ITX Build Advice

[Cornholio]

The problem here is that the OP doesnt know what he wants to do with it, and if I was in his position, I would rather get the extra flexibility than be slapping myself later because it wont do what I decided to do with it.

Thats the attitude im taking buddy, i mean..i love my media pc it just seems too big for what it is, why have such a bulky HTPC when i can have a ITX HTPC ?.

One question...is there anyway of finding out what sata chipsets these mobo's are using, or do some boards have 1 pci slot, i will not be using it for gaming i have my pc for that .

[strike-down]

The jetway board I posted about has 4 sata ports and a pata port on an embedded MCP78S Chipset and a pci slot. Look at the link I posted earlier, gives all the details on that website for most of the available mini ITX boards.

[Camrada]

There is an interesting article here and here about the Intel board, which goes on to say,

"The fact of the matter is that except for 3D games, large databases, and very compute-intensive applications such as MPEG2/4/H.264 encoding, an Atom 330 will more than do the job for a regular desktop user."

You'll probably find that most ITX board have a single PCI slot, but if t=you have a case that supports it, then you have the option of a dual-riser such as this one

[strike-down]

Again, the main problem is the chipset. From the OPs last post I would assume this would be used as some sort of HTPC to replace his 'bulky' one. This could well mean HD video encoding and playback, which the nvidia 8200 chipset is brilliant for.

[Camrada]

that may be so, but the OP has a desktop PC which he uses for gaming, so that would be much better suited for HD Video encoding than any ITX system he builds. From my point of view, an ITX system should be very low power, silent and capable of the core functions (web browsing, playing dvd quality video, video conferencing, running office apps) which the Atom is more than capable of.

The first iteration of the Atom board were based around the 270 single core chip, which wasn't capable of a great deal, but decent enough in its own rights. The 330 dual-core chip is fantastic for doing what it needs to.

In this case, if HD Video playback is an essential parameter, then it might be a smart idea to hold on a couple of months and wait for the ION platform to be released, then you'll be moving into Pico-ITX arenas. Granted the 945 chipset wont set your hair on fire, but it is capable for what many need it to do in a small low-power system. The atom 330 tdp = 8W, Athon 4850e tdp = 45W (www.cpu-world.com), so looking at the total cost of ownership over 2 years say, the atom is a far better choice.

What might be a way forward is to go for the atom 330 board, then later in the year or next year (when prices fall) upgrade the Intel board for one with ION enabled one for about £60(ish) - total cost of ownership will still be less than the single AMD system, and the ATOM&ION combination will be winning pairing. As it stands at the moment the Atom chip uses about 500% less power than the energy efficient Athlon 4850e (~£50).

NVIDIA reckons this makes implicit sense, too, as it is announcing, today, a new platform, dubbed ION, that marries the potent GeForce 9400M to Intel's well-received Atom processor

Article here

The NVidia 9400M is the IGP that Apple are going to be using in their mid-high end laptop Macbook pro's - enabling decent gaming and HD Video.

My way of thinking is using the Atom 330 board for the next 12 months, then simply swapping out the board and upgrading that next year to one with ION built in. Also, at that point integrating a slimline Blu-ray player, if prices for discs have come down in price. Total cost of owner ship over the 2 years will still be a huge chunk of change less than the AMD solution (don't forget that the Atom's tdp is ~500% less than the athlon 4850e, cost of electricity over 2yrs is a factor to consider).

[scaryjim]

I think there's 2 ways to go with ITX.

The first is to build a low power, lightweight system that will hadle the basics but no frills, and use it like a net-top: browse, email, listen to music, maybe watch the occasional DVD. For that, there's no point paying anything more than you absolutely have to, and the Little Falls 2 fits the bill perfectly.

The other way is to push the extremes of what you can do in small form factor - just for the hell of it. Personally, I'd love to get the J&W 780G Mini-ITX, add a 4850e, watercool the whole damn thing and then overclock it as far as possible. It'd be expensive, a lot of hard work, and I could easily build something mATX in a reasonably small case that'd perform better at a lower cost. But where's the challenge in that?

So, ask yourself, why do you want to build a mini-ITX system? If it's just to get experience with mini-ITX and have a working PC at the end of it, go cheap and get a board with integrated Atom. If it's to see just how far you can push an ITX platform, go for the the J&W 780G. Either way, have fun

[Pob255]

My way of thinking is using the Atom 330 board for the next 12 months, then simply swapping out the board and upgrading that next year to one with ION built in. Also, at that point integrating a slimline Blu-ray player, if prices for discs have come down in price. Total cost of owner ship over the 2 years will still be a huge chunk of change less than the AMD solution (don't forget that the Atom's tdp is ~500% less than the athlon 4850e, cost of electricity over 2yrs is a factor to consider).

I do agree with you on the atom 330 it's a great cpu for the money and low power usage.
I also agree the ION will see the atom 330 really take off in terms of functionality as the 9400m gpu is going to seriously boost it in terms of gaming and video encode & decode.
Price could be a real stickler though, we've seen the 8200 come out in matx for around £50 then the 9400 matx boards come out for around £120

So I would definately urge caution atm, lets wait for the ION to come out before jumping for it.
Also remember you're not just buying a motherboard here, the atom cpu is soldered on granted that has some advantages as it's a compleate unit, but it can push the price up and limits flexability.

