Braswell motherboards

All about them.

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Jakoob
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:14 pm

Braswell motherboards

Post by Jakoob » Wed Apr 08, 2015 8:31 am

Since my last thread about Bay-trail boards was quite popular, lets do it again. This time it is Braswell and finally the specs looks like 21st century :)
I guess the only issue will be to find appropriate PSU for the boards if the DC-in is missing, because PicoPSU with adapter is quite expensive and ATX power source will consume itself more energy, than the board in full load :lol:

MSI

MSI N3700I ECO - Intel Pentium Quad-core N3700, 2.40GHz SoC http://www.msi.com/product/mb/N3700I-EC ... o-overview
2x SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, HDMI (1.4), 24-PIN ATX
Image


MSI N3150I ECO - Intel Celeron Quad-core N3150, 2.08GHz SoC http://www.msi.com/product/mb/N3150I-EC ... o-overview
2x SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, HDMI (1.4), 24-PIN ATX
Image

MSI N3050I ECO - Intel Celeron Dual-core N3050, 2.16GHz SoC http://www.msi.com/product/mb/N3050I-EC ... o-overview
2x SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, HDMI (1.4), 24-PIN ATX
Image


UPDATE 1: ASRock Well ASRock will flood the market with Braswell boards

Image
Bigger picture: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9271/S ... arison.png
Some boards are already listed on ASRock: http://www.asrock.com/mb/index.asp?s=Intel%20CPU

For HTPC purposes only: N3150DC-ITX and N3150TM-ITX seems usable, since the others lack DC-in and it is almost impossible to find good and cheap PSU, for such low powered system.


UPDATE 2: ECS

BSWI-D (V1.0A) Intel Celeron N3050, N3150, Pentium N3700 http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Produc ... 17&LanID=0
2x SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, HDMI (1.4) - ONLY 1080p, DC in (maybe only when N3050 onboard)
Image


UPDATE 3: SuperMicro

X11SBA-LN4F Intel Pentium N3700
http://www.supermicro.nl/products/mothe ... A-LN4F.cfm
2x SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, 4xLAN, 1x IPMI, HDMI + DisplayPort, 1x PCIe x8, ATX, 12V DC
Image


UPDATE 4: Biostar

N3150NH Ver. 6.x Celeron N3150
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/int ... p?S_ID=804
2x SATA 6.0 Gbps, USB 3.0, HDMI/VGA, PCIe x1, ATX
Image


UPDATE 5: Asus
Asus pages are total rubbish and Braswell boards are spread everywhere, anyway...

N3050I-C Celeron N3050
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/N3050IC/overview/
2x SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, HDMI, 24-PIN ATX
Image

N3050M-E Celeron N3050
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/N3050ME/
2x SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, HDMI, 24-PIN ATX
Image

N3150I-C Celeron N3150
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/N3150IC/
2x SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0, HDMI, 24-PIN ATX
Image

And again feel free to contribute, I can't catch everything myself :wink:
Last edited by Jakoob on Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:11 am, edited 13 times in total.

Lucky Luciano
Posts: 56
Joined: Wed Mar 25, 2009 6:23 am
Location: Bucharest, Romania

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Lucky Luciano » Wed Apr 08, 2015 10:13 am

If they could squeeze in 4 SATA ports in instead of 2 that would make them great for home servers, especially for a home made NAS.

gietrzy
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 2:09 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by gietrzy » Fri Apr 10, 2015 12:30 pm

What is the point of Braswell?
I have GA-J1900N-D3V and recently upgraded my monitor to UHD@60Hz. I wonder if Asrock will release a board with proper display port.
At the moment the way I see it is you need Intel Nuc5 with myhe ending to be able to drive UHD screen or 5K (UP2715K via 2xmDP).
Disapointed...

Jakoob
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:14 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Jakoob » Sat Apr 11, 2015 2:25 pm

I think Braswell will be able to play 2160p at 30 Hz, which should be enough for watching movies. BayTrail isn't powerful enough for such videostream, or is it?

Of course 2160p at 60 Hz would be nice, but don't forget we are talking about very cheap boards (entry-level) and Intel was always behind with performance on integrated graphics and moreover crippling Atom CPUs to force you to buy Core i3/5/7 models.

What I'm really afraid of is total absence of passively cooled PSU with 60-80 Watts. I'm currently trying to find some reasonably priced 60 W PSU and it is total nightmare. So at the end you will buy super-eco board and power it by 250-300 W PSU, which is total overkill.

