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Intel Hardware

Pentium M Goes SFF 191

Jonesy writes "The folks at The Tech Report have reviewed an interesting new small form factor box (a roughly toaster-sized desktop PC) from AOpen based on the Pentium M. As expected, performance is on par with a Pentium 4, but noise and power consumption are much lower. The reviewer says, 'Subjectively, the EY855-II was simply amazing. At one point, I sat with the system at ear level two feet away. I closed my eyes and strained to hear it, but was unable to do so.' The one fly in the ointment: relatively high prices still on Pentium M processors, although that could change soon."
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Pentium M Goes SFF

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  • by bigtallmofo ( 695287 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:00PM (#11958379)
    I've attended the Seattle Folk Festival many times and often wondered, "When are they going to get mobile processors here?"
  • by Cr0w T. Trollbot ( 848674 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:01PM (#11958392)
    How on earth has the Wintel world decided that now is the right time for a quiet, small-form factor computer? I have no idea! *coughcoughMAC MINIcoughcough*

    Crow T. Trollbot

    • by psyconaut ( 228947 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:04PM (#11958433)
      'cept this is $324 bare bones (still needs memory, hard drive, etc.) and is bigger and uglier and still not as quiet. ;-)

      -psy
      • by TheViffer ( 128272 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:17PM (#11958594)
        Well .. the base Mini Mac is $499 and still needs memory, hard drive, etc also if you want to run OSX with any amount of performance.

        But your right, its nothing more then a "narrow" shuttle .. and it does look like a toaster.
        • For its price point and target demographic, the Mac Mini is good to go for 99% of all people.
      • $325 with or without a processor? Uh... without... hmmm. bit pricey then, especially with the current prices of the 'M' chips.

        The other difference is the mini has an old but competant video chipset (Radeon 9200)... the AOpen has "Intel 855GME". Since they didn't even mention it in the review and used an AGP video card, I assume it's not up to much.

        Of course it's a lot more expandible. It's really not in the same ballpark as the mini. It's more like a step up from the Cube.
    • Sure Macs had the first Small form factor Computer in the G4 Cube, but Shuttle and other PC Case makers have been making much more realistic(buyable) products for awhile now. The only reason Mac has the Mini is becuase of the inroads these other Case makers have been doing.
      • "The only reason Mac has the Mini is becuase of the inroads these other Case makers have been doing" ...what?

        Apple did the first small-form-factor PCs, like, EVAR, but somehow the mini traces its lineage back to the clunky ol' Shuttle lunchboxes?

        I mean, I guess you could make that make sense, but I don't know why you'd want to...
      • Sure Macs had the first Small form factor Computer in the G4 Cube...


        "First" small form factor was the G4 Cube?! You kids these days! Ever heard of the Sun IPC [obsolyte.com]?
        /me shuffles off to take his Geritol...
    • *coughcoughMAC MINIcoughcough*

      *coughcoughMAC PLUScoughcough* So quiet you can hear the capacitors venting(smoking). Or, as was once said: "So quiet you could hear a mouse peeing on a cotton ball"
    • How on earth has the Wintel world decided that now is the right time for a quiet, small-form factor computer? I have no idea! *coughcoughMAC MINIcoughcough*

      Crow T. Trollbot


      Probably from the already existent small-form factor Intel/AMD market. If I had to guess.
    • ...It looks like those very small "breadbox" case designs for PC compatibles that has been around for a couple of years.

      In short, it's not even anywhere close to being inspired by the Mac Mini.
  • by AthenianGadfly ( 798721 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:02PM (#11958401)
    I had a processor make exactly the same sound once. Usually after they go 'sfff' they're pretty much dead.
  • by peculiarmethod ( 301094 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:02PM (#11958402) Journal
    That thing is a lot of badass electronic-fused-with-acoustic musical stage time.

    I'm a musician, and I know I'm getting one for that.
    • just wait untill it gets some processing work for it's cpu and the fan ramps up.

      how much cpu power you need on stage anyways? plenty of quiet options.
      • If you've been to a music event in the last 50 years, you'll notice that most musicians are using amplification that will generally over power a system that one is unable to hear "with the system at ear level two feet away".

        Philip Glass, OTOH, probably wouldn't need this much power.

  • Pentium M? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:02PM (#11958407)
    The Pentium One Thousand!!!! We'll sell you the whole processor, but you'll only need the edge.
  • So the difference? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel.johnhummel@net> on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:03PM (#11958414) Homepage
    I'm looking at the pictures, and so far I see a system with more beef than a Mac Mini (2 DIMM slots instead of 1, etc), maybe a little bigger and more expensive. But quieter and less powerful than a loaded Shuttle.

    So somewhere in between the two, then.
    • It is also 3 times the size of a mac mini ,Perhaps a little more beef , but still .ok perhaps i am a little shallow but it still is not as nice looking
      So what we have is , a pc notebook in the shuttle form

      perhaps im too harsh , as i can imagine a silent x86 system would be lovely.
      The problem is , i dont see intel building the amd64 extensions onto the pentium M anytime soon ( unfortunatly) or even duel core. and they will contiune to beat the dead p4 horse for a long time to come .

      ((on a side note , does
      • Functionality aside, it's one of the ugliest things I have ever seen offered for sale as a PC. Isn't the idea of SFF that you can keep it on your desk? Aopen desparately need to hire some industrial designers. They don't have to make their boxes expensive but they do have to work out a desirable appearance, right now they appear to be making whatever size fits and tacking on bits of chrome and crap until it looks busy.
      • (on a side note , does anyone have any benchmarks comparing a pentium m procesor to a G4)

        Yea, it's not pretty: http://barefeats.com/al15b.html [barefeats.com]
        PM beats G4 per-clock in CineBench. Keep in mind that the PM is 500Mhz faster than the G4 now, and has twice as much cache as it did when that test was run.
        • I actually like this comparison. Nice find
        • Hm i dont think this is a fair comparison , iirc cinibench is highly optimised for x86 and the PPC version is not on par

          However i found some photoshop comparisons today and dammed if i can remember where , but that really did turn the tables on the pentium M

          so i guess it looks like its the same comparison as AMD to intel , in that it depends what you want to do
    • Uh,... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
      Don't discount the all-out performance of a Pentium M simply because it was designed for mobile use and consumes very little power. I've seen a few gaming benchmarks that showed the Pentium M can keep up with an Athlon 64 pretty well, the difference was no more than five percent. Side-by-side, few gamers would be able to tell the difference unless there was a meter saying what the FPS was.
      • I'm not going to qoute the entire 21 page article [anandtech.com] from Anandtech, but the conclusion was pretty clear.

        Basicly, the summary is that mobile chips are often limited by memory bandwidth etc. The Pentium M is stunning, and an even match for PIV/A64 under those conditions, and with lower power consumption to boot. But when you remove the constraints and move to a desktop, it does not perform as well as the desktop chips. E.g. it has a large cache to deal with a slow memory bus. Give it DDR400 (or soon, DDR2-667)
  • Wow, it looks exactly like a shuttle with a different front panel...very interesting.
  • PS/2? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by chudik ( 746965 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:04PM (#11958430)
    Interesting that they are still bothering with PS/2 for keyboard and mouse. I just got a new Dell at work. No PS/2, just 8 USB 2.0 ports.
    • That, and the ugly-ass floppy port in what's an otherwise attractive case.
    • by imroy ( 755 )
      I don't know why the PC world stays with the PS/2 ports. Most mice now seem to be USB, but I still don't see many USB keyboards. I bought a Logitech USB keyboard back in 2000 with a built-in 2 port USB hub. I plug my mouse into one port and use the other for USB flash drives. I thought it was the way to go, but I'm still waiting for the world to catch up!
      • but I still don't see many USB keyboards.

