Sapphire IPC-AM3DD785G - AM3 mini ITX motherboard with PCI-E 2.0 16X slot!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Finally socket AM3 has a decent mini-ITX motherboard available:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presenta...&pid=319&lid=1

It will cost around the £100 mark AFAIK.

[alsenior]

ohh this would be nice for a mod project that is in the planning stages

[kmac]

Mini-ITX is cool but you pay a substantial premium for the small size - oh the cost of being cool

Also as I've found, the fans on the small cases are harder to silence completely as you can with say a 120mm fan

Still, I like em and I'd happily build another mini-ITX system if I could find an excuse to do so

[scaryjim]

So, the only question now is: 3470 for the sheer coolness of mITX Hybrid Crossfire, or 5570 for better gaming performance?

[Blaineoliver]

5570 if you have any sanity

[kmac]

Hybird crossfire on a mITX board would be uber cool.

[Dayvo]

The higher efficiency of current intel CPU's has always made a AMD mini ITX setup less attractive to me.

Every watt counts when you're building small machines with small PSU's and limited cooling, with AMD you get less performance per watt then you do with intel.

[scaryjim]

5570 if you have any sanity

If I had any sanity I wouldn't even have thought of the possibility of hybrid crossfire. There's just something about "world's smallest crossfire computer" that appeals

But yes, for sanity's sake a 5570 would be the way to go. You could make one hell of a great LAN box with an Athlon II X3, a 5570 and one of these...

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

One of these motherboards with a 95W Phenom II X4 945 or a 65W Phenom II X4 910e,a SG05 and an HD5770 1GB would make a nice SFF gaming computer.

[scaryjim]

true enough CAT, but you'd want a decent-sized case to get sufficient airflow and fit that GFX card in. I've perssonally never seen the point in going mITX then putting everything in a case that's almost as big as a (well-designed) mATX case. The whole point for me would be going as small as possible, which is where a nice low profile card like the 5570 comes in!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBH,I am just happy that now there is a mini ITX motherboard for AMD processors which actually has a full length and full speed PCI-E 2.0 16X slot!

At least there is now more choice if you want to build a mini ITX gaming rig.

[Funkstar]

Ignore the gaming side, you could build a nice mini NAS box with a hardware RAID controller with that board.

Standard Intel boards have issue with the likes of the Dell PERC RAID cards, AMD systems handle them just fine.

[Pob255]

true enough CAT, but you'd want a decent-sized case to get sufficient airflow and fit that GFX card in. I've perssonally never seen the point in going mITX then putting everything in a case that's almost as big as a (well-designed) mATX case. The whole point for me would be going as small as possible, which is where a nice low profile card like the 5570 comes in!

I know nvidia has pritty much become a dirty word now, but what about sparkle's low profile gts250, not quite up to the 5770 but still more performance than the 5570 and will cope well at 1650x1080

[scaryjim]

It's a nice thought - I do like the look of that (sparkle also did a 9800GT low profile which was kind of funky!) but the coolers on those are relatively huge - certainly 2 slot - and of course they pull a lot more power than a 5570!