Pegatron IPX7A-ION330

[tnynyn]

Ordered this board for a HTPC setup. It was the cheapest Atom 330 ION I can find. I wanted an mobo with so-dimm support since I had extras from upgrading my notebook. Specs:

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ipx7a_ion330

What you guys think?

[cordis]

I've been eyeing that one too, as an upgrade for my current atom board. Be sure to post on how it goes, I'm curious to hear about it. I have a 330 board I'm using in a NAS type system, but I'd definitely want to hear how it works in a htpc with the ION chipset. I'm really intrigued by the pci-x slot, any plans to put something in it?

[ilovejedd]

I'm really intrigued by the pci-x slot, any plans to put something in it?

It's not a PCI-X slot, is it? As far as I know it's PCIe x16 same as you use for graphics cards.

[tnynyn]

Ill be streaming some 720p/1080p content from my home server and will do some basic bench for power consumption and temps. No plans for the PCI-E x16 slot yet. Main reason I got the ION chipset was for watching HD content w/o the need of a video card. Plus it has HDMI. I got a mini-itx case with a fsp 300w psu (which is more than enough for the system).

Heres my build so far:

SilverStone Sugo SG05-B Mini-ITX Case
300w FSP PSU
Pegatron IPX7A-ION330
2x2GB DDR2-800 Corsair SO-DIMM
250GB 2.5" 5200rpm HD
Slim DVD-RW

Will be used for streaming HD and other media over gigabit lan network.

[BDA123]

Does this motherboard have any problems waking from SP3 or running two monitors from the DVI and HDMI at the same time?

[-TDO-]

I have the POV branded version of this board and wake from SP3 is no problem.

HDMI and DVI - I can't test it, but I think the ION chipset is not capable to do this (even the version for socket 775 is not able).

-TDO-

[Methanoid]

Does this also draw plenty of power whilst "OFF" like the POV one?

[BDA123]

The Zotac IONITX has no problem running a screen off the HDMI and one off the DVI at the same time. However it does shut down the VGA connectors if the DVI is used. Therefore, it can't be a limitation of the ION chip set. If you get a chance, please give it a try. Thx.

[BDA123]

FYI

Per Logic Supply's Tech support, "Yes, just tested it. The graphics controls actually include a setup Wizard for configuring two displays. Pretty impressive, for an onboard graphics chip."

[fyleow]

Pair it up with the Chenbro case that has 4x hot swap bays and it would make a really nice low powered file server.

[cordis]

I have that 4 bay Chenbro case with an Atom 330 board in it, and it's a fairly sweet little system. I had to cut up the case a little bit to add a big fan blowing on the processor and switch out the drive bay fans, but it's a resonably quiet solution. But the problem with using this board in it is that although the 4 sata ports will easily hook up to the drives in the bay, if you wanted to use an extra 2.5" drive as a boot (and they have a bracket for it) or a slimline optical drive, you'll need to add a card in the slot. The motherboard I have has an IDE port which is good for those kind of things, but I wanted to go with an SSD boot drive inside and add an ESATA port, so I got a riser and stuck in a low-profile PCI SATA card to give me the extra ports. You could do the same with this board, although PCI-E x16 risers and SATA cards seem to be a lot more pricey than old PCI versions, and I still haven't seen a low profile PCI-E SATA card yet. I'm kind of hoping somebody comes out with an Atom 330/ION board with an old PCI slot on it at some point.

So I'm not really thinking about using this board as a replacement for my current board. This would be more interesting to use with a nice PCI-E x16 graphics card as a dedicated Folding at Home system, or system block. The nice thing about mini-itx is that you can fit it in a 5.25" drive bay, so I can imagine taking my big old CM stacker, putting a decent motherboard in it, and putting a couple of these boards in the drive bays with big graphics cards. Wouldn't be particularly quiet, but it would be a powerful but compact mini-cluster. And that would be kind of cool.

