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Desktop Pentium M Motherboard Review
Babstar writes "Discussed numerous times on Slashdot, the quiet PC is the holy grail for many, and one step in the right direction could be using a Pentium M (designed for notebooks) in a desktop machine. Here's a review of a desktop Pentium M motherboard. Surprisingly it's also a great game machine."
One thing I've noticed is the more fans your computer has the more often you end up needing to replace components. I've had 2 high-end video cards fry themselves due to the bearings in the fans wearing out.
Now I run a box practically devoid of fans and it's been running great for 4 years & counting.
Wanna get nasty? - DaNasty
Buy a shuttle.
I have two, one which is a power workstation, AMD64, Radeon 9800 Pro, 2 gigs ram, sata disks and still is very quiet.
They are both stacked on each other and are very sexy units.....uses liquid cooling mechanisms for cooling and are competitively priced.
Google for the website to slowdown the slashdot tidelwave.
No meaningful comments yet, and the server is already loading slower than my old Pentium 133. And, of course, they subdivided the article into 16 pages. That way I can wait 5 minutes each... Ahh the joys of ASP.
My Systems
Yeah, 16 pages is too much. Can someone paste the article here, please?
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
If I want something fanless, I'll get a Via board or vapor from TeamASA. If I want a game PC, I'll get an Athlon64 and put shitty WinXP on it. The Pentium-M might be a good middle ground, but unless you specifically want a Pentium-M, it won't fill either niche really well.
A bit too little, a bit too late for Intel.
For much much cheaper, you could get an AMD motherbaord that supports Cool 'n Quiet: the CPU is underclocked to 800Mhz for things like web surfing and watching DVD's. There's also an option to have all the fan stop if the case is cool enough.
For a list of supported motherbaords clickhere
For the price of the Pentium M CPU alone, you could get a faster motherboard, a mid range AMD 64 bit COU and maybe some ram.
Intel currently has two major consumer-level processor architectures on the market, "Prescott" and "Dothan". The Prescott processor core is the basis of Intel's Pentium 4, Xeon. and Celeron processors, replacing Intel's previous mainstream processor core known as "Northwood". Intel's Prescott architecture was truly designed with clock speed scaling in mind, as the chip will scale up to 3.8 GHz, which will no doubt make for some incredibly fast processors. Unfortunately, in order to make these CPU's clock so high, the efficiency of the chip had to be compromised. Intel's "Prescott" processor core runs hotter, consumes more power, and has the worst performance per clock cycle of any modern Intel processor core.
These factors have made Intel's "Prescott" based Pentium 4, Xeon, and Celeron processors less attractive to the enthusiast market compared to previous Intel processor products. While the mass markets are largely unaffected by Intel's Prescott core shortcomings, a larger amount of the population is slowly coming around to the fact that the Pentium 4 is not on the right track lately. With Intel seemingly misfiring on their latest processor families, the enthusiast crowds are discovering new and better options, including AMD's Athlon64 processor lineup.
Intel, however, does have an ace up their sleeve, that being their other major processor architecture, "Dothan". Dothan is an architecture which was designed from the ground up to consume as little power and produce as little heat as possible, and was originally designed strictly for the mobile markets. When Dothan processors started to hit the market, people quickly realized how efficient this core was in addition to the Pentium 4. In addition, performance of the chip was surprisingly good, considering the fairly low clock speeds at which Intel has presented this processor lineup with. Our tests in the past have shown that a top of the line Pentium-M processor can perform on par with the fastest Pentium 4 and Athlon64 processors in terms of raw CPU power, which is extremely exciting considering the limited feature set of the Dothan core architecture in comparison to today's desktop processors.
Until now though, the Pentium-M platform has been hindered by its attachment to the notebook sector. Since the Pentium-M runs on an alternate processor socket (Socket-479m) which is electrically incompatible with every Intel desktop motherboard on the market, we have not been able to see what the Pentium-M processor is truly capable of in a workstation or gaming configuration. While there always has been some demand for Pentium-M motherboards for the desktop, there was not enough of an urge to turn this demand into more than niche appeal.
