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Pentium-M In Mini-ITX Format
Hektor_Troy writes "A German outfit is going to introduce a Pentium-M based mini-ITX board. Finally good performance in a small size. The manufacturer claims it can be cooled pasively, but I'd like to see it first." "Good performance in a small size" is relative, of course -- I like the quiet little EPIA system in front of me pretty well ;)
I love making very small computers to bring along to lan parties. It makes me salivate to think that one day, very soon, I'll bring a 3 GHZ P4 to a lan party, in a package I can carry in one hand! Very smart move.
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
The shuttle sff range have been up with the big boys since they got an AGP slot.
"Good performance in a small size"
That's what I keep telling my girlfriend!
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
and for purposes of karma whoring Kill M$ KILL KILL
Pentium M is quite a bit faster than any EPIA board. Interestingly enough Pentium M MHz per MHz is faster than the Pentium 4.
I think at the age of 27 I'm finally starting to outgrow gaming, so the concept of a "lightweight" PC that can be used for digital imaging and video storage interests me. My thirst for FLOPS isn't totally gone, so the Athlon64 has my attention as well. It's like trying to choose between a Civic and a monster truck. :(
I'll believe the passive cooling party considering you can put these in laptops with their puny little fans so a single case fan should be fine.
It is sad that the pentium M, the best x86 proccessor Intel has ever made has been pretty much abandoned by them marketing-wise and sales wise. Hopefully this will help spur sales of the pentium M.
That's all well and good, but for it to be really nifty, it needs an AGP slot. I mean, a PCI or integrated video card might be "good enough" for most things, but what if I want to game with it?
hey!
For once, I think we need some benchmarks comparing laptop processors to desktop processors. Just so we get an idea of how laptops actually perform rather than depending on the specs alone.
Like right now, how does the Pentium-M compare to the Pentium 4/Athlon XP?
Atleast we're sure that HTPCs can be faster now. . .
Why would you link to a secondary site talking about the companies announcement and not the actual announcement?
http://www.lippert-at.com/miniitx.html
-Eyston
"Good performance in a small size" is relative, of course -- I like the quiet little EPIA system in front of me pretty well ;)
Most of the new Pentium M laptops are mostly passive cooled. I can barely hear the fan on my friends laptop when it does kick in.
Why doesn't someone make a Mini-ITX case for this board, that comes with a laptop style cooler and has a small slit on the side of the case as an exhaust, just like a laptops?
Perhaps the main site won't be able to handle the load?
Perhaps I'll get in my Thunderbird and pick up one of these Thunderbird boards. I guess I'll need a new processor, too, since it uses Pentium-M instead of an AMD Thunderbird. I wonder how well Thunderbird performs on it? It's a good mail client.
So am I to assume that current notebooks like the Dell D800 and M60 using the Pentium-M 1.6Ghz are upgradable to the Dothan CPU too? If so, looks like I have an upgrade path!!!
I think this would make an excellent platform for the next XBox or any sort of PC-hardware-based game console. It runs cool and fast as the dickens! (I'd say it'd be a much better option than a very hot and power-hungry AMD or Pentium 4 solution).
:-)
I have a Pentium M notebook and I absolutely love it
If they can make a better product than the soekris boards I might get interested. It is generally accepted that Intel chips have not been capable of being passivly cooled since the early Pentium days. I'd say the pentium 166(??) was the last passivly coolable design before active cooling became mandintory. A router doesn't need that much processor to operate unless its some sort of ultra-utilized mega router.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
All I have to do is hit that little power switch thingy, and there... it cools itself down without a sound.
My department at school is planning to purchase several hundred of these to create a Beowulf cluster. Does anyone have an esmimate on how closely we could pack them together before they would have to be actively cooled?
Thanks!
Imange a beowulf cluster using these mini-ITX the shear number packed inside a standard 19inch rack unit... just think of the raw compute power used for evil plans step 1 build cluster step 2 ???? step 3 take over the world!!! FrostByte btw step 2 may has to be expanded to infinity to get the needed steps for this to work
What could you do with a PC if you didn't have to worry about airflow at all?
Although the VIA/Centaur isn't exactly the fastest thing around, to me that isn't the most limiting factor of the EPIA line.
The abysmally slow onboard 3D graphics are what just really disappoint. I mean, I've built 8 EPIA-based systems but they've always been for use as workstations (Internet browsing), or simply mom and pop kind of computing usage.
Now, take a look at the article. Are those graphics memory slots I see? I know Intel Extreme 2 isn't exactly winning any awards but it's certainly better than the horrid S3 EPIA 3D. That, more than the processor, is what really interests me about this board.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Then you must not be using Linux. Some cool folks like this guy (not to mention this guy) are working hard at making Linux work on the EPIA -- but it doesn't have to be this hard. I've been keeping my eye on these MiniITX boards for some time now, but I'm waiting until I can do everything I want (play DVDs and DivX files, maybe run a couple emulators) without reverse-engineering drivers. Maybe this new board will make it happen.
Well this gentlemen sees things being distributed and I do too. People are going to get away from the monster machine that eats electricity, and blows heat like a hair dryer. Cooperation is the future trend, bringing overall cost down, and having a closer fit to what your needs are.
BTW I recommend reading the entire site.
picture
(It's not mini-PCI; that's on the top-side of the board, next to the regular PCI slot.)
Way to go, you fucking moron mods.
How does IPCop run on an EPIA board? It's a linux distro.
Ever notice how geek guys don't get any, but geek girls are almost legendary for being extremely kinky? All the "geek" girls I knew never seemed to have guy trouble, execept to many, and too desperate. That's probably why there are so few girl posters on slashdot
S'troll.
No matter how you do the math, no miniature PC will ever be as small as a miniature smart terminal with broadband.
here are some snapshots
be gentle with my bandwidth
...in a small box, I'll be bringing in my dual 5 gHz P5 tower rig.
iAppliance
SBCs using Linux
The Invisible Computer
SBCs are for more than just harsh environments (you're thinking industrial). If you look through all the above links. You'll see that P2P style, appliance computing is were we are headed. Instead of getting a monster rig, that does it all. You'll have a main (lower power) computer that does things that can't be split into individual boxes. While that box is surrounded by more specialized machines, all cooperating. Finer grained computing, were you get only what you need, and it's transparently easy to add to, and manage.
The complexity of the PC has sealed it's fate.
Just because they aren't 10GHz Pentium IX's is pretty meaningless for many. The mini-itx thing is a Godsend to some of us.
:-)
I use the EPIA EDEN 533MHz system for the two weather stations on my mountaintop observatory site. They are plenty fast enough, considering all they do is run the weather app and Opera/Eudora/network-clock/antivirus/firewall.
I don't have AC up here yet, so low power consumption is way more important than beating somebody in a pissing competition over UT2k fps or Photoshop rendering speeds!
has anyone been paying attention to the mini-itx community? Commell Systems has had mini-itx pentium4 based boards out for months in both mobile and desktop processor versions.
What about this one:
? pr oductdatasheetsid=1158
http://www.radisys.com/oem_products/ds-page.cfm
as far as i know, this has been around for a while and now there is a mobile version too
"That's what I keep telling my girlfriend!"
Doesn't the laughter bother you?
who is bored by hardware comparisons such as these? The technology could be anything, the thread always plays out something like this:
.... "
The article says Left-handed Sprugel-Fipp MX545454-X shows very good performance next to the Loop-handed Rifkind-Muppet QX345454-D.
Then someone says "Kewl! I bought a Sprugel-Fipp last week! I knew those Loop-handed Rifkind-Muppet models were duff!"