All told currently it's a tough call, AMD2+ have the benefit of felxability and the very good 8200 or 780G chipsets
Atom 330 & 945board, has the advantage of lower cost, heat and power use.

[DanceswithUnix]

Total cost of owner ship over the 2 years will still be a huge chunk of change less than the AMD solution (don't forget that the Atom's tdp is ~500% less than the athlon 4850e, cost of electricity over 2yrs is a factor to consider).

Faulty logic there, sorry.

1/ TDP is for when the CPU is running flat out. The Athlon, like any modern CPU, takes only a few watts when idle.

2/ an Athlon is way faster than the atom, so it can crank up to 45W for a short time, get the job done, then switch back to a few watts at idle. That is often more efficient overall than letting a slower CPU keep the system going full throttle for a long time.

Note that an entire dual core 8200 chipset based PC can be built that draws about 50W from the wall as long as you don't start actually using it

Linkety linkness...

[scaryjim]

an Athlon is way faster than the atom, so it can crank up to 45W for a short time, get the job done, then switch back to a few watts at idle. That is often more efficient overall than letting a slower CPU keep the system going full throttle for a long time.

An interesting Addendum to that is Atom 230 and 330 *don't* have full EIST, so they won't clock down when idle. Semprons / Athlons do have Cool'n'Quiet so can significantly reduce idle power-draw by clocking down to a few hundred MHz.

Atom N270 and Z500-series do have EIST, but they're more aimed at the laptop / mobile market.

[Camrada]

Faulty logic there, sorry.

1/ TDP is for when the CPU is running flat out. The Athlon, like any modern CPU, takes only a few watts when idle.

2/ an Athlon is way faster than the atom, so it can crank up to 45W for a short time, get the job done, then switch back to a few watts at idle. That is often more efficient overall than letting a slower CPU keep the system going full throttle for a long time.

Note that an entire dual core 8200 chipset based PC can be built that draws about 50W from the wall as long as you don't start actually using it

Linkety linkness...

I'm a little confused now to be honest. With the link you gave and your logic you say the 4850e coupled with 8200 chipset draws 50W when idle, the research I've previously down echoes this with an idle draw of around 50W. Further reading led me to think the Athlon has a draw of between 79W-100W under load.

The Atom 330 on the LF2 board has an idle power draw of 41W and a draw of under 50W under load. I'm not disputing the Athlon chip is more powerful, but (and my thinking may be flawed) doesnt the Atom consume less power?

You say that the advantage of the Athlon is it'll be able to run processor intensive tasks (tasks which put the processor under heavy load for duration) faster. You're quite correct, though for the duration of the task it'll be drawing more power than the Atom. Some examples, and keeping in mind what the purpose of the ITX system is for (mentioned previously)

watching a 90min video: I cant watch the video faster, so what difference does it make how fast the processor can run.
reading/writing a document in word: speed of the chips will not be a factor.
browsing the internet: again there will be a negligible difference between the two chips.
video conference (skype): a 30 min video conversation will put both chips under load, but which is going to draw more power?

and with the help of your link and info, the LF2 board under load draws less power than the Athlon draws idle...

There are ACPI and power management controls in the BIOS, so overall, if the system is used for what it has been designed for (watching video clips{prev mentioned it can handle MKV and HD}, office apps, browsing the internet and video conferencing), even under load the LF2 board will draw less power than the Athlon setup running idle...

[DanceswithUnix]

Apologies for the late reply, lost sight of this thread.

The thing to remember is that the Athlon system will, at idle, be pushing 1GHz true dual core and so its definition of idle is actually way more powerful than the Atom system at full load. The power draw of a CPU follows Ohms law, so it goes up by the square of the voltage across it. The trick here is that the BIOS drops the cpu speed to 1GHz, but then thanks to the reduced operating speed it can then reduce the voltage for a big power saving. On Athlon, you would watch a DVD at idle.

This is why I dismissed Atom for general home use. *All* current Athlon CPUs throttle back to 1GHz at reduced voltage so it doesn't matter that much which model you get, at idle they all draw very little. Should your usage pattern change, then the Athlon has the option of scaling up the CPU freq, spinning the fans a little faster and getting the job done when Atom would just hit a wall.

So translating this to the figures you had, an Athlon system at 50W (the actual CPU draw is I think about 7W) is faster than an Atom system at 50W. At stock settings, you probably can't configure an Athlon system down to 41W (though you might if you undervolt it, the opposite of overclock, but then perhaps the Atom could get the same savings and perhaps like many people you want to run at stock speeds for peace of mind).

BTW, lowest I have personally seen out of a PC was a VIA chipset based Shuttle PC with Socket 754 Sempron 64 1.8GHz, and that idled at 45W from the wall (with DVD rom and a hard disc installed).

Last problem I had (I nearly bought the Gigabyte Atom board at one point) was the chipset. I want gigabit ethernet and half decent graphics. I can get both of those on a decent chipset motherboard, but with one PCI slot I have to choose. Plugging in a card to upgrade the deficient chipset will certainly blow the 9W power difference.

Of course better things are on the horizon for Atom, and I may well want one of the Ion platform devices when they come out to handle the entertainment in my kitcar

Anandtech Atom+Ion review

Lastly, I am sure the Core2 Intel stuff is capable of low power as well, I just don't have personal experience of minimising power consumption on that platform. Yes, I am a cheapskate