Today though, we finally get to see how the Pentium-M platform can compete with the big boys, thanks to AOpen's new Pentium-M desktop motherboard. The AOpen i855GMEm-LFS is the first of its kind to bring the Socket-479 mobile socket to a desktop environment, an extremely exciting product for those looking for a high-performance, low noise system. Let's get to it.
Pros and Cons of the Pentium-M
The Pentium-M processor has several key factors which are very attractive and others which will be unappealing to some. Before we get stated on looking at the actual hardware which will power our Pentium-M desktop setup, let's look at the pros and cons of this architecture.
Pro - Efficient Architecture - Intel's "Dothan" architecture is one of the most efficient designs on the market today, allowing for exceptional performance with fairly low clock speeds. Even at a peak clock speed of 2.0 GHz (2.1 GHz models have been announced, but aren't shipping yet), the Dothan processor can match raw performance levels of Pentium 4/Athlon64 chips at much higher clock rates. The surprising fact here is that the Dothan architecture is rumored to be based on a derivative of Intel's Pentium III processor architecture, although that fact has never been confirmed by anyone at Intel to our knowledge.
The Dothan processor pipe
GamePC has a rather good collection of benchmarks, shame they got slashdotted already.
My favorite was the Xeon vs Opteron gameing benchmarks. Now if someone just had a dual SLI PCI-Express and Dual Opteron board, life would be good.
I've been using a pentium M laptop with a docking station at home for months now. Its been silent heaven. You do take a speed hit with keeping the chip in "battery performance mode" in order to keep the fans off 99.9% of the time, but to avoid the high pitch noise of my desktop, its sooooo worth it.
What is striking about such a setup is you can actually forget your computer is even there when watching a movie on TV or reading a book in the same room.
As far as I care, the ultimate sound test is turning off a monitor and seeing if you can tell a computer is on.
Silence is golden.
If this is accurate. VIA's may have trouble with their Epia series of motherboards. I've got an M10000 and I'm looking to upgrade soon.
That is, only if the prices drop on both motherboard and CPU.
AOpen comes up with a great concept, what bothers me is that I came up with the same concept while using their 1555G open book that is slowly falling apart to the point it is becoming a desktop, network card is failing, using a pcmcia replacement. Keys falling off the keyboard, and a scratched LCD, a cdrom drive improperly mounted and a failed battery. All happening within 9-14 months of owning the book. I don't trust the longevity of their products, but i would still be interested in a small form factor Pentium M based system when a higher quality manufacturer produces one.
how long before a Socket-479m mini-itx board is released? it would be great to mess around with.
It seems that the industry focus is about to change from increasing Mhz (essentially useless for most non-gamers non-content producing desktop users) to decreasing noise / power consumption. I think its a sound strategy, as its the only way I can see my parents upgrading from their (noisy as hell) 1 Ghz AMD Thunderbird.
Anyone got a clue why Pentium M are far more costly than P4s? Something to do with (sold units) volume?
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A few years back, I had to replace my motherboard, etc. to get a game to work right (kinda sad, really, but it's true). Instead of buying top-of-the line new stuff, I just talked to a buddy of mine who is a big time computer gamer who upgrades his stuff like once ever six months. So, since it was his upgrade time, I inherited much of his "outdated" stuff for a pretty low price.
Unfortunately, a "Dragon Orb" fan is used to cool the CPU, and boy, it is quite loud. I can hear it several rooms away, and I get lots of questions like "Why is your computer so loud?" I think the bottom line is because it's cheaper, but I like to tell people it's because it's better, and they usually believe me because the same theory generally applies to cars. At any rate, one of the fans quit working some time ago, and so I was glad I had a backup, but I'll be up the creek without a paddle if the one in there now quits working.