Jakoob
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:14 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Jakoob » Mon Apr 13, 2015 1:36 pm

ASRock boards may come very soon :)

From tweaktown forum:
I'm ASRock HQ Technical team.
Regarding of Bashwell (SoC) series product, we will follow Intel road map schedule to release this series product.
The time will be about 2015 Q2.
If have any update news & information, we will release on our official website.
ASRock

ASRock TSD
Eddy

sirocco
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri May 08, 2015 1:25 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by sirocco » Fri May 08, 2015 2:33 pm

Here are 2 boards from Asus ... but using mATX Form Factor ...

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/N3050ME/
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/N3150ME/

gurabli
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 11:30 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by gurabli » Wed May 13, 2015 11:54 pm

Strange that Asus and Asrock are this slow to release decent itx board with Braswell.
What MSI did is for industrial use, not targeted at all for htpc, all 3 versions, basically worth nothing.
Asus got these two boards with Braswell in mATX format? That is a joke... Why didn't they make a full sized ATX board instead? And add that a min of 500W PSU is required...

I really think that none of them are willing to make a decent itx board with proper functions (no COM and LPT ports at I/O - maybe COM header on the board, add DC input to the board with a low power brick 40-50W should be more then enough (perhaps a power slot, but that is too much to ask), a decent sound card and optical S/PDIF out (there are many top quality amps with us without HDMI input), and there you go -- if we can believe the to the first reviews and based on specs, these SoC's will do everything for HTPC needs, and will not be so awfully crippled as B-trail boards are.

For example, ASRock Q1900-ITX is an excellent board, do the same with Braswell SoC (preferably quad core Celeron and Pentium versions) and there we go! Just add the DC input too!

I start to believe that they do not want these boards, as ASRock is pushing its compact mini PC's with Braswell SoC, and Asus the Chromeboxes.

gurabli
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 11:30 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by gurabli » Wed May 13, 2015 11:55 pm

Jakoob wrote:ASRock boards may come very soon :)

From tweaktown forum:
I'm ASRock HQ Technical team.
Regarding of Bashwell (SoC) series product, we will follow Intel road map schedule to release this series product.
The time will be about 2015 Q2.
If have any update news & information, we will release on our official website.
ASRock

ASRock TSD
Eddy
It was me who asked this, and received the above answer. Since then, nothing.

lanac
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 4:08 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by lanac » Mon May 18, 2015 4:01 am

Do you think AsRock will come with more featured boards (with a DC connector, more than 2 sata) ?
I hope so...

Tephras
Posts: 1140
Joined: Tue Sep 07, 2004 11:03 am
Location: Europe

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Tephras » Tue May 19, 2015 11:44 pm

Here's the line-up from ASRock: Eight SKUs including DC-in variants

gurabli
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 11:30 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by gurabli » Thu May 21, 2015 12:22 am

lanac wrote:Do you think AsRock will come with more featured boards (with a DC connector, more than 2 sata) ?
I hope so...
Until now, I was also hoping to get DC and more then 2 Sata, but no it is finally a reality. ASRock didn't disappoint us, there comes a bunch of itx (and matx) boards based on Braswell, and while we still need to wait for a DC version, there are boards with 4 sata ports!!!

I'm afraid that we won't get a Quad-core Pentium N3700 version with DC, but who knows, maybe we got lucky. It is not the Pentium vs Celeron CPU performance that matters (it is basically the same in real world) but the GPU limitations of the N3150 versions, especially the base frequency (400 MHz vs 320 MHz) and the number of EUs (16 vs 12).
We need to test both in real world performance and see how does the 320Nhz and 12 EUs perform in Linux with deinterlacing and upscaling. If it performs as expected, then no reason to go with N3700. If not, remains to be seen how does the N3700 performs.
Still many open questions.

For home server/NAS I would say the N3150 is perfect, no need for the N3700, except if you really need few % of performance. But if that is the case, one should consider more powerful (yes, more power hungry) solutions.

http://www.asrock.com/mb/index.asp?s=Intel%20CPU

lanac
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 4:08 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by lanac » Thu May 21, 2015 4:23 am

Our wishes have been fulfilled :D
The lower TDP of the Celeron N3150 and the fact it supports C-7 state look promising, but for a really ultra-low power NAS, we need the DC connector. I hope it won't be too long before getting these boards.
MSI announced them boards last month but they are still not for sale at the moment... Maybe ASRock will be faster !