        Simple reason for that...

        "Hit F1 to continue or F2 to enter setup"

        Yes, most BIOSs include some degree of support for USB keyboards at boot-time. But, having dealt with a good number of different PCs and USB keyboards at work, I would consider such "support" sketchy at best. Most commonly, they don't work at all. Right after that, in a bizzare, horrible twist of fate, everything works except the function keys (actually I'd image any extended key sequence wou
    • I have a very good use for a PS/2 port: my IBM Model M keyboard (manufactured in 1987). I tried dozens of different keyboards, and it's still the only one I truly enjoy using. Not to mention that after almost 20 years of use, it still works like new.

      I know there is a company that makes M replicas with a USB connector. But I paid $10 for my M, whereas the replica is around $100. Another solution I looked into is a PS/2 to USB adapter. The ones that do true hardware conversion are also quite expensive (the c
  • Goes to show... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sensible Clod ( 771142 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:06PM (#11958458) Homepage
    they've overhyped the Pentium 4 for 4+ years, and underhyped the Pentium III. The P3 was a far better chip, and still is. That's why they re-released it as the M.
    • Re:Goes to show... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by adam1101 ( 805240 )
      The P-M is a pretty good chip, a 2.0Ghz Dothan is more than a match against a 2.0Ghz Athlon-64 [gamepc.com], while using less power. The only problem is that they are still very overpriced.
      • The only problem is that they are still very overpriced.

        WRONG.. the TWO problems are: 1) Price and 2)Mobo availability (and price).

        Athlon64 wins primarily because it is faster, costs a whole hell of a lot less, and is much more available.

        Intel fucked themselves over with the P4 and have still yet to learn from it... lets hope they learn in time to recover from an AMD marketshare majority.

    • Your close to the truth, the reality is the M is a mixture between the P4 and the P3 architectures. The M seems like a very good processor to run in Desktop Systems that do not do a lot of number cruching (number cruching such as games, video encoding, CAD, graphics rendering). Still the P4 architecture is good at processing larges amounts of data since the clock speed can be so high. To read more about the differences of the chips go to http://www.cpuid.com/PentiumM/index.php [cpuid.com]
    • Re:Goes to show... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:26PM (#11958686)
      The problem is the Pentium M is not a Pentium III, but is based off of P6 (the same core archetecture dating all the way back to the Pentium Pro).

      They didn't really underhype the Pentium M, the M is for mobile, and that's exactly where it was aimed and designed for. They hyped it as the "Centrino platform", and it has sold like hotcakes in most modern laptops.

      The real issue is why it took so damned long for Intel to move Pentium M to *desktop* use. The minute they cancelled Itanium's whole branch, they should have moved Pentium 4/Xeon up to its role as the server processor, and moved the Pentium M to the desktop; instead they waited and let AMD get the competitive edge on them with the Athlon 64.

      I commend AMD for their forcing the market to keep moving, but I also hope Intel becomes more responsive and keeps its wheels spinning so that we can see technology keep moving, and not stagnate as it has the past two years.
      • The minute they cancelled Itanium's whole branch

        Sorry, but the Itanium2 [intel.com] is alive and well, though relegated to a relatively small market.
        • As of right now, I can't find the link to where they have done it, but Intel has said that they "doubt there will be an Itanium 3", due to market pressure from the AMD Athlon 64, the fact that people would rather buy a crufty old x86 processor than the new IA64, the fact Microsoft will no longer support it, and the fact that HP has quit out of their side of the partnership.

          Besides all of that, it's simply not worth the money, as an array of IBM's 970's is faster (as Apple has shown through their G5 platf
  • Bad hearing? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They claim the computer is almost silent, so much in fact he could barely hear it from two feet away from the ears.

    My question is then if he has bad hearing. Because any harddisk and the PSU fan will be hearable!
    • My question is then if he has bad hearing. Because any harddisk and the PSU fan will be hearable!

      Only if you have a loud PSU or harddisk. In my own system, there's 3 noise sources, in order: CPU cooler, PSU fan and harddisk. The latter is a single-platter, single head, liquid bearings, recent Seagate model. These are very quiet. And mounted on rubber vibration-dampers, almost inaudible. PSU fan speed is varied depending on load, and mostly very quiet too. Its noise only goes up during long compile jobs or

      • Actually the recent Seagate Barracudas aren't that quiet. The Cuda IV's are, but thats not a "recent" model. The current quiet champ for 7200 desktop drives is the Samsung Spinpoint series with Nidec motors. I have both the seagate and a samsung spinpoint, the samsung is quieter. check out SilentPCReview 's Recommended HDs [silentpcreview.com]
  • by operagost ( 62405 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:07PM (#11958470) Homepage Journal
    And it will look just like a toaster. But I guess if you really wanted to make toast, you'd have to use the Prescott instead of the M.
  • by GundamFan ( 848341 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:08PM (#11958488)
    AOpen has had a microATX 855 chipset board for a little while but really the Pentium M is the perfect fit for SFF computers so I am not complaining.

    The 855 chipset is a little dated though, not great for gaming. I wonder how well supported it is in Linux.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:09PM (#11958508)
    Maybe it should read:
    At one point, I sat with the system at ear level two feet away. I closed my eyes and strained to hear it, but was severely burned.
  • Noise factor (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kogus ( 855114 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:10PM (#11958514)
    In every environment I've worked in, it has been easy to just position the PC in a way that I can't hear it, even if it is a bit noisy. I, for one, am not willing to pay *any* extra for a quiet desktop. The Mac mini isn't popular because it is quiet, it is popular because it is a practical fashion statement- something Apple is good at.
    • I must be out the demographic but... what? "...popular because it is a practical fashion statement?" How is a computer a practical fashion statement? Best power per dollar is the way I pick my 'chine and I'll turn in my geek card when I start looking at how pretty it is.
    • And while you are not likely to pay anything less for a silent computer, there are 10 other people out there who will pay for a computer that will sit nicely on a shelf in the Entertainment center, hook up to their TV, and record their favorite TV shows for them.. Just as long as it doesn't sound like a vacuum cleaner.

      Hell, I'd buy a silent computer too if I could get one with the same amount of power as my current desktop. It definitely would help with my sleep as it now sounds like a fully qualified Hoo
    • I have a totally silent fanless/diskless machine at work and it's so quiet that i can hear everyone in the adjoining offices. Kinda like having my laptop for a bit of background noise.

      Now it'd be nice to have a silent system at home, but i usually have music on when i'm working so either way it's good.
    • Maybe you're not interested in quiet computing, but plenty [silentpcreview.com] of people are.
  • by PureCreditor ( 300490 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:16PM (#11958585)
    if Pentium Ms are similar performance to Pentium 4s, wouldn't it be ideal for clusters and server farms in which (a) density, (b) heat, and (c) power dissipation becomes major factors in day-to-day operations?

    • Read that article from a while back about Google's descriptions of their server farm. The found that electricity is cheaper than low power boxes. Unless you can buy low-power PCs with a minimal price overhead, it was better to just spread them out over more area and using more power/AC/rent.

      Sad but true. That said they probably don't use P4's either.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:17PM (#11958592)
    As a PC user for 9 years, and a Mac user for 5 years before that. I can say that I have yet to see an offering of the quality of Apple, nor have i seen an SFF box for a similar price with opperating system included.

    As an AOpen customer I reccomend agaist any product of theirs that cannot be self serviced, as AOpen has had poor relations with resellers and endusers. My current laptop and dealings with AOpen have lead to now 7 months of no solution to my problems, initially the firewire port broke which was not a problem as I do very little editing, then a key fell off the laptop keyboard, and now the screen mount is broken at the point where the LCD meets the laptop, attempts to open or close the screen damage the laptop casing.