All that to basically say, yeah, I can't wait until I get a quiter computer someday. Maybe I'll be able to both work AND hear myself think...
Into Beowulf clusters? If so, can you imagine the possibilities?
Printer-friendly (1-page) and coralized link.
Good thing to mention: they addressed their inline images relatively so they get fetched through the cache.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
I just got a super-quet machine. It's an HP 8200 workstation. Dual Xeons, tons of power and it's so quiet I literally have to look at the light to see if it's actually on.
The surprising thing is that it's conventionally cooled. The side panels seem to be a bit thicker and they invested a little bit extra for higher quality fans, but nothing too exotic. This thing really proves you can have a quiet machine and not have to go to alternative processors or liquid cooling. I wish more vendors took a hint from this design.
I've got a Centrino notebook that died on me two months back and I've been looking for a new computer ever since. Maybe I can plop the processor from my notebook into this one. Too bad it doesn't take notebook ram. Then I'd have about $400 of parts covered. :)
I'm running on one of these setups now. I just liked the hardware so much that I threw down the cash and took it home with me.
- Chris / GamePC
Yea, low-tech ... but pretty darn effective ... and I rarely need access to the CD/DVD drive and/or box itself, so it works for me.
Having said that, I look forward to the Pentium-M's ... 100+ Watts of power for the 3+ GHz Intel CPU's is semi-ridiculous ... and I gotta believe that if the thermal load from that can be removed, it will create savings in other areas. BTW, if you DO want your PC to be a space heater in the coming winter months, fire up Google Compute.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Does that make the iMac the holy grail?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
There are multiple versions of the Athlon 64 mobile, so you have to be very careful to pick the right one, but... There is a 2800+ part, 1.2V part, that has a total power dissipation (TPD) of 35W. With AMD's ratings, that means that fully utilized (saying running something compute-bound like SETI @home), this part has a power consumption of 35W. (I believe Intel publishes average numbers, not max, although this is something I've read and not researched myself.) Will "Cool and Quiet" turned on the power consumption at low speed is supposedly any retailers that carry them has been difficult. Have they been pulled from the market, or are they not for the retail channel, or what? Anyone know what gives?
Given the trend and push for low consumption, hence quieter PCs, I'm optimistic that problems like this will be a thing of the past
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thats my cpu, it works great on standerd socket a mobos. though my motherboard doesnt support voltage lower then 1.55v and i think the processor is supposed to default to 1.45v, but all the more power to overclock with.
Is there an NVIDIA card out that has a good tradeoff between heat and memory?
I'm not going to use it for gaming, but I think I've finally outgrown my measly 8MB cards and would like to go for at least 64 to take advantage of more colors, higher resolution, and hopefully the ability to drive two monitors, while not heating things up too much.
the main bad points apart from price seem to be no 64 bit instructions no sse3 and no ht all of which offer the user little or no benifit,
few people encode movies(mostly what sse3 is for) when it is still faster to download them ht benifits on the desktop are dubious at best and while as a gentoo user i realise i could have all my progs work with 64 bit instrictions most users woulnt get this for years let alone need 64bit
also the idea of a lower fsb being bad should be viewed as the fsb/clock ratio and people sholud remeber cheeper memory at low speeds is as good as expensive stuff
I never understood the people who strive for this computer silence. I have a few fans in my system (including a dual-fan thingy that goes into a CDROM slot and evacuates air - I had a huge discount on one so it was hard not to get it) and I don't hear my system, ever.
Then I realized that the people who can hear their fans turning must have never lived in the city, and never had a roomate. Having gone through 4 years of college and being able to fall asleep with another human being living in a small room with you, you can't possibly mind a fan turning. But funny, I live in NYC and it just never gets quiet enough that I can hear the fans anyway.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
Get a nice Dell 400SC or 420SC - wisper quiet ,fast, reliable, and less than $300 delivered.