[fyleow]

I have that 4 bay Chenbro case with an Atom 330 board in it, and it's a fairly sweet little system. I had to cut up the case a little bit to add a big fan blowing on the processor and switch out the drive bay fans, but it's a resonably quiet solution. But the problem with using this board in it is that although the 4 sata ports will easily hook up to the drives in the bay, if you wanted to use an extra 2.5" drive as a boot (and they have a bracket for it) or a slimline optical drive, you'll need to add a card in the slot. The motherboard I have has an IDE port which is good for those kind of things, but I wanted to go with an SSD boot drive inside and add an ESATA port, so I got a riser and stuck in a low-profile PCI SATA card to give me the extra ports. You could do the same with this board, although PCI-E x16 risers and SATA cards seem to be a lot more pricey than old PCI versions, and I still haven't seen a low profile PCI-E SATA card yet. I'm kind of hoping somebody comes out with an Atom 330/ION board with an old PCI slot on it at some point.

So I'm not really thinking about using this board as a replacement for my current board. This would be more interesting to use with a nice PCI-E x16 graphics card as a dedicated Folding at Home system, or system block. The nice thing about mini-itx is that you can fit it in a 5.25" drive bay, so I can imagine taking my big old CM stacker, putting a decent motherboard in it, and putting a couple of these boards in the drive bays with big graphics cards. Wouldn't be particularly quiet, but it would be a powerful but compact mini-cluster. And that would be kind of cool.

Thanks for sharing! Do you mind telling us which motherboard you're currently using? What riser do you use? I'm thinking of putting together a similar system myself.

[cordis]

Here's the board I have:

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9832

I got the riser from the same place:

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/80h094340

The riser puts the card away from the board, and there's a little space on that side so a board can go in, although it's right over all the wires coming up from underneath the board (power supply connector and sata cables mostly) so managing those wires can be somewhat problematic. The low profile sata card I have has most of the connections on the top, so I wound up replacing a couple of the provided sata cable with right angle ones to get a shorter connection at the top of the card. There's a fairly light grill over the back of the card, it was relatively easy to cut it out with some tin snips and free up the e-sata port.

Now from a silence perspective, the one big problem was the fan on the heat sink. When I originally ordered it, the picture didn't have one, I was kind of surprised when it arrived. I went through some different fans to replace it, there's a grill over the cpu area, but it's pretty densely covered with plastic over metal, so it doesn't get a lot of air. I finally just cut a big 120mm hole over the area, screwed a nice quiet fan on, and now it's pretty resonable. The drive bays aren't particularly quiet, but I'm usually not bothered by them. I have some 750GB seagates in them, they'd probably be very quiet with wd green drives in them. The other problem fans are the 70mm fans that pull air over the drives and the dc-dc converter. I was able to replace those with 70mm nexus fans from endpcnoise, they're much quieter. I had a backup plan to put 70 to 80mm fan adapters on the back and use 80mm fans outside the case, but that turned out not to be necessary.

[tnynyn]

Finally got everything put together yesterday...just to find out my ram is defective. However, I did run some basic test with a different stick of ram. (Sorry everyone, no pictures since I don't have a camera other than my phone..)

Opening the box...
Came in a regular brown box from Logic Supply with a bag of accessories: I/O faceplate, SATA cable, CD, and Manual (5 pages long). Heatsink was a bit small for my taste. Aluminum on cpu, copper on the gpu/southbridge. Updated to the newest bios on the Logic Supply website once everything was plugged in. There is ZERO option for any type of cpu overclocking or any voltage control, that includes memory as well.

Installation...
I can confirm both DVI and HDMI works at the same time. Installed and loaded Vista Ultimate 32-bit just fine. All drivers were available on Nvidia's site and had to download Realtek HD codec for audio over HDMI to work. No lag in Vista, everything ran nice and smooth.