    I attempted to go through my reseller only to find that they were sued by the California Better Business Bureau for fraud and were no longer in business. AOpen provided no option for repair and has ceased to return communications.

    That said, I do know people who have had success with cases by AOpen, however I have yet to talk with anyone who has had success dealing with AOpen for customer service, including retailers.
  • AMD Geode NX... (Score:2, Interesting)

    ... should be interesting, there's at least a Tyan board (K7M [tyan.com] that handles AMD's low power K7 chip. It's socket A with DDR333 memory.

    This mobo is purely a microformat web/mail/office unit, no AGP or PCIe, but it could make a pretty slick little microserver or homebrew blade..
  • by MarkTina ( 611072 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:20PM (#11958624)
    Not sure thats a good thing really, do we really need PS2, serial, parallel and VGA ports on the back ?

    Would have been neater to just go fully USB, Firewire and have DVI, ah well.
    • I can almost still understand the PS2 ports for keyboard and mouse, but you're right - the serial and parallel ports are not really needed and add to the cost of the product. Adapters are available for those that still need to have the serial and parallel ports.
  • Looking for "a roughly toaster-sized desktop PC"? Look no further than IntelliToast [ubergeek.tv]!
  • The Tech Report wrote:

    Like Arnold to a Democrat, you can practically hear it calling the DFI heatsink a girly-man.

    These sort of topical quotes really frustrate me. The reviewer is trying to get some of the psuedo-hip language that the technically incompetent magazines try and sprinkle around to make their reviews readable to the technically incompetent.

    Wasn't calling someone a "girley man" a common insult of the Satruday Night Live characters Hans and Frans rather than one of Arnold Schwarzenager's? No


  • Companies hype small form-factor Desktop PCs or Thin Blade Servers as if they invented something new. All it is, is a laptop in a new package. That is why the prices are high.

    What the companies do is take out the Pentium M motherboard and other small components from a notebook, dump the LCD and then package it all in a small thin box and call it the latest, greatest thin desktop/blade server.

  • Some day they'll figure out a way to make processors survive 310+ farenheit, then we'll have real toasting machines.
  • Next noise target (Score:2, Insightful)

    by epexegesis ( 733596 )
    So, as the review points out that the loudest thing in the system was the video card, are there any current video cards that can be passively cooled? I'd've thought that with PCs becoming 'home entertainment systems' that there'd be more of a move toward fanless/silent systems.
    • Re:Next noise target (Score:3, Informative)

      by imroy ( 755 )
      According to one MythTV HOWTO I read, the nVidia geForce FX-5200 is the most powerful fanless video card currently available. I don't know how well it would do in a gaming system, but it would certainly be enough for a MythTV box!
    • You could always get an aftermarket kit like this [newegg.com] to passively cool a higher end video card. However, I'm somewhat doubtful that it would work well in such a small case.
  • Why did I half-hope that would read "Pentium M Goes SSJ"?

    I can just imagine it turning bright yellow and crackling with electricity. Actually...thats what happened when I spilled orange juice on my processor one time...that's not so cool.

  • by Ancil ( 622971 ) on Wednesday March 16, 2005 @06:51PM (#11958985)

    Still isn't what people are looking for. Wintel folks: look to the Mac Mini for inspiration.
    • People don't need expansion slots. Everything is built into the motherboard. If they really need something which isn't there, it can be plugged into a USB port. Expansion slots are a huge waste of real estate, and screw up your airflow too.
    • People want good video performance. That means no shared memory for video. The only reason people buy these huge AOpen and Shuttle SFF's is that the Mini-ITX boards are saddled with lousy graphics. Put an ATi Mobility X700 with 128 megs of video memory in there, and customers won't want or need an AGP or PCIE16 slot. Now you can get away with no expansion slots at all.
    The solution is staring the industry in the face, but no one seems to sell it: SFF machines built using laptop motherboards. If Dell can sell this [dell.com] for $1,000 why can't they sell the same thing with no display, battery, or keyboard for $500?
    • people DO want slots.

      my SFF (at work, which I built at home and brought in to use at work) has a dual-dvi video card (matrox g550). try finding dual-dvi on a SFF. good luck.