Unless you need a boatload of Linux CPU goodness (and, certainly, there are those that do) or you are looking to put together the most bitchin' gaming machine ever.... ... just buy a Mac.
The iMac G5 (or G4) is dead quiet, barely making any noise when the CPU is cranked.
The PowerBooks are also dead quiet. With the Fan cranking at full blast, it makes a faint whirring buzz.
The current generation of dual proc G5s can make a bit of racket when torqued. I'm a professional developer and I beat the snot out of the CPUs on a regular basis. However, rarely do I ever crank all the fans up to full speed.
You can undervolt the DTR-class Athlon 64 CPUs down to Low-Voltage-class levels... most of the time. My old C0 stepping DTR 3200+ can. Full speed at 1.3V, 1.8GHz at 1.2V (same as the LV 2800+, only with twice the L2 cache), 1.4GHz at 1V, 1GHz at 0.85V (ridiculously low power consumption). Use ClockGen.
Anyone know of an equivalent to ClockGen for 64-bit Linux?
The new 90nm mobile A64's are 35W max... and outside of the 3000+ in the Acer Ferarri 3400, not out yet. Dunno what AMD is waiting for, desktop 90nm A64's are plentiful.
Am I the only person that thinks the hum of the hard drives and fans comforting?
:)
I like the sound of my tower in my room at night. A completely silent room is just eerie. Maybe it's just because I've had the computer on for so long.
My Centrino laptop makes the most horrible high pitched squeeling noise when it's not on AC power... I'd much rather have fans
Well, yay for you. And your brother.
You enormous wanker.
I must agree that I find the constant drone of a few case fans is quite comforting, however, there are limits. For example: my friend has a Vantec Tornado which screams when it is turned on; it can even be heard through a floor. There is no reason that a trade-off between performance and noise-level should lead to a computer that you don't want to turn on, due to noise.
One of these days, I'm going to drop a paper clip in it, I swear...
Second you on complete silence being eerie. If only it would rain more... But seeing that I have two boxes almost constantly on in my room, I wonder what I would do if I ever went to liquid cooling! Apnea would consume my soul!
_
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Oh boy, now a laptop and dektops are one in the same. THere was always that arguement of what has better performance but now since both can run on the same CPU and MOBO architecture there will be no complaining. Does this mean I can walk down the street with my desktop now? Damn, I will need a lot of extention cords!
_
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I agree with this. After having a computer system less than two feet away from my bed since I was 14 (eight years), I find that I just can't fall asleep without the gentle white noise of my humming fans.
from the results, it looks like Pentium M clock for clock beats Pentium 4. In order to beat pentium M, the Pentium 4 has to run at 3gz compared 2ghz. Can we let the damn pentium 4 die already.
In Spring of 2000, my LeadTek GeForce 256 came with a fan, a noisy little bugger that failed in less than a year. Here's a picture . So did most of the other flavors (Asus, Guillemot, etc.), as a fan was specified on the nVidia reference design. I ended up taking the fan off, and attaching a large passive heatsink. End of problem.
CPU is the least of my worries.
My Asus Riva TNT came with a fan when I bought it early 1999. The Asus card was however one of the few TNT cards that came with a fan.
This fan also failed within a year (started to make alot of noice) so I got the card replaced on warranty. A few years ago the fan broke again, but since the card is now used in a server only running in console, that is not any problem.
My Slashdot comment from almost a week ago
I'm glad someone picked the link up, if a zillion Slashdotters stomp into their hardware store demanding P3-M boards, it might change the future of computing (if it isn't already being changed)
I discarded the Prescott unseen, because it consumes more power than my air conditioning unit and from the figures, it would beat it in a one-on-one shootout.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Wait a minute - this is a review posted on a MANUFACTURER'S site. GamePC sells PCs, including, surprise, a Pentium M gaming system.
It's no surprise that a desktop Pentium-M machine makes an excellent gaming machine. Past benchmarks in laptops have shown that the Dothan Pentium M can compete with high-end Pentium 4s and Athlon 64s and hold it's own when it comes to gaming. And by hold it's own I mean outperform.
2 129&p=10) that showed the Pentium M 755 (Dothan at 2GHz) outperforming a P4 3.2, which if I recall correctly was one step below the fastest P4 at the time.
For example, back in June Anandtech did some gaming benchmarks (http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=
I didn't think that was just a rumor--I thought the story was that some Israeli branch of Intel developed the Pentium-M based on the Pentium III architecture (which was much more efficient clock-per-clock than the P4, which was designed more for marketing-driven clock speed), and now Intel is seeing the error of its ways and giving up on the super-clocked, super-long-pipeline approach and ditching the P4 architecture and adopting AMDs non-GHz-based numbering schemes as well as, umm, their 64-bit instruction set. Oops.
Pentium 4 has been crap since it was born. Not as bad as Itanium, but still crap. If it weren't for their excellent glue and video chips, Intel would deserve to be laughed off the market. Finally, with the M series, they're recovering some of the lost glory of the P3 days when they could lead the market in performance and features.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
I don't know if the moderators realize this, but there's nothing inflamatory about saying that Mac's run quiet.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Or not so surprisingly. Pentium M CPUs have a much larger bus (IIRC) than comparable CPUs, and thus can perform many more instructions per second per clock cycle than a similarly clocked Pentium 4 or Athlon XP (and I believe even the A64, with 32 bit code).
There's really nothing in the x86 implimentation right now which compares with the P-M, IMO. Price might be a little high, but performance per clock, power consumption, size, noise, and overall performance is pretty much tops.
I'd say the only thing preventing Intel from switching to P-M based chips at this point is a reluctance to ditch the research investment for their P4 and other chips (and likely the warehouses full of chips, I'd wager). As soon as the profit isn't worth the wait, we'll see a Pentium-M derived desktop model, I'd imagine - quickly followed by a laptop model that has even better power consumption, etc. than the current P-M.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
runs. Then the fans spin up and it sounds like an aircraft on take off! For some reason booting OSX off a CD sometimes causes this. It's a bit surprising to here a mac that is virtually silent one minute roaring with the noise of the fans the next. Thankfully this doesn't happen often at all and 99 percent of the time the fans are so quiet that they are practically inaudible. I work as a mac and PC tech and I really admire the slick cooling system that Apple's designed for the G5. The G4 systems are much noiser and seem to run much hotter.
I had a bit of buyer's remorse waiting for it to get here even though I spent less on it than I did when I build my last desktop. I was worried a laptop couldn't take the place of a desktop that I could build much more cheaply but I was truely amazed. It compares favorably in every way with desktops in performance while giving me the sort of portability that in Intel based systems was previously unheard of. I get over 4 hours to a battery on this thing and a well under 10 pound travel weight when I want to take it with me. I remember when Apple had a huge lead in the battery life game with the G3/G4 vs the Mobile P3/P4 and that lead has completely eroded. Intel actually made a processor that uses less power without sacrificing much in the way of performance to get it.
I have moved completely to this laptop for all of my computing needs and it has the best of everything with seemingly no comprimise. I know that technology has progressed in the desktop scene as well but compared to the kind of freedom that we have been given in mobility with the increased performance and battery life coupled with wireless networking in the sort of package offered in the new Centrino notebook they don't compare. These notebooks are the sort of progress that changes the way we use a computer and work while being soo stark and beautiful a contrast and change that it truly feels that we have joined 21st century computing in a revolutionary feeling desktops just don't give. I for one will never by another desktop after a couple months with this laptop and suggest that rather than looking to the Pentium M as a desktop chip, as there are far cheaper for the purpose, you should take the plunge and buy a notebook with one and experience the quiet and the performance along with the portability and form factor change that can cut the wires and set you free.
