Ok. I have an idea. I want to build the smaaaallllllleeeeest yet most powerful machine per volume in history ever. I have decided the best way to do this is to start with a laptop. Take for instance your average crazy over the top over powered desktop replacement laptop. Give it the best laptop cpu you can find, max out the ram, thrown in an ssd... nice and fast. Now here is the crazy part... Rip off the monitor, keyboard, trackpad and shell. Take out whatever poor excuse for a graphics card is in the mxm slot. Build a new, super slim, vertical tower case. Now we are getting somewhere... next up? Put a full size graphics card in that MXM slot. Oh snap! But how? From what I have researched, an MXM slot and a PCIEx16 slot are very similar. Apparently if you solder up the appropriate connectors from an mxm slot to a PCIEx16 riser you can have a standard PCIEx16 card in this riser, and this riser connected to your mxm slot. I have seen a picture of a development type board that does exactly this - they exist, and are used for designing laptops. Short of actually finding out where it was built, who built it, and how to buy it, I would like to know if anyone is game for making an MXM3.0b to PCIEx16 adapter? This would mean a custom slim tiny pc powered by a laptop board/cpu/ram and a desktop GPU. Kinda like what the HP firebird shoulda been. Am I crazy? can it be done? Let me know! -Ash EDIT: Thats the Dev Board. The board plugs into an MXM slot, and then a PCIEx16 card connects to it. Hilariously, it is wasted in this pic, as the card plugged into the adaptor is in fact another adaptor, holding an MXM card. -Ash
Being Devils Advocate: I would have thought a laptop mobo would actually be larger (surface-area) than a Mini-ITX motherboard?! Plus, what are the power specs for MxM connector? If a 'full-bloodied' 5870 (or whatever) requires the 75W from the PCI-Ex16 connector in addition to the external connectors, you may struggle. I suppose the laptop internals give you the advantage of lower height, but I believe you can get low profile RAM sticks, etc ? thanks, SouperAndy
Yeah I would use something like the drive bay PSU for the graphics card. As for profile - im including heatsink height too. An mitx board with a decent silent cooler takes up a ridiculous amount of height. -Ash
+1 for mini-itx. You're never going to be able to set any world records anyway, as who would decide that yours was the most powerful and the smallest? What if someone has one a bit slower, but a bit smaller? Or a bit quicker but .1 cm2 larger. If you stick with a laptop MOBO, you'll end up with something the size of a laptop with a GPU stuck to the side. A laptop mobo is just larger than you'll need, why not start with something small rather than something big? If you go with mini-itx, with a bit of love you could come up with something mega and good looking. Even nicer than this: http://www.gizmodo.jp/2008/11/macbookmac_pro_ultra_mini_1.html
No Probs, wasn't trying to be negative about the idea at all. You mentioned smallest in terms of volume in your original post. So you can go either small footprint but taller (mini-ITX or nano-ITX, if you can source anything) or larger footprint but wider (laptop innards). How are you planning to mount the GPU? Vertically is a no-no I presume due to the tallness argument. But even using a PCI-E riser the horizontal size is still significant... Also, what do you mean by performance ? High-MHz Dual-Core, Quad-Core or Hexa-Core? Intel or AMD preference? What GPU do you have in mind? For reference, I've built a Mini-ITX sytem using a Zotac GF9300-WiFi, E7400, 4GB RAM and a HD4770 all in a Silverstone SG-05 case. I used a low-profile heatsink on the CPU and omitting the GPU and case it is really very compact. Thanks, SouperAndy
http://www.intel.com/Assets/Image/prodlarge/D945GSEJT_lg.jpg Quite a physically thin Atom. Note the 12v barrel power connector. You could create a slottable bay with the 12v power connectors and ethernet connectors (or use Wifi) ready for mating. Add a MiniPCI-E SSD and you're good to go. They might end up looking similar to these. Google for "fawn cluster": http://news.cnet.com/i/bto/20091014/FAWN_3G_crop.jpg http://www.duke.edu/~mat39/firstpicture.png http://www.sandia.gov/csit/research/assets/images/cluster_big.jpg
Thanks for all the feedback guys. Im kinda looking at something as thin as a laptop, and about the physical dimensions of a 17-18" gaming notebook, maybe a bit slimmer. Taking out the battery and screen/keyboard/shell cuts out a lot of bulk from a notebook - in something like a 15" notebook, the mainboard takes up about half the space footprint of the actual notebook. The main reason for using a notebook board is the low power consumption and thus heat output, and a massive cutdown on PSU size. Additionally, the heatsink for a laptop CPU is very very small and wont add to the bulk of the machine. I would be using a PCIE riser to get the whole thing all flat-like. Hopefully this would all fit in a neat little package. Basically, the idea is slim and silent. -Ash
What about something like this? I know you wanna use a laptop Mobo and why, but this would be so much easier~
I actually have all the parts to do what you suggest skreenname. Problem is, a server PSU is anything but silent. The "silent" server PSU that I bought for this wails like a banshee when I start any kind of load. Hence, laptop idea. -Ash
There was a good thread here about using an external GPU on a laptop, might be of interest to you http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=188555
1U PSU's tend to be loud because they use screaming little fans; take them out; bore a hole in the side; slap in a large slow fan and as if by magic, quiet PSU. p.s. ensure the PSU is compleatly discharged before opening it up or you may fry yourself, and you will void your waranty; but what you're planning to do to a laptop I think the lattar is the least of your conserns.
Try looking around for embedded stuff. There should be something out there based on 'calpella' but has real PCI slots. I've seen embedded reference boards all the time that use mobile CPUs but the boards are more desktop oriented. Purely as an example off the top of my head, see if you can find info on a reference board named "Cook Forest". I'm not sure what the embedded reference board based on Calpella is called though. I saw something a while back, but I have no idea if it was ever released.
