Advice: ATX motherboard to take mobile C2D chip

[ikonia]

Chaps,

I'm looking at putting together a small low powered machine to act as a disk caddy. I've read the review of the thecus N5200 disk array and seemed to run 5 disks on a 200 watt PSU without any issue.

I'm consdiering a board with a c2d mobile chip so that it scales well with power and can upscale if required.

I'd be very interested in hearing opinionson a board with onboard sata ports (2) and at least 2 PCI slots.
Onboard video would be a real plus.

I'd be especially interested if you have or know someone who has the kit your going to recommend.

thanks.

[staffsMike]

Thats an exensive way to do it really..mobile chips are around £130 for the base. You would be better off with an AMD 3600 X2..they are fairly low powered and about £45.

The Abit micro ATX boards would be my choice..

something like this.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=548095

That has the minimum of your requirements but will make a very low power system. That with a couple of hard drives wouldn't need more than 200w.

If you're dead set on a mobile c2d then this is what I would have.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=451525

But it really is an expensive route with no real benifits.

[ikonia]

thats a very interesting comment, thank you.

I'm quite surprised that your suggesting the difference in power consumption between the example amd X2 and say a c2d is not that different.

It sounds like I was wrongly under the impression that one of the key advantages of a c2d chip was the power scaling and that it was a significant leader of the amd option.

I'm certainly not dead set on c2d, it sounds like I was just reading/listening to tosh.

thank you for you opinion