News Six-core mini-ITX motherboards inbound

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/06/14/six-core-mini-itx-motherboards-inbound/1

 

Yeah I saw those and the first thing that came to mind was.... "meh, f*kin SoDIMMs!"

But it's a step into the right direction.

The J&W-board coupled with a low-power CPU like the AMD Athlon II X2 240e and the option to slap in a miniPCIe DVB-T card makes it a real nice media-box.

 

Now give us the 125W CPU support. thank you.

The way I see it, there's two main issues keeping me from buying on of those boards:
1. no 125W CPU support
2. SO-DIMM?? - aren't those ridiculously expensive compared to their desktop counterparts?

I'd still love a mini-ITX gaming rig, but I just don't see it as a dream to come true before we either get a dedicated gaming mini-ITX board or if we get 125W CPU support.

 

The DFI P55-T36 has room for full fat memory modules as well as support for the Lynnfield processors. Whether it will handle them is another story entirely.

 

DFI P55-T36 - it can and it does, we've tested it. Whether you'll get support if your board blows up though.. well, your guess is as good as mine.

RE: So-DIMMs. Kingston is the only company to make 1600MHz parts because it can afford to use the expensive Elpida Hiper ICs. Otherwise you're setup with using 1333MHz. It's not meant for super-duper-benchmark winning performance anyway.

 

Isn't there also the Zotac H55 one?

To me at least, it seems as though the Intel components are much more suited to running in a small package, all the Intel Mini-ITX ones I've seen have managed full DIMMs.

Again, power is an issue, but Zotac doesn't seem as if they're going out of business in the near future...

 

ITX has huge potential for LAN party systems. A small light system that is semi-portable but beats a laptop in performance is what I would like to see. Not to mention small is sexy

 

Yes, I'm looking at making myself a Crossfire Mini-ITX rig (I know what you're thinking, but there are ways of managing the fact it only has one slot) and I've worked out that the smallest it could possibly be without ripping apart the PSU would be 31cmx33cmx10cm

 

I can think of one method to get around the one slot problem.......Something like that?

 

Check back tomorrow for our Gigabyte H55 mini-ITX review

Yes Zotac and ECS also do H55 mini-itx boards (both reviewed on bit too ) but they don't recommend lynnfield CPUs, only clarkdale, whereas DFI's P55 has inbuilt overclocking profiles for moderate Core i5 750 and i7 860 overclocks.

You've no chance of CrossFire really. Why bother making hassle for yourself trying to hack something it was never meant to support? Buy a better single card. Look at micro ATX - but even then they will be few and far between, because a second x16 slot will often be an x4 only. Does Asus make a P55-based Rampage III Gene?

 

Do Gigabyte recommend Lynnfield chips?

 

Yes and no. All H55 boards are geared towards Clarkdale more or less