Gigabyte i-Ram 2

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

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doudou
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Gigabyte i-Ram 2

Post by doudou » Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:29 am

Hi there !

Great news today (seen on matbe.com): Gigabyte announces they will release i-Ram 2 in next february ! updated features include: SATA-2, DDR-2, up to 16GB capacity, and 5"1/4 form factor !

Sounds good, eh ?

How about booting in 10secs, in a perfect silence ?
I do believe that SATA-2 will bring the performance boost i-Ram wasn't able to porvide (because, what HDD can sustain 300MB/s ?)

sgtpokey
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Post by sgtpokey » Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:38 am

perfect!! I kind of figured there would be a Rev-2 before they went to market.

The 5 - 1/4 form factor at 8gb/16gb was what I personally would have liked to see. It now has enough capacity to act as the first storage location for an HTPC. (The dumbest thing about HTPCs is the "LiveTV" portion, since LiveTV basically means constant disk-writing). The i-Ram 2 would save on the noise, disk fragmentation, and physical wear on HTPC hard drives.

If they finally do come out with this my plan for the iRAM would be to use it as the primary recording hard drive, from which the raw recorded content would get automaticalliy encoded to DIVX and moved over to the file server during idle time...

sgtpokey
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Post by sgtpokey » Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:42 am

Hmm,
What is the specific link for the news on matbe? I know a little French but I can't find a gigabyte link...

sgtpokey
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Post by sgtpokey » Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:45 am


sgtpokey
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Post by sgtpokey » Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:51 am

Last piece of intersting info:

The memory slots = 8 so budget-wise, you can fill it up with 1 gig sticks for 8 gbs, and if you can find/afford 2gb sticks, you can get it to 16 gb.

It also says it's in a 5.25" bay, utilizing an eSATA connection!! Which may mean they are giving users a choice of mounting it internally or letting it be mounted externally.

sgtpokey
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Post by sgtpokey » Mon Dec 19, 2005 7:55 am

Ah ok, the original news source is in english and sums it up pretty well, the only thing I'm wondering now is if it's still using a PCI/pCIe slot to draw power... If the design is external than it probably also comes with a power transformer as an option.

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=3052

"It will be externally housed with by means of an external case or fitted into the 5.25" bay with eSATA interfaces"

Al
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Post by Al » Mon Dec 19, 2005 8:13 am

sgtpokey wrote:Ah ok, the original news source is in english and sums it up pretty well, the only thing I'm wondering now is if it's still using a PCI/pCIe slot to draw power... If the design is external than it probably also comes with a power transformer as an option.
I was wondering about this as well, since the previous version could still charge when your computer was off, as long as the PSU was still connected to the mains. I can't think of any other ways to do this without external power, which is a rather inelegant solution IMHO. I'm already using extension bars to provide something like 12 sockets in my uni room - not sure quite how I'd find another!

mb2
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Post by mb2 » Wed Dec 21, 2005 6:38 pm

hm i hope it doesn't *require* a 5 1/4" drive bay (althou i can see it would be a good idea as an optional mounting possibility).. not very helpful for an HTPC. (unless ur mad and are willing to accept a full ATX case under your TV)

~El~Jefe~
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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Wed Dec 21, 2005 7:00 pm

htcp's should use a ebay purchased old 2.5" harddrive in my opinion.

they are meant to be partially ghetto and get the job done right? I can see though how cool a ramdisk would be of course.

DDRII. hm. who has that lying around???

frostedflakes
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Post by frostedflakes » Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:09 pm

According to the above articles, it can either be mounted in an external box or 5.25" drive bay. Of course, if you want to mount it externally, you'll need an external SATA connection (high-end boards such as the ASUS A8N32-SLI have this) or a long SATA cable. Actually, I expect Gigabyte will probably include a PCI bracket with external SATA connection.

Also, I suspect that this will have it's own dedicated, brick power supply. To me this makes the most sense, as there's no other way to feed the RAM power constantly (via +5Vsb) when it's mounted externally or in a 5.25" slot. Of course it will probably still include a battery so the RAM will be refreshed during power outages, when the computer's being moved, etc.

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Post by sgtpokey » Wed Dec 21, 2005 10:36 pm

(unless ur mad and are willing to accept a full ATX case under your TV)
haha, I currently use this ATX case for my HTPC. I actually got it in 4 months ago in anticipation of a future useful 5.25" component (such as this rev 2 i-Ram). Funny thing is it's the same footprint as my older microatx coolermaster case:

http://www.mcubed-tech.com/eng/shop.htm
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