Then someone says "No, you can't make a simple comparison like that without looking at how each model caches - you're comparing apples an oranges! (insert words 'insensitive clod' if necessary)"
Then there's a brief but heartfelt flamewar culminating in the fans of Loop-handed models to say "Yeah but just you wait until the NEW Rifkind-Muppet model!"
And finally the Sprigel-Fipp fan says "Huh. Yeah well I will (see you next time)
ad infinitum. Yawn.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
I use the EPIA EDEN 533MHz system for the two weather stations on my mountaintop observatory site.
Serious Question: What do you do to protect these "mountaintop" electronics from lightning surges?
Even down here near sea level, we have a terrible time with lightning blowing out every manner of electronic device.
PS: Are you familiar with the great grounding controversy? If so, on which side do you stand? [The great grounding controversy goes something like this: Classically, it was thought that you should drop a grounding rod practically down to the level of the subterranean aquifer, so as to try to lure surges away from you and down your ground. More recently, however, people have been wondering if these grounds don't cause more harm than good because they serve to attract lightning...]
The correct answer to this post is:
"I'll bring a 3 GHZ P4 to a lan party, in a package I can carry in one hand!"
Ha! It takes two hands to carry my package.
it becomes possible to make a current model PC with zero moving parts perfect for terminals, employee workstations
Yep. Those keyboards and mice with zero moving parts are really nice.
Ok, I guess they could all use button-less touchpads, but I've yet to see a usable keyboard without any moving parts.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
> With no hard drive, it becomes possible to make a current model PC [not striped version of 486] with zero moving parts
> perfect for terminals, employee workstations, ect.
Yes, if your idea of current is two or three years ago. Via competes with Transmeta not only on lowest watt/mhz but also on lowest actual performance/mhz. A 1Ghz Nehemiah is a lot slower that an 1Ghz Duron or Celeron. I'm not exactly a fan of the current Intel and AMD oven-processors, but claiming that a Via Epia performs like a current PC is ridiculous.
It's not the size that counts...it's what you do with it . Oh, wait...we're talking about computers. Never mind.
The main benefit that the pentium m brings to the table is less heat. As the pentium 4 was being ramped up for hi mhz levels it also increased greatly in heat and power consumption. Increased heat ='s noisier fans which is bad for systems like these which are probably going to be located in places like the living room.
Hmmm... Pie...
passively cooled hmmm...
I've been looking for a silent computer for a while and only found the hushtechnologies and the tranquil pc. Both run on via eden 1ghz mainboards customised to be fanless (the 1ghz would normally have a fan), that's not much horsepower but as fanless computers go that's cutting edge.
I'm actually seriously considering buying one, they cost more, but for home recording (computer in same room as instruments) it will make a huge difference especially when recording queit sources.
So if this board is passively cooled and running at 1600 then it should end up in the hush and the tranquil... and the 'Silent Computer' just got 60% faster!
The via processors have performed worse then celerons of the same mhz level based on most of the benchmarks i've seen. These processors fit on the old p3 line of motherboards (on the newer socket type insert and not the cartridges). The benchmark tested the p3, the celerons of that time, and the epia. On most performance tests the epia at the same mhz level performed at around half or a lot less speed of the p3 and also signinficantly less then the celeron.
Hmmm... Pie...
The main reason is because these you a lot less power and give off a lot less heat. A lot of mini-itx systems are used in places like living rooms for pvr's and lots of other reasons and because this gives off less heat you can even have passive coolers with no fans.
P4's on the other hand require a pretty powerful hsf setup, especially your beloved 3.0 ghz versions. Which i believe gives off an excess of 90 watts at peak and around 70 watts normally.
Hmmm... Pie...
Amen!!
Yep. Those keyboards and mice with zero moving parts are really nice. Ok, I guess they could all use button-less touchpads, but I've yet to see a usable keyboard without any moving parts.
What about those keyboards that display an image of a keyboard onto a surface and then track your finger movements to determine what keys you are pressing. I can't find a good link for this, but here is one. They are probably still in development (vapor?), but they don't have any moving parts.
Think no moving parts like a PDA (which these virtual keyboards are designed for).
--Drunk as in Beer
Fair enough but swapping in a new USB peripheral is alot different than opening the box. In particular, a techie visit is not required.
Cubix has been doing this for ages. Cubix was selling blade servers from before anyone ever called them blade servers. Hundreds in a rack. No problem.
Alright, but what GCC flags output for the Pentium-M? Is the *-M a PIII or a P4 at heart (or something different altogether)?
I know it Looks like a PIII and the specs all point to a modified PIII, but intel says it's 'fresh' in origin, and it seems to be quite different from the P4 offerings (in terms of caching and performance).
I'm just wondering if I should compile with -march=pentium3 or -march=pentium4 for this beast.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I would rate the shuttle machines slightly larger than most shoeboxes and a lot louder and heaver.
Mini-ITX machines can be about 1/3rd the size of these shuttles.
The shuttles are fine, but I won't be putting one in an A/V rack any time soon.
Thank you for some much needed British humour. Don't get that much here. :)
The Pentium-M will be a nice boost over the performance of the VIA C3 based EPIA boards.
The other great things about this board:
- Two ethernet ports on board - for Gateway usage. Internal port is the Gigabit port, for fast file serving. The external 100Mbps port is plenty of bandwidth for any reasonable Internet connection.
- It appears to have a CompactFlash interface on the bottom. For the ultra quiet system, a 512MB or 1GB CF card provides a lot of space.
- Pentium-M based - Low power consumption.. My server sits idle most of the time, and it lightly loaded for a good portion of its actual usage. The Pentium-M can be downshifted to a lower clock speed when not under load, to save even more power.
- Wireless LAN on board - nice for the all-in-one Linux server.
I could even see using one of these for a quiet workstation.. It supports dual head displays ( which I can't live without now).
The only questions are Availability and Price.. The product announcement says it's intended for OEM's producing gaming, entertainment, and other high performance embedded applications. That does not sound promising for end-user availability.
The spec's say that there are dual LVDS outputs for Dual Head LCD displays.
This seems odd, since the industry has gone to DVI for digital LCD connections. I wonder if LVDS is used in laptops (since the Centrino technology is intended for laptops).
So, the questions are:
- Will the LVDS output work with the few LVDS capable monitors, such as the amazing widescreen LCD from SGI, the 1600SW?
- Are there converters available to go to DVI? The only one I could find is intended for the 1600SW, and it's very expensive and hard to find.
performance is not the issue.
availability of a low power small form factor pc base has been the #1 missing element in computing for a long ass time. want something small? get an Arm/Xscale system, or get a laptop if you need real power. something like this has never happened, and is much needed.
theres more to portable systems than laptops.
Does that mean there's finally support for Linux on EPIA systems?
How about a touchscreen LCD or something? You'd be MUCH closer to no moving parts. Windows has an OSK (on-screen keyboard) for people who can't type but are able to use a pointing device (anyone who can move their eyes in case you were wondering).
A 1Ghz Nehemiah is a lot slower that an 1Ghz Duron or Celeron.
Whoa, there. I'd check VIA's page on the C3 being cool before you say it's slower than a 1GHz Celeron. It's at http://www.via.com.tw/en/viac3/pcb.jsp. Scroll to the performance per watt graph (just above the fanless heat rendering)
Pentium-M IS a Netburst-based CPU, just like the P4. What Intel did was to shorten the pipeline, thus increasing the IPC, making the CPU do more work per clock cycle. Thus, the Pentium-M is what the P4 SHOULD have been, had Intel not implemented a long pipeline to get higher clockspeeds for marketing purposes. It is a "P3-like" P4, but it's still a P4.