      I also want decent hardware raid (sometimes). enter the 3ware pci cards. you can also fit 2 slim line drives in a SFF for raid redundancy (I hate it when my always-on workstation crashes due to a drive seize or head crash).

      what about onboard ethernet? most are pitiful. I went with an ethernet card by intel (pro 1000) that is bes
    • People don't need expansion slots. Everything is built into the motherboard. If they really need something which isn't there, it can be plugged into a USB port.

      Yeah, when your on-board video-chip burns-out, you can just plug-in a USB videocard.

      When your gigabit ethernet burns out, you can just plug-in a gigabit USB NIC.

      I'm considering this AOpen system, but I sure as hell wouldn't even consider any system designed to your ideal specifications...

      Speaking of the Mac Mini, history has shown desktop compute

      • when your on-board video-chip burns-out...
        When your gigabit ethernet burns out...


        If something on my motherboard burned out, I don't think I'd be trusting it at all anymore, with or without expansion slots!

        Anyways, this would be my logic if such a problem actually happened:

        if mobo.age < 12_months:
        manufacturer.warranty_claim()
        elif mobo.age < 24_months:
        credit_card.warranty_claim() # always double your warranty for free
        else:
        buy(new mobo) # they're cheap and in 2+ years, it's upgrade time anyways

        • If something on my motherboard burned out, I don't think I'd be trusting it at all anymore, with or without expansion slots!

          Well, that's your own opinion, based on a completely lack of info I might add.

          I've had an Apple PPC machine, where the built-in NIC stopped working, but with a PCI NIC, it kept on functioning for YEARS. I've had the same experience with many PCs, who's on-board video, sound, ide, etc., crapped-out, and just adding one PCI card took care of the problem, and the machines kept on runni

  • If laptop parts come down some in price (more than this), and folks are willing to pay the difference to have quiet, smaller, cheaper to run machines, we could see an interesting trend over the next couple of years.

    Laptop and desktop parts could converge, leaving what we currently think of as desktop parts (and their like) in the server realm. Meaning we might have a little burp in Moore's law (that the average macine bought in 2006 will be SLOWER than the average one bought in 2005) and the number of hef
    • >> If laptop parts come down some in price (more than this), and folks are willing to pay the difference to have quiet, smaller, cheaper to run machines, we could see an interesting trend over the next couple of years.

      Speaking as a working corporate desktop sysadmin, I certainly hope that doesn't happen.

      For some reason, people refuse to believe that trade-offs exist in nature. Everyone wants Small & Cheap & Fast & Reliable.... laptops!!!

      Except that the reality is that laptops are much l
      • I agree that they're less reliable (and we're getting far from the subject) but I suspect that there's good reason for their unreliability compared to desktops, and that if you have mobile CPUs in desktop machines, you won't have the same trouble (or will, but to a much lesser degree).

        One -- the hardware in them changes constantly. Every year is a major redesign, as makers try to cram more into less space/weight.

        Two -- They're more complicated, integrating non-standard mice and such as well as that scree

  • Someone's finally invented a notebook computer without an integrated keyboard and LCD panel?

    The hell you say!
  • It's worth comparing this box with some of the Pentium M machines/barebone systems available based on miniITX motherboards with integrated video and no AGP. If you're not doing 3-D gaming, then these guys are very attractive.

    In particular, look at some of the designs coming out of Soldam, such as the Alphia [soldam.co.jp], Lepty [soldam.co.jp] and Rhapsody [soldam.co.jp].

    On the other hand, if you're looking for 3-D gaming with the best performance in the smallest possible package, it's hard to go past something like Iwill's ZPC64 [iwill.net].

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