That's funny, when I bought my area-51m system a couple of years ago I thought it was an amazing advancement to put a normal desktop processor in a laptop! Sure, it makes a ton of noise, basically burns a hole in my desk, and sucks 2 batteries dry in 3 hours...but it's fast! And isn't that what we all really want, deep down?
After looking at the benchmarks across the board for the Dothan setups, I would get such a setup if only they dropped the prices down on the Dothans and their associated motherboards to a more reasonable price. The only thing you'd have to worry about overheating would probably be the GPU, and that should already have adequate cooling built onto it. It makes me wonder if you could get away with a lower-wattage power supply because the CPU using up a whole lot less power than P4's and Athlon64's and still have enough power to juice up a high-end GPU, a couple HDs, an optical drive, and the good ol' floppy drive.
si vis pacem, para bellum..."if you wish peace, prepare for war"
I was shopping for computer crap with a friend of mine in Japan, where they've got lots and lots of Transmeta based subnotebooks. So I started comparing. The Pentium Ms were okay. They ran pretty cool, but you could still feel the heat. The Transmeta machines, if you turned off the monitor, you probably wouldn't even know they were on.
Transmeta is cool.
They are called Apple Macs.
The 6200 series is also very quiet. It should be very similar to the 8200 since they are both HP models. The X and XW 6000 & 8000 models were similar in design. What surprised me was when I saw inside that it has an 80mm fan on each CPU, a fan on the Video, a fan in the PS and TWO 120mm fans on the back. That's SIX fans, yet you need to put you hand in the airflow in the back to know they were moving. The SATA HD is quiet too. We didn't stress test it to much, just a few OS loads as we were building a company OS image for it. But the fans did pick up, but only in the air they were moving, not the noise levels.
Looks like they traded high RPM for low RPM high CFM airflow. Plus I bet they are also BIOS controlled.
I guess they go hand in hand, but it would really be nice to see a movement in the PC world to produce machines with as low power consumption as possible.
Apple has made more efficient processors for the Mhz, so I'm glad others are seeing similar benefits. I just wish Apple's desktops weren't so overpriced!
Mod up +5 Accurate. This is the EXACT reason while we will only see Dothan in "niche" boards like this.
I hope Asus puts out a Pentium-M board like this one, because AOpen's quality control sucks more than Paris Hilton.
$2500-$3000 is too expensive for a computer, when you can make an AMD 64 system for under $1000. That's my only mac gripe.
-an iBook G4 owner
I like to post comments. This is one of those times.
Extreme Tech also reviews the same motherboard and comes to a different conclusion.
Hugs and kisses.
You think you little PC is quiet? Well i can hardly hear my liquid cooled G5. Its great for all 20 good games available to mac.
Did you test the game performance of the P4 systems, which Pentium-M beat, without HyperThreading? Could you?
You're correct of course that they're a manufacturer, but there seems to be at least some distinction between their retail efforts, and their review efforts. For as many reviews from them as I have read (a dozen or so), the numbers and data they generate are in-line with other reviews of the same product, so I don't believe there's any foul play going on.
My iBook's fan comes on very rarely. It came on for the first time almost 4 months after I bought it... At the time I was scared it was making funny noises because it was broken. I have heard similar things baout the imac G4.
Just look at the morons and trolls they give +5's to while giving -1's to one good post after another from AC's. I think most of the moderators hate /., and are just doing their best to make the site useless.
Proud AC since Oct '98
Not the newest Shuttle XPC (SB86i), which I think is the first PC built using the picoBTX standard. This new Shuttle XPC does not need the ICE liquid cooling heat pipe system because quiet cooling is built into the BTX standard. Slashdot covered the launch of Intel's BTX form factor last Monday (Intel's BTX Form Factor Launched Today).
I think the ICE cooling system is what made Shuttle's small PC's stand out from the competition, but the picoBTX standard will probably make it easy for competitors to make tiny, quiet PCs.
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Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
That's interesting. So the logical solution to make the hardware more robust would be to get rid of the fans. Here, let me--
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