Atom-Based Mini-ITX Motherboard Available

LWATCDR writes "A company out of the UK is selling an Intel Atom-based Mini-ITX motherboard. It has a riser for two PCI cards, two SATA ports, and an IDE ports so it could make a great little NAS, firewall, MAME box, or low-power workstation. To add to the fun it has a real parallel port 'perfect for hardware hacking,' a real RS-232 port 'perfect for data acquisition,' and two USB ports. The price is around $100, give or take, and hopefully it will come down over time. All in all a nice system to run Linux, WindowsXP, BSD, or maybe even OpenSolaris on."

What is the total watts used?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great that the cpu is 4 watts, but how much does the whole motherboard take?

Limited features on that board

[eagl]

Deal killer for that board - no DVI or HDMI output combined with no PCI-e slot. Either the digital vid output or a slot suitable for a reasonably new video card with DVI/HDMI HDCP compliant output would be sufficient, but having neither makes this a rather bad choice for any type of HTPC and of limited use to many others who, like me, think a single analog video out port is a relic from the DOS ages.

That said, for someone who wants a reasonably quick and low power system and doesn't mind an analog video output (car-puter builders?) this would be a great little motherboard.

For me... No DVI and no reasonable way to add fast digital video out means it's not even on my lottery win wishlist.

Re:4 watts?

[evanbd]

If you read the page, the fan is on the northbridge, not the CPU. Which makes me wonder: how much power does the northbridge draw, anyway? And what's the point of a 4 watt CPU if the northbridge draws more than that?

Re:4 watts?

[level_headed_midwest]

945G northbridges are rated somewhere around a dozen watts as they're made on the old 130 nm process node. My laptop has the 945GM and the northbridge actually runs hotter than the CPU, which isn't surprising as the CPU's TDP is a couple watts less (C2D U7500.)

Exactly!!

[Stoutlimb]

The company I work for is using old bloated PC's with out dated knoppix running on them for computability reasons. Our mission critical industrial hardware runs partially on serial. USB to serial doesn't work, because of conflicts with other apps that use USB. They're always slow, unreliable, and power hogs. Since they are vehicle mounted, it's not uncommon to kill a deep cycle battery after a long days work, thus requiring a boost to start the vehicle. I'll be forwarding these specs to my boss.

Re:Serial AND Parallel

[flnca]

You'd be surprised: Serial ports are still being used in industrial applications. And who doesn't like to connect text terminals to their computer? ;) (mainframes still use that, but it's also nice for UN*X boxes when you've got problems with a framebuffer driver or X ... really, a null modem cable can be a useful thing!)

And parallel ports are still useful also, many printers still have a Centronics port in addition to the USB port. Often, the parallel port cabling is more reliable (and portable) that USB. Most UN*Xes support parallel port printers, but not all support USB printers properly. :)

Re:Way out of date chip set and you can better boa

[caladine]

1) This CPU runs on **4 watts!** I'm not sure my cell phone can run on 4 watts in standby.

Just to give you an idea - even the top of the line smart phone right now doesn't consume anywhere near 4 watts under full load. Atom is an interesting idea for a MID device, but the power consumption is still far too high for too many smaller applications. Let's think about it, if your cell at idle used anywhere near 4 watts in standby, you'd kill the battery in less than two hours with the largest of cell phone batteries.

Re:Way out of date chip set and you can better boa

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a PC with an ASUS M3A78-EMH and AthlonX2 4850E that uses about 50 watts under load and about 30 watts idle (not including hard drives). As I understand it, these Atom boards do anywhere from 26 watts idle to about 35 watts under load. Performance wise this Athlon will wipe the floor with the Atom, so it will be "under load" for a shorter period of time than the Atom. In all likelyhood this will result in the Athlon using *less* energy overall than this atom CPU since it can remain idle much longer. Now compare the specs of the ASUS motherboard to the crappy intel one and the comparison tilts in favour of the AMD part significantly. I sure hope Intel has something else up their sleeve, because if this is it then they are in big trouble.

This is a scam, it is not an ATOM platform

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not an ATOM platform.
What you have here is a plain old motherboard.
A few notes:
The real ATOM platform does not have PCI, only PCIe. It does not have SATA, only IDE (poor), It has an HDMI output (actually SVDO). Also the ATOM platform is a 2 chip solution, while this board is a 3 chip solution.
The Atom platform cannot support more than 1Gbyte dram while this board promises 2Gbyte.
Last - the ATOM does not need an heatsink.
See http://www.intel.com/products/centrino/atom/index.htm
for the real stuff.

Re:Kontron has one with 10/100/1000

[Anonymous Coward]

A TPM... oh wonderful. I like my motherboards to come with integrated chains to imprison me.

Imagine a beowulf cluster....

[crhylove]

So I've been rather seriously toying around with the idea of putting together a beowulf cluster, just to flex my tech muscles. What would be the most cost effective?

I can get used xboxes from gamestop for $60 each, it looks like soon enough I'll be able to get atom boxes for about $200 each... They also have gamecubes down at gamestop for $50 each.

What is the cheapest way to cluster, and how many nodes would I need to beat any core 2 duo out on the market? And what distro should I use, and can I get real time frame rates in something like ray traced quake 3 at a decent resolution?

rhY