. I wonder what the pricerange will be...?

The position of the ATX12V connector looks less than optimal though.

Being very impatient, I ordered one of these direct from the manufacturer as there is no distributor in Spain. They were very helpful and shipped to me almost immediately.

Configuration:
- T7500 and 2GB of RAM.
- OrigenAE S21T case (which happens to have a built-in TFT display)
- Blu-Ray drive
- Vista Ultimate 32-bit.
- 50" plasma connected via DVI (this is the second display)
- Haupagge DVR3000 board.
- AnyDVD to take care of Region decoding, decryption and HDMI issues.

After some initial problems with the Intel video driver (solved promptly by Commell) the system is now up and running.

It is whisper quiet. In fact, the loudest thing is the CPU fan, a coolermaster unit, that came with the motherboard. I'll probably replace it with the Psile passive heatsink as the Origen case has plenty of airflow.

So now the bad news -- video sucks.

In fact, it sucks so much that unless I can get the problem resolved, I will likely wait until a MicroATX motherboard comes along and buy that and plug in a proper video card.

By sucks I mean that I am having nothing but problems getting both monitors to run simultaneously and getting the big monitor to display without any noise at full resolution (flickering pixels for example).

Lastly, and most dissapointing is the fact that video playback -- even on DVD source material -- is AWFUL.

My previous machine was a P4 2.4 with an ancient ATI video card, and it played back video in circles around this new machine.

I've sent another plea for help to Commell, but unless a solution is quick to come, I will have to grin and bear it until a mobo with a slot for a video card comes on the market. I know that Commell have just released one, but customs is such a pain in the ass, that it will cost me a fortune to ship this one back and exchange it for another.

So I'm dissapointed, but I guess blazing new trails involves a bit of pain sometimes...

J.

bcnchef wrote:So now the bad news -- video sucks.

After some more help from Commell, things have for the most part been resolved. All performance issues with video are gone -- playback is as smooth as it was on my previous P4 2.4.

The only remaining problem is video noise on the DVI output. I am running a 5m DVI cable to the plasma display, and green sparkles appear at high resolution.

While I didn't have this problem on my previous PC, I find it hard to fault Commell on this one.

I need to get a DVI extender and see if it solves the problem.

J.

nice!

it's especially good to hear that commell are helping you out on this one. how exactly did they do that, through bios updates?

Darylw: How much did you pay for the commell mobo?

Skottgroda
Sweden

Hi scottgroda,

I haven't bought one yet, as they are still not on sale anywhere in Europe or the US. The one mentioned above is the Mini-ITX one, not the Micro-ATX one that I am after.
I have received a quote for direct supply from Taiwan and it is $235 + $45 postage, so $280 total. They did say that they are just sending out supplies to their distributors that pre-ordered though, so it may be possible to get one online soon.

Darylw

The AOpen i965GMt-LA is now available at Logic Supply.

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/i96 ... etter&ty=1

Bump...

Anyone seen any socket-P 965 boards from the big names yet?

Not sure what constitutes a "big name" but I've been on the lookout and so far have only seen the following:

1) AOpen i965GMt-LA
2) BCM MX965GME
3) Commell LV-679
4) Commell PMSA
5) MSI Fuzzy GM965
6) Axiomtek SBC86840

I think all of them are listed as "industrial motherboards" which apparently means they can charge mucho dinero for them. $250 is about the cheapest I've seen. I got a $400+ quote on one of the Commell boards a while back. Must be a volume (or lack thereof) thing.

Philsophically, I'm totally onboard with the MoDT thing. I've got a Socket M MSI 945GT Speedster with a Yonah proc that's worked great (and the mobo only cost $140). My Mac Mini has a passively-cooled Merom and also works great (draws 20W idle, 44W peak). I can't understand why there haven't been many Socket P mobos. Possible reasons:

1) They're waiting for the Montevina platform (and its Cantiga chipset), due out this May.
2) First generation MoDT systems didn't sell well.
3) Conroe and later desktop chips are pretty power-efficient already. However if this is the case, why does Apple keep using Merom's and not Conroe's in their Mac mini's and iMac's? I'd love to see a head-to-head matchup between similar Penryn desktop and mobile chips. Perhaps the desktop chips can be underclocked enough to approach the mobile chips' efficiency?

The mobile Penryn proc's are just hitting the streets (so far only the T8300 is available). I'm looking to build a nearly silent HTPC soon and am leaning towards the BCM board (has HDMI onboard) or the MSI board (doesn't have DVI or HDMI) with an ADD2 DVI or HDMI card. However, a desktop board with an underclocked proc would probably be cheaper and have more PCI/PCIe slots (for capture cards).

lunadesign wrote:My Mac Mini has a passively-cooled Merom and also works great (draws 20W idle, 44W peak).

My Mini definitely is not fanless. Are you saying yours is running without a fan?

I've been sold on MoDT since the AOpen 855 board. For what I do, they work great, use little power and can be made silent, or at least pretty quiet.

hmsrolst wrote:

lunadesign wrote:My Mac Mini has a passively-cooled Merom and also works great (draws 20W idle, 44W peak).

My Mini definitely is not fanless. Are you saying yours is running without a fan?

I'm pretty sure. At least I've never heard one. I got curious the other day and visited a few sites where they show you how to open up the mini and all of the pics I saw showed a pretty nifty fanless heatsink with some interesting ducting. I've got the 2.0GHz Merom model...bought it a few months back. It does get pretty warm though.

Having upgraded my RAM, I now remember you're right. There is a squirrel cage fan that vents the chassis, but doesn't attach directly to the heat sink. There is circulation through the heat sink but it's not directly connected.