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."

Comments

Atom-based? That's small!

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

I could sniff a line of them and have a LAN in my sinus cavity!

nas not really

[stokessd]

I thought it would make a great mini NAS nut it only has a 10/100 nic. That was a bummer

Sheldon

Serial AND Parallel

[simonbp]

Wow, it has a serial and a parallel port! That's great! Now I can hook up both my MS serial bus mouse AND my dot-matrix printer; I'll be in Windows 3.1 heaven!

Re:Serial AND Parallel

[TheQuantumShift]

You may even be able to install one of those new fangled three dee accelerator cards in that PCI slot! Sounds like a bunch of voodoo to me though...

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:Serial AND Parallel

[trayrace]

Speaking from an electronics hobbyist's point of view, the standard RS-232 serial port is just so much simpler to use and interface than USB. No drivers required, real plug and play. All I need to interface a microcontoller is a simple level converter chip and some lines of code.

What is the total watts used?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Way out of date chip set and you can better boa

[compass46]

And what's the power consumption of one of those boards? This board is made to do simple jobs and do it with little energy consumption.

RS232's not dead? Good!

[FlyByPC]

Nice to see manufacturers still including the venerable RS232 port. It may be old and slow, but it's very easy to work with, if you're an electronics hobbyist -- much simpler than implementing USB connectivity...

Re:RS232's not dead? Good!

[drinkypoo]

I'd guess that this is also intended as a replacement for various DOS-based industrial control systems. It's small enough to fit even in enclosures that had weird custom PCs in them (such as some CNC machines) and yet has the serial and parallel ports needed to control such devices.

Re:Way out of date chip set and you can better boa

[ejecta]

Except that board is huge, whereas this is tiny, and this boards power useage is far, far lower.

Small refined things always cost more, even if they aren't as powerful as the 'normal' sized item.

Re:can't bother with fans

[ejecta]

I have a via PC2500E board (same as what's in the GPC sold over there in the US), it's a low power cpu but they ship it with a tiny heatsink + fan as that's cheaper than a moderate sized heatsink with no fan. Simply remove puny heatsink, add on moderate sized heatsink and you're good to go.

Personally I find the bucket of old Socket 370 heatsinks I have laying about are great for this purpose, simply drill four mounting holes in them and you're good to go sans fan.

Re:Atom-based? That's small!

[ichthyoboy]

Pfffft...I'm waiting for the quark-based boards, but only if Nvidia releases an open-source driver to resonate my video strings!

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

[doctorcisco]

You just don't get it. Let me spell it out for ya:

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

2) This system board is really, really small. It would make a simply superb POS system, home fileserver/email server/router/allaround network appliance, a great low-power system the size of a trade paperback ... a lot of things like that.

Yeah, the 10/100 ain't so great, but you can always put a GigE NIC in one of the PCI slots.

Let's review: Really small, really low power, really really powerful for its size and power footprint. Lots of neat things one can do with this.

doc

4 watts?

[iminplaya]

And it needs a fan? My 486 consumes more than that and doesn't even need a heatsink. And what the hell is TDP if it doesn't represent some real mathematical value instead of Madison Avenue mumbo-jumbo?

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.)

Re:4 watts?

[Anonymous Coward]

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? Lol, from the design brief for the 82945G GMCH chipset, the TDP of the chipset used is 22.2W (with system bus of 1066MHz, memory frequency of 667MHz and 2 dimms installed). That's only 5.5x the TPD of the actually cpu attached to it...

Re:4 watts?

[flnca]

If you want a truly low-power board, check out the EFIKA with Freescale MPC5200B processor. It has lower specs that the board in TFA, but consumes less than 10 watts with hard drive, and has RS-232 serial port, USB and NIC. Systems with Freescale MPC5121 and MPC5123 dual-core CPUs are also in the make (see news section). :)

I'm running an EFIKA 5200B board with ATI 9250 graphics card, hard drive and CD burner with Debian Linux. Installation was via USB stick and serial port. :)

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:Limited features on that board

[Slashdot Suxxors]

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

Why would it be on your lottery win wishlist? It's a hundred bucks. I'm only a student, and a hundred bucks is a lot of money, but it's nothing that can't be saved for.