My point was also that a EPIA IS a striped PC. It's very useful, but not up to modern spec. Things like robotics, media centers, etc. need a fast modern board to run. But the only current Intel or AMD processor even close to an C3 is the P-M. A gereral purpose computer of recent vintage is useless for most hobbie apps...It's very difficult to run the current crop of "space heaters" on any kind of limited power source. Until recently, it was only available in notebooks or SBCs...not very useful for general hobbiest and greatly limiting it's potential. Hopefully AMD will do the same with Athlons after 64's arrive!
This thing, mini-ITX board, still has "Floppy connector" - what a waste of space and energy! Today I expect it to see least in mini-factor boards. How many decades will take more to finally kill the floppy controller on motherboards?
Less is more !
True, they are downright snails, but where else can you get something PC compatible for $150 that will run for hours off of a standard 12V drycell. These things draw power compariable to car headlights or radios...not space heaters. That allows you to unplug the unit from the wall and do really useful cool things with it. Also, you can use stock external "brick" power supplies and that reduces complexity/increses reliability. Sure, you could get a laptop, but again, did I mention EPIAs are in the $150 range!
What's with those giant parallel connectors. I don't even have a parallel printer cable any more. I threw it out. And they should be using SATA, not PATA. In a super tiny case even rounded PATA cable are going to substantially block air flow.
I want performance, but I don't want the monster HSF that a 60 - 70 W processor requires.
It's from the Simpsons episode where Homer went up in the shuttle.
Kent Brockman: Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but,
uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft
has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master
race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this
vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men
or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no
stopping them; the ants will soon be here.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to
remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful
in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar
caves.
When did Intel get around to releasing Pentium 1000 and why didn't I see the commercials? I thought that Pentium 4 was still their top-of-the-line model.
Anyways, is Pentium 1000 marketingese for yet another 686 processor or have they gotten to 786 by now?:P
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
tell me what moving part a mouse has? The photons from its LED? or the electrons in its ICs?
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Since the pentium M has roughly the same IPC as a AMD Barnton XP CPU what we really need mini atx Nofrce 2 board. A quick change of the multiplyer and Vcore will have a barnton running at 1400mhz and consuming about 24 watts of power. No SSE 2 but you could put a whole system together for the cost of the CPU from a P-M system!
Nforce is the integrated peripherals king, nothing else comes, probably one of the best chipsets of all time.
VICS Cooling After RD7-CA is the gimmick you need.
And have you ever wondered why beamers run their ventillators after switching off?
I have put together an M10000 Mini-ITX system with the hopes that it, too, could be silently actively or passively cooled. Unfortunately, even though it does run at less than 27 watts, I still have to cool it with a large--yet quieter--fan than the one that ships with the board placed above the passive heatsinks for the processor and bus glue logic.
I've done a fair bit of searching and have thus far come up empty for any silent cooling techniques for this PC. Does anybody have any recommendations for cooling the board and hard drive silently within this small form factor?
-AP
The i586 Mini-Me? Or short for, "Mmmmmmm... CPU's" Maybe it is "Pentium Member" and refers to a serial male connector?
I remember the days leading up to the original Pentium unveiling (and naming), more than a decade ago.
Anyone who was anyone has ads in Computer Shopper, proclaiming their 80486 ("P4") systems to be "P5 Upgradable".
Why are we going backwards?
Kid-proof tablet..
If you've ever looked at the wattage increase going from the P4 at 2.4GHz through 3.2GHz, it's pretty damn appalling. A 10% increase in raw clockspeed increase is traded for a 20% increase in power consumption. This is ridiculous, despite the fanatics who will argue to their death that they'd need that 10% even if it doubled their electricity bill.
An eye-opening comparison is to look at the kind of PCs major 3D game developers had on their desks in, say, 1997. It was typically a 333MHz P2. And now you have people complaining that a 2GHz Celeron is "too slow" for anything. And Dell should be seriously fined for tagging such "low end" processors as being suitable for "home office applications", but nothing more.