Testing...
Tested using Kill-A-Watt, Prime95, and CoreTemp. One thing I noticed is that I got an engineering sample of the CPU (Intel Atom 330 Diamondville DC ES). Power and heat is 29w/48c Idle; 37w/86c Load (full load 100%, 4 threads). 0-1w Off; 2w Sleep. The load temp does concern me a bit as max temp on the Atom 330 is 90c I believe, but since this is used just as a HTPC and light computer usage, I think it should be safe.

I streamed a 720p clip from my nas server with gigabit lan. Didn't do so well with just ffdshow and WMP11. Lagged and audio was off. I'll have to test different decoders/software players after I get new memory.

Thoughts..
My case has a 120mm fan blowing in and 80mm exhaust from the PSU. Plenty of ventilation with my current case (Silver Stone SG05). You can probably run fanless in a smaller case, which might be pushing it if there is heavy load. I'm sure it'll be able to handle 720p/1080p just fine with the right software. I'll be sure to test that soon. For a very efficient HTPC and general computer usage, I really like it. Paired up with the SG05 case and the PSU it came with, theres plenty of room for add-ons (another 3.5 drive and slim optical drive) and it the case itself is really nice looking. My total came out to around $350.

[funklizard]

First, thanks, tnynyn for posting your experience with this board. While the Zotac boards seem to get a lot of attention from review sites, I haven't found a whole lot of info online about the Pegatron board.

I just ordered one of these boards from Logic Supply. I'd been looking for a Mini-ITX board for a file server with these features:

• Gigabit ethernet
• PCIe x16 slot (for a RAID card)
• DVI output (ideally, dual-link DVI)

I've been a bit surprised by how few boards satisfy these requirements; in particular, the on-board DVI is missing from more boards than I would have expected. I was seriously considering waiting for revision 3 of the Zotac GF9300-D-E; but ultimately the lower price (after adding a CPU to the Zotac board) and lower power consumption (of Atom versus an LGA775 CPU) convinced me that the Pegatron board was the way to go.

I'll follow up once I've got this thing up and running.

[BDA123]

I have both the Zotac Atom 330 board and the Pegatron boards. I love them both. If you have any comparison questions I would be glad to help in any way I can.

[funklizard]

Well, I've received my IPX7A-ION from Logic Supply. It's a pretty neat little board and I think it will fare well in the Psile. I've fired it up briefly; but my build is missing a few pieces so I haven't really put it through its paces. A few initial impressions:

• The orientation of the heat sinks is such that air flow across the width of the board is ideal; however, I'll be blowing air front-to-back. Since the heat sinks are pretty low-profile and the fins aren't completely solid, I don't think this will be a big deal. (And, no, the heat sinks can't really be reoriented.)
• As some other folks have noted, the BIOS options are pretty spartan. However, a surprising level of control is available for the PWM fan. I have a Nexus 80mm PWM fan I'll be using in this machine.
• Its USB ports don't seem to like my KVM. Hopefully this is just a boot-time issue.
• It seems to work with my RAID card; at least, the BIOS seems to load.

When I started putting things together in the Psile, I found there wasn't really room for a conventional SATA connector behind the optical drive (with the slim IDE to SATA adapter attached). So I've ordered a left-angle SATA cable that should address the issue. Once that arrives, I'll be able to install an OS on this thing.

[BDA123]

Just to give you a little update on the two systems I built and the laptop I run with the system. Both are running seamless ASTC PVR functions in HD and playing my MOVIE LIBRARY in Windows 7 Media Center with DVD and Blu-ray. They are setup as a Home Group on a gigabit home network and streaming everything between each other.