gurabli
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 11:30 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by gurabli » Thu May 21, 2015 4:48 am

lanac wrote:Our wishes have been fulfilled :D
The lower TDP of the Celeron N3150 and the fact it supports C-7 state look promising, but for a really ultra-low power NAS, we need the DC connector. I hope it won't be too long before getting these boards.
MSI announced them boards last month but they are still not for sale at the moment... Maybe ASRock will be faster !
Well, the TDP difference between N3150 and N3700 of 2W's is nothing, since the board will probably not consume more power when idle or doing non CPU intensive tasks, therefore it is really not a big difference. Performance will be roughly the same in terms of CPU.
The real questions is: what will N3150's GPU be capable of? The quite low MHz and the 12 EU might be a problem, but guys from Kodi dev team with proper support from Intel will bring out the maximum of these, you can be sure. If the N3150 is capable to deliver the required performance, then it will be an excellent board. Especially as the N3150 will have a DC version!

Now it's time for picoPSU to start making 50W units, and that would be plenty enough for the board + 4 HDD (especially 2.5"), even if you add a decent Intel NIC pcie card or a decent Xonar sound card.

If you plan to use it for NAS only, then N3150 with DC input is the way to go, for home use it would be great. No ECC RAM, but if you look at the price tag of factory NAS units that utilize ECC RAM, well...

Hey, it will be an excellent small Plex server too, for one or two clients it should deliver the required performance for sure!

I believe they will hit stores within a month, stay tuned:)

lanac
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 4:08 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by lanac » Sat May 23, 2015 12:34 am

gurabli wrote:
lanac wrote:Our wishes have been fulfilled :D
The lower TDP of the Celeron N3150 and the fact it supports C-7 state look promising, but for a really ultra-low power NAS, we need the DC connector. I hope it won't be too long before getting these boards.
MSI announced them boards last month but they are still not for sale at the moment... Maybe ASRock will be faster !
Well, the TDP difference between N3150 and N3700 of 2W's is nothing, since the board will probably not consume more power when idle or doing non CPU intensive tasks, therefore it is really not a big difference. Performance will be roughly the same in terms of CPU.
The real questions is: what will N3150's GPU be capable of? The quite low MHz and the 12 EU might be a problem, but guys from Kodi dev team with proper support from Intel will bring out the maximum of these, you can be sure. If the N3150 is capable to deliver the required performance, then it will be an excellent board. Especially as the N3150 will have a DC version!

Now it's time for picoPSU to start making 50W units, and that would be plenty enough for the board + 4 HDD (especially 2.5"), even if you add a decent Intel NIC pcie card or a decent Xonar sound card.

If you plan to use it for NAS only, then N3150 with DC input is the way to go, for home use it would be great. No ECC RAM, but if you look at the price tag of factory NAS units that utilize ECC RAM, well...

Hey, it will be an excellent small Plex server too, for one or two clients it should deliver the required performance for sure!

I believe they will hit stores within a month, stay tuned:)
The TDP difference is interesting in comparison of the baytrail-d boards. I think they should be able to go lower than 10W of power draw.
Performances doesn't matter much for me, I replace an Atom D330, not really a beast :)

Jakoob
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:14 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Jakoob » Fri May 29, 2015 1:49 am

Guys thanks for sharing info, ASRock added to the first post. It looks good, however I hoped for more boards with DC-in, since I have no idea with which PSU to power the other models. Smallest ATX PSU have around 100 W, which is still a total overkill for such system...

pac0
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 12:12 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by pac0 » Fri May 29, 2015 11:58 pm

PicoPSU is the way to go if you want to keep the power usage as low as possible in motherboards without dc/dc onboard :wink:

gurabli
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed May 13, 2015 11:30 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by gurabli » Tue Jun 02, 2015 12:30 am

One choice is indeed picoPSU (80W version being the lowest available atm, but let's hope they will follow the trend and adopt to lower W versions with the Bay Trail and Baswell boards taking over the low power segment and Skylake already announced and released probably by the end of 2015).

Let's assume a total power consumption at peak load around of 15-40W: board with Braswell around 15W, and add 4 x 2,5" hard drives, still around 40W total, and this is the peak power we are talking about, probably it will be much lower in most of the cases, as even if the rig runs as a htpc/nas combo as a home server/media center it will barely reach these figures.

I get the 2,5" drive details from Hitachi Travelstar 5K1000 drives: startup/peak max W: 4.5W, seek and read/write average around 1.8W, so these are really low values.

Of course, the DC version of the board will probably be the good solution (and cheaper, unless the onboard DC part fails and the board is bricked) if it has enough juice to power 4 x 2,5" drives and the board (no information related to this can be found on ASRock's site).