Re:Media Box?

[Runefox]

Video cards have IP addresses now?

That said, the Radeon HD 3450 would be great for that, if only that was a PCI-E slot. A Radeon 9250 or GeForce 6200 is about the most you'll get in PCI nowadays though...

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

[AKAImBatman]

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

My Nokia charger was rated for 1.5 watts. My current Motorola Razr comes with a charger that's rated for ~2.8 watts. Obviously, the wattage of a charger has to be higher than the battery output in order to charge the phone.

Make of it what you will.

Re:RS-232!!

[bitrex]

RS-232 is still a popular communications protocol in industrial/control applications, along with test equipment (i.e. data acquisition as stated in the summary). You can still buy exorbitantly priced RS-232 PCI expansion boards for these applications. The manufacturers of this board are probably looking to get some of that market, hence its inclusion.

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

[miscz]

Give up on arguing with those idiots. It's the same kind that compares netbooks/subnotebooks to draggable notebooks.

**Warning** Do not buy from this site

[eudaemon]

Shipping from UK to the USA costs more than the device: they want 52.90GBP for the system, and 59.99GBP for shipping!
Unless you want to pay 219.75 USD for this device, I highly suggest you find a supplier in the United States.

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.

Intel has a much better board

[Yvan256]

Intel has a much better board than this, erm, intel motherboard: the Intel D201GLY2A Little Valley Mainboard, 79$ in bulk packaging. And yes, that's a mini-ITX with a serial and parallel port and yes that includes the CPU too, an Intel Celeron 220 1.2 GHz, Conroe-L (65 nm) based on Intel Core microarchitecture.

Re:RS-232!!

[jobst]

Its an Intel board and they have that in (most of) their server boards : s3000ahlx. I have 3 of those. I use the boards to control my server room temperature (amongst other things) and nothing beats the easy programming of a RS232 port. Additionally I bought some Kouwell ParPort cards to do some other jobs.

Re:SATA Hub?

[hoxford]

Something like this:
http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm-e.asp

or this:

http://www.sataport.com/

Supplier in USA

[athloi]

http://www.mini-box.com/Intel-D945GCLF-Mini-ITX-Motherboard

$80

I think this box would be an ideal computing appliance for the average user. Of course, I would recommend CentOS and a carefully configured set of applications and GUI.

Think, like, your mom and dad checking their email and looking for bargains on Craigslist. At 4 watts.

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

[enoz]

The ACP-12U appears to be a Travel Charger, meaning that it charges a phone much faster than a regular charger by supplying a higher current (perhaps at the cost of battery life).

This charger's maximum output rating is not a reasonable measure of the phone's usage.

Every version of this you could want

[coyote4til7]

I spent a few minutes googling and came up with a US supplier with various mini-itx logic boards. One has gigabit ethernet. Others have HDMI, DVI and more:

http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.100/.f

And no... I have no connection with them ... but if they want to thank me for the plug, I could put some of these to use...

Seems like I also hit another page that had mini-itx boards with a Duo 2 processor. Now, I just need to find one with a Duo 1 processor, put it in a tiny metal case and use to cook breakfast. :-)

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

[puhuri]

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

In cell phone industry they have "3 watt limit" that is the maximum power consumption that a mobile phone can have. It is not about batteries but heat: you do not want burn your hands on mobile.

Yeah, the 10/100 ain't so great, but you can always put a GigE NIC in one of the PCI slots.

If you compare ethernet power consumption at 10, 100, or 1000 Mbit/s, you can see that it rises quite rapidly. For most of time home server is perfectly ok with 10 Mbit/s, when you stream video you may like to have 100 Mbit/s and when transfereing files gigabit is nice. But it is waste to keep 24/7 running server at gigabit.

I've had VIA Epia-based board as home dsl gateway, automation server, video server and dvb vdr box. It is some difference when you have system running 24/7 if it consumes 30W (my epia system with disk powersave) or 150+W (old athlon based computer that has about same cpu power).

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.