HD HTPC #1
Case – Apex MI-008
Motherboard – Pegatron IPX7A-ION Atom 330
Memory – Crucial 4gb (2x2gb) PC6400 DDR2 800mhz SODIMM
Hard Drives – 2 - Hitachi 1TB hard drives
Tuner – Hauppauge 2250 Dual Tuner PCIe-x1 card (running ASTC)
DVD Drive - LG Blu-ray DVD Player
OS - Windows 7-RC running Media Center
Screen - 46" Sharp 1080p LCD
Remote - Gyration RF Remote and Keyboard (love this)

HD HTPC #2
Case - Jetway JC-300b
Motherboard - Zotac Ionitx D-E Atom 330 (Overclocked to 2.0)
Memory - Corsair 4gb (2x2gb) PC6400 DDR2 800mhz
Hard Drives - OCZ 30gb SSD & WD 320gb HHD
Tuner - Hauppauge HVR-950 (running ASTC)
DVD Drive - LITE-On Internal Slim DVD Drive
Screen - 19" Dell LCD
OS - Windows 7-RC running Media Center & MS Office
Remote - None yet

HD Ultra Mini Laptop PC
Acer 1410
Intel Core 2 Solo 1.44 Ghz SU3500 Processor w/Intel GS45 Graphics
OS - Windows Vista, but I may upgrade to Windows 7-RC until the RTM release

[funklizard]

Just to give you a little update on the two systems I built and the laptop I run with the system. Both are running seamless ASTC PVR functions in HD and playing my MOVIE LIBRARY in Windows 7 Media Center with DVD and Blu-ray. They are setup as a Home Group on a gigabit home network and streaming everything between each other.

Cool... Do the systems run at comparable temperatures? Have you measured their power draws?

I finally got my machine put together. I'm pretty impressed at just how responsive it is. Unfortunately the hardware sensors support in Fedora 11 doesn't appear to be fully Atom-aware; so I don't have good numbers for the CPU temperature. But the GPU temperature is around 55C--which isn't bad compared to the 62C my 8600 GTS hovers around in my primary machine. But I'll probably do some ducting to help direct air out of the back of the case.

Another annoyance is that I can't make the Nvidia driver switch to a resolution above 1680x1050 (on a monitor capable of 2560x1600). I'm pretty sure this is an issue with the driver, though; hopefully it will be corrected soon. Regardless, this machine will be functioning as a file server; so the particulars of its display capabilities aren't all that important.

[BDA123]

They both pull about 33-45 watts max. Both sit between 45-55 degrees. The Ion Itx is just using the CPU fan that comes with the board and the Pegatron is only using the fan on the power supply, which is conveniently located just above the CPU heatsink.

[funklizard]

They both pull about 33-45 watts max.

My IPX7A-ION system idles at 46W. The difference is probably due to the RAID card I have plugged into the PCIe slot. I'm also powering a slim optical drive and a 2.5" hard drive.

[funklizard]

According to the spec sheet that's included with the IPX7A-ION, this board will support up to 8 GB of RAM. Logic Supply doesn't reprint that number on their Web site; and, indeed, when I asked them, they said that the most they'd tested the board with was 4 GB.

So, has anyone tested this board with more than 4 GB? I'd love to know if it actually works.

[-TDO-]

The Atom CPU does not support more than 4 GB.

So it's absolute useless to install 8 GB RAM.

[funklizard]

The Atom CPU does not support more than 4 GB.

The Atom 230/330 support EM64T; so in the case of these processors, that sounds pretty unlikely. There can be a chipset limitation on the maximum supported memory; and, as I understand it, some of the Intel chipsets have just such a limitation. But I don't know about ION.

[-TDO-]

No it does not.

http://download.intel.com/design/proces ... 320528.pdf

Signal Name Type Description
A[32:3]# I/O A[32:3]# (Address) defines a 2 32-byte physical memory address
space. In subphase 1 of the address phase, these pins transmit the
address of a transaction.
In sub-phase 2, these pins transmit transaction type information.
These signals must connect the appropriate pins of both agents on
the processor FSB. A[32:3]# are source synchronous signals and
are latched into the receiving buffers by ADSTB[1:0]#. Address
signals are used as straps which are sampled before RESET# is
deasserted.

[funklizard]

No it does not.

Yes, it does. If it didn't, it wouldn't boot and run x86_64 Linux just fine. Which it most certainly does.