Otherwise, a picoPSU of 50-60W would be a nice choice, but first we would need real precise measurements of Braswell boards with few picoPSU versions. Even quite serious sites use a 250W+ psu to test Bay Trail boards, and they analyse the not so good results. And an expert would be needed who can confirm and recommend a unit that is capable to precisely measure these low watts, as Kill-a-watt is definitely not precise enough for this, especially at these low loads.

Vicotnik
*Lifetime Patron*
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Location: Sweden

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Vicotnik » Tue Jun 02, 2015 11:18 am

Why would you need a picoPSU with lower max capacity? Lower cost? :) What matters is efficiency at low loads and that depends mainly on the brick you pair the picoPSU with.

Jakoob
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:14 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Jakoob » Sun Jun 07, 2015 8:31 am

MSI boards updated in the first post

Regarding PicoPSU: it is quite hard to buy it in my country together with proper power brick and by ordering abroad the price will become too high compared to traditional ATX PSU. I think it is time for the motherboard producers to start selling products with DC-in or better bundled with powerbrick.

gietrzy
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 2:09 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by gietrzy » Wed Jun 10, 2015 8:40 pm

First Asrock mobos comparison: Bay-Trail vs. Braswell
http://www.techspot.com/review/1014-int ... ium-n3700/

lanac
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 4:08 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by lanac » Thu Jun 11, 2015 3:19 am

I wonder how much energy is wasted by using a 500W PSU in the test, because 14 and 21W seems impressive with this kind of PSU !
A picoPSU could achieve less than 10W for the N3050 board :)

CA_Steve
Moderator
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Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Jun 11, 2015 6:35 am

lanac wrote:I wonder how much energy is wasted by using a 500W PSU in the test, because 14 and 21W seems impressive with this kind of PSU !
A picoPSU could achieve less than 10W for the N3050 board :)
The Silverstone Essential PSU used in that review has ~74.5% efficiency at 40W with 230VAC in according to Techpowerup. Roughly 11W loss at 40W..and 230VAC PSUs run a little more efficient than 110V versions. Call it 12W at 40W load for 110V. I haven't seen an ATX PSU with less than 6W loss at low (20W) loads. So, that's the rough range of power loss.

Compare that to a NUC or ZBOX idling at 6W with a wall wart and internal power conversion.

lanac
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 4:08 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by lanac » Thu Jun 11, 2015 11:44 pm

CA_Steve wrote:
lanac wrote:I wonder how much energy is wasted by using a 500W PSU in the test, because 14 and 21W seems impressive with this kind of PSU !
A picoPSU could achieve less than 10W for the N3050 board :)
The Silverstone Essential PSU used in that review has ~74.5% efficiency at 40W with 230VAC in according to Techpowerup. Roughly 11W loss at 40W..and 230VAC PSUs run a little more efficient than 110V versions. Call it 12W at 40W load for 110V. I haven't seen an ATX PSU with less than 6W loss at low (20W) loads. So, that's the rough range of power loss.

Compare that to a NUC or ZBOX idling at 6W with a wall wart and internal power conversion.
Thanks for the numbers :)
6W for a NUC... Wow my Asus router idles at 11W

Jakoob
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:14 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Jakoob » Sun Jun 21, 2015 10:29 am

ECS board added to the first post, in the specs is written only 1080p resolution, which I hope is not true, because that might be a big disadvantage to other competitors.

lanac
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 4:08 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by lanac » Mon Jun 22, 2015 12:27 am

ASRock MB become to be available in France so I guess it's already there in US.
Unfortunately, I haven't seen more reviews yet, especially about realistic power figures...

Jakoob
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:14 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Jakoob » Mon Jun 22, 2015 11:05 am

SuperMicro added first mobo with Braswell (see first post), unfortunately only 2x SATA ports are available :/

Jakoob
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:14 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Jakoob » Mon Jun 22, 2015 11:12 am

Biostar added to the first post, again very basic board with almost zero extra features compared with competitors...

lanac
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 4:08 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by lanac » Sat Jun 27, 2015 12:40 am

Dutch review on ASRock boards : http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/6153/vi ... htpc-basis
Once again power consumptions are impacted by a 80+ ATX PSU...

lanac
Posts: 26
Joined: Tue May 12, 2015 4:08 am

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by lanac » Mon Jun 29, 2015 1:33 am

A french review with -OMG- a picoPSU for consumption test !

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/936-6/consommation.html

Jakoob
Posts: 59
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 3:14 pm

Re: Braswell motherboards

Post by Jakoob » Fri Jul 10, 2015 6:09 am

Asus boards added to the first post

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