Kontron has one with 10/100/1000

[Tavor]

http://www.minitechnet.de/761.html?&cHash=1&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=4619 Features: * Intel® Atom(TM) processor 1.1 GHz BGA CPU * Intel® US15 Embedded Chipset * FSB 400/533 * 1x DDR2 240 pins DIMM * 2x PCI-Express 1x * 2x SDIO * Flat Panel Display Support by on board LVDS * 1x PCI slot * Up to256MB on board graphics memory * CRT, DVI (optional) * 1x 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet * 8x USB 2.0, 3x RS232C * 1x ATA100 and 2x SATA150/300 IDE Controller * Compact Flash socket on board * High definition audio * TPM (Trusted Platform Module) Onboard * Size: 170 x 170 mm (6.7" x 6.7")

Rules of thumb

[symbolset]

What's that general rule of thumb based on?

For general purposes, it's 10 bits to the byte. 8 for data and 2 for overhead.

Re:Rules of thumb

[JoelG]

I should also mention that the overhead is composed of packet headers for each preceeding layer to the packet data.

IE: For HTTP traffic the overhead would be as so (in a standard LAN environment)

802.3 Headers (144 Bits)->IP Headers (160 Bits)->TCP Headers (160 Bits)->HTTP Headers (Variable. But usually at least 240 Bits)

This would total about 704 Bits on a good day.

Now consider also the fact that a standard Ethernet Frame can only reach 12,144 Bits (1518 Bytes) you have 5.8% of each packet being eaten up by headers.

So, for a Gigabit Link (1,000,000,000 Bits/Second), you could only see in the best of circumstances 942,000,000 Bits/Second.

Now the rule of thumb is quite a bit different. A typical IP Routing dude would give way for about 8% overhead due to packet headers. This would give a maximum Data Throughput of 920,000,000 Bits/Second.

Now these are theoretical numbers. You have to remember that this is assuming your computer can encapsulate, fragment and assemble the data at the same speed the Gigabit Network card operates. This is not the case!

In actuality, in a typical PC with a Gigabit Network card, you will see (including packet overhead) a data throughput loss of 20% or greater!

Add to this Window Scaling and MTU sizing, and you have yourself quite a few variables that will effect your throughput at any one time.

If you actually want to see this type of throughput you need a high end router that does all of it's packet transport using ASICs and then you might actually get close to the theoretical numbers. In the mean time, if you can get 300Mbit/second off of your PC's Gigabit NIC, consider yourself lucky! :)

Accentuate the positive

[symbolset]

As long as we're at it, let's point out a 99% efficient PSU to go with it.

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

[Eivind]

Your cell-phone runs on a lot less than that. Have a look at the battery sometime.

My cellphone has a battery that is 3.6V, 600mah, which works out to 2.16Wh (2.16 W over a period of one hour).

It can stay in standby for aproximately 72 hours before needing recharging, so actual power-consumption should be on the order of 2.16/72 = 0.03W.

Your mileage may vary, there are certainly monster-cellphones that use a lot more power than this. But seeing as my fairly typical cellphone uses on the order of 1% of 4 watts it's probably a fair bet that most cellphones use under 4W.

That's in standby. When talking it uses a lot more, perhaps on the order of a watt or so (which would mean it's empty after 2 hours of talking)

hooray - everything I don't want!

[Anonymous Coward]

No ECC RAM support? Check!
Stupid 4cm fan that'll buzz like a mofo, then fail? Check!
No PCI-E slot, guaranteeing piss-poor video, Gbit ethernet or RAID? Check!
Onboard 10/100, not Gbit? Check!
Only one ethernet, making it harder to use as a router/firewall? Check!
Forced 'Legacy IDE' SATA ports? No AHCI, no eSATA, no NCQ? Check!
DVI? FUCK NO!
No hardware virtualisation functions? Check!
Largely useless PS/2, IDE and parallel ports? Check!
Made in a communist dicatorship with questionable human rights? Check!
BIOS bugs galore? With Chinglish changelogs and a slow website? Check!
Hundreds of pre-teen overclocking options? Check!
A generous 12 month warranty, more than anyone could ever need? Check!
Linux support? You'll let ME find out? Wow, bonus excitement!

Let me know if I missed any...

Re:hooray - everything I don't want!

[MattskEE]

I don't have any of the "missing features" you list on my current desktop computer. I used to be a technophile, but since I became an engineer I'm too busy and lazy for that. Now I use my computer for: internet, watching TV/movies, bittorrent, Mathematica and Matlab (when I work at home), a touch of occasional photo editing (The Gimp), and word processing (Open Office).

My computer has a 3GHZ (or so) P4, a gig of ram, an old 64MB video card, and 1.25TB of hard drive space. The processor is probably way overpowered for what I need. I built it over 4 years ago and haven't had any need to upgrade it it since, and I don't expect that I will need to for another several years. If XP gets too out of date I'll move to Linux before installing the Vista resource hog. I don't know why I'd need any of the features you list unless I was running a server, doing lots of photo/video editing, or playing the latest games, but like most computer users I'm not.

To address you point by point:

ECC: Who cares, it honestly does *not* matter if you have ECC ram.
4cm fan: Have you ever seen a northbridge with a big fan? They don't need big fans. If it matters to you, take it off, replace it with a quieter one, or put on a bigger heatsink.
PCI-E: Most people (including me) can get by on still-available PCI video cards. And people who buy mini-ITX video cards are not usually concerned about RAID. Side note: my work computer just got upgraded with a PCI video card because it has an apparently obscure PCI-E x8 port on the motherboard instead of x16 or AGP.
Gigabit: Again, who cares. It's not a server. I rarely find myself transferring gigabytes of data between two computers on my network.
Only one ethernet: When was the last desktop motherboard you bought with two ethernet ports?
Old SATA: For the third time, it doesn't fucking matter even for most power users.
DVI: All of the several monitors I own still use VGA.
Hardware virtualization: Hell, I don't even know what that means, and I'm too lazy to google it.
PS/2, IDE, parallel: I am typing on my IBM model M keyboard, it's PS/2. Ever try developing stuff to run off USB? It takes a lot more work than a parallel port to implement a USB connection. I know, because I've done both. The IDE may be unnecessary but the biggest cost is in implementing it is either board space or the connector cost itself, and both of those are pretty small.
Made in a communist dictatorship: Yeah, a lot of stuff is made over there if you haven't noticed yet.
"Pre-teen" Overclocking options: Why would that be bad? I won't use them, but I don't mind that they are there. It takes very little engineering, and even less production cost to include that.
12 month warranty too long: Why exactly is it "too long"? Would you prefer a 90 day warranty?
Linux support: Well, that's the only potentially valid point, but since it is using an Intel chipset and Intel graphics, I bet: (A) It is supported, and (B) you can confirm or deny that point easily via a web search.

You should be modded Troll, I don't know why you're +5 Insightful.

Re:Atom-based? That's small!

[nacturation]

I hear Nostrildamus builds beowulf clusters of those down at the ol'factory.

**Warning** Do not buy from this site _FOR USA_

[IBBoard]

That's better than we get in the UK from the US. Most companies have hardware at a similar numbered price to in the UK (e.g. maybe £100 would sell for $120, which is ~£60 at the current exchange rate, or something equally stupid) and then we don't even get the option of shipping it to the UK! At least they're trying to be international ;)

Also, the whole of /. doesn't reside in and around the US. There are visitors from other countries including Britain and Europe, you know ;)

Re:RS-232!!

[Smidge204]

A USB dongle is not the same as a genuine RS-232 port. It might be good enough for consumer grade gadgets but it's just an imitation.

Plus, you lose USB ports that way. That PS/2 adapter looks like it'll block at least one adjacent port, maybe all four. Again, it's just an imitation for the real thing. A dedicated port for a dedicated function is going to be better.
=Smidge=

Re:RS-232!!

[quenda]

A USB dongle is not the same as a genuine RS-232 port. You are right. A REAL RS232 port needs a genuine 8-bit 4.77 MHz ISA bus. None of this new-fangled junk.

Re:RS-232!!

[Crizp]

Thing is, RS-232 supports a larger current than USB will, so it can drive more high-powered attachments where USB will fail to supply the needed current.

Some EEPROM burners have this problem when used with USB-to-RS232 converters.

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