[mczak]

Well the same argument came up in another thread, viewtopic.php?t=54314 so I'm not going to repost that here. But sufficient to say, the paragraph quoted by -TDO- is inconsistent as the amount of address pin numbers is (1) larger than what's needed for a 32bit memory address space (and the pinout in fact has a couple more address pins even), so intel really screwed this up in the datasheet.

[-TDO-]

It is not quoted from me but from an Intel employee and in the Zotac support board from an Zotac technical engineer.

You can either believe them or not.

Yes, it does. If it didn't, it wouldn't boot and run x86_64 Linux just fine. Which it most certainly does.

What has this to do with the ability to address more then 4 GB?
Nothing
(Do you remember the Intel 386SX? It had the 32 bit instruction set but could only address 16 MB.)

[BDA123]

Just to let you know, the Pegatron I have is running the Hauppauge 2250 dual pci tuner very well. I am getting excellent OTA 1080i content. That wasn't much of a suprise. What was a suprise was that I hooked a Hauppauge hvr-950 usb drive up to the Zotac Ionitx board (via usb) and it actually gives me excellent 1080i content without choaking on the video stream. I thought I was going to have to use a HDHomerun or something similar as a tuner since the Zotac doesn't come with a PCI slot. I had tried to use it in my old desktop (AMD Athlon 64-2 dual core with a Nvidia 9400 video card) and in a laptop with a Celeron chip both of which just met the required Hauppauge specs but they both choaked on the video. I had given up on the usb tuner. To my understanding the usb tuners nearly all use the cpu to encoding/decoding and can be taxing on the system. So, I was really suprised when the Atom 330 was able to utilize the tuner perfectly. My guess is that the integrated Ion chipset combined with Windows 7 must be allowing the GPU to do all of the encoding/decoding. So for those of you looking at the Pegatron board just because you want a PCIe slot for a tuner, well the Zotac may be capable of more than it seems. I haven't tried the new Asus AT3N7A-I board because I am not that impressed with the PCI slot vs the PCIe-16 provided by the Pegatron, but I have to say that the bluetooth and 7.1 audio are nice features.

[hramrach]

I don't recommend this board.

The problem with the hardware is cooling. I installed WinXP and tried some 3D mark old enough to still run on XP and the graphics won't heat too much. It was slightly over 60°C, and the graphics cooler is quite large with sockets for fan screws.

The problem is with the CPU. I tried playing some trailer which went poorly. Apparently the GPU acceleration of video playback is not available in XP and only relatively small videos like 640x480 would play decently. The CPU would get very hot, I turned the PC off when it was 100-105°C. With ZM-NBF47 mounted in place of the ridiculous tiny piece of copper the CPU would get to 80-85°C in a pretty slim closed case (but with some airflow due to PSU fan).

The most serious problem is lack of support. I flashed my board with the 903 BIOS from LogicSupply because I wanted the alleged USB bootability. Unfortunately, this bios always says that my NVRAM checksum is wrong and only allows to re-enter the setup or to booting with default settings. No adjustments in the BIOS setup are possible anymore because the defaults have to be reloaded on every boot.

I got another copy of a 903 BIOS from the retailer where I bought the board (after long delay) and it is broken in the same way.

There is a Pegatron web site which has no info on it. No drivers, BIOSes, tools, manuals, FAQs, nothing, not even list of products.

I tried to contact Pegatron and they say that they are an OEM manufacture company and if I wanted a custom boards produced they would gladly send me an offer but they cannot publish details about their products because it could harm the interests of their OEM customers.

Apparently this also applies to products that are sold under the Pegatron brand and for which there is no other place to turn for support.

Until that policy changes there is no support whatsoever for Pegatron products.

To be fair they also said that they would forward my request to the appropriate department if I name the product about which I want more information. I sent the description of my problem a month ago and did not hear back from them so far.

In a way I am glad I broke the board. Now I know I should avoid Pegatron stuff.