Small Form Factor Thread for the thin mini ITX builds

Board and CPU arrived today gents so a pic of it all installed:



The Akasa cooler is a smidge too tall, but you can still fit the bottom panel. A Silverstone NT07 would probably fit perfectly. The SATA power cable that comes with the board has the SATA power connectors facing the usual way so you can't really use a 2.5" drive with this case and board unless I can find a suitable cable or mod it. I've borrowed an mSATA drive from work just to test it and it flies along nicely and temps and noise from the Akasa cooler are very good. My idea of punching two holes in the IO shield for the WIFI antennas may work but its gonna be tight with the two large 3R3 chokes(?) at the back of the board.

I will say that the BIOS is a bit basic on the ECS boards, no real control over the fans or anything and there doesn't seem to be a Windows key embedded in the UEFI (no real surprise there) but mine came with pretty much all the accessories I would expect from a new board rather than a bare OEM one.

 

So benchmark scores in Realbench:

Image Editing
120,546
Time:44.1986


Encoding
16,677
Time:319.466


OpenCL
7,462
KSamples/sec: 1412


Heavy Multitasking
12,200
Time:625.548


System Score
39,221

Final spec:

Intel Core i5 4670T - quad core 2.3GHz base, 3.3 turbo, 45w TDP
8GB Samsung DDR3-1600 SODIMM
ECS H81H3-TI2 V1.0
250GB Samsung 840 Pro
Intel Wireless-AC 7260 - not installed yet, need to add the WIFI aerial holes
Phoenix Technologies Phnx Toem case
Akasa AK-CC7118HP01 K25 CPU cooler

Total cost, £117 not including OS. Max temps were about 75 degrees and the cooler was noticeable but not bad considering its only a tenner. The Silverstone NT07 and an mSATA drive to help with airflow would probably do better. The case does get pretty warm on top too though I've only removed the protective plastic around the sides at the moment until I've finished faffing.

 

Damn, Realbench is Windows-only! I've gone Full Penguin on my H81 board - was about damn time I made the switch full-time... (really missing the middle-click-to-scroll thing though)

 

It is. We designed it for workstation/gaming rigs really. The intention was to add a 3D benchmark but it was never realized because it was made with near-zero budget.

 

On the subject of the wifi card. Mine works without antennae. It's fairly slow but quite stable. I think, with the addition of laptop style antennae running round the inside of the case, and terminating with the metal ends touching the case, it should provide a fairly decent signal strength, providing you aren't three rooms away from the router. I'll try it and report back next week. Might save butchering the I/O plate

 

Just for reference....My realbench score on my main rig, It really highlights just how useful these little boxes are! (P8Z68, i7 2600k @4.5GHz, 16gb ram, 256gb SSD)


Image Editing
142,392
Time:37.4178


Encoding
55,520
Time:95.964


OpenCL
15,990
KSamples/sec: 3007


Heavy Multitasking
66,183
Time:115.316


System Score
70,021

 

Okay... I’ve seen enough. I’m getting in on the action.

They have the board locally (less than 30 mins from my place) for $48 which is the same as if I bought it from the UK and had it shipped.

 

What do you guys use it for? I have a Q09 with mini ITX board (albeit not thin) doing nothing and no real use for it..?

 

It's good enough to for pretty much anything but gaming over 1650. According to real bench, the decoding is a bit weak too. I'd happily edit images on it though.

 

Would you be so kind as to bench it for comparison?

 

For me it's my only desktop PC right now. I had to sell up most of my gaming kit in order to help pay for some insurance costs, so my PCs currently consist of a ThinkPad X240 and this H81/G3220T-based system. It's good enough for most day-to-day purposes TBH.

 

It's running Ubuntu, but of course. What do you want me to run?

 

I’ll most likely turn it into a DVR as I am tired of paying $5 a month to rent a box to show my cable on TV as well as another $5 on top for recording features. It’ll pay for itself eventually and it will also be able to record shows, remove adverts and just be a better solution overall.

Anyone got any recommendations for a really slim chassis that I can purchase here? That Phoenix Tech one comes to the same price as a Silverstone unit here.

Edit:

I totally forgot that I have an FM2 ITX board that I need to test. It was one of the best produced by GB... I should probably do that first. Now, to hunt down a cheap CPU!

 

And just like that, there’s an A4-5300 on the way. It was ending soon and I won for $7.99 plus post.

 

Noice, loving the ITX and bargains on this thread

 

Ah, same issue as Byron then. Although I'm not sure why it would be Windows only when all the apps real bench uses are open source. Must be an easy fix no?

 

Has anybody else noticed on these ecs boards the vcore is ludicrously high? Both my pentiums (g3258 and g3240) sit around 1.7v and also the ddr3l is at 1.5v. Unless I'm blind I can't see a way to change it either. I'm hoping the bios is falsely reporting it because it's far from toasty even using the stock cooler.

 

How are you checking the voltage? Within the UEFI?

 

I can probably stuff Windaz on it some time soon!

 

Same voltages in the UEFI here too, 1.72v on the CPU and 1.55v on the RAM. Here it is in Windows while running the CPU-Z stress test:



Edit: Two holes in the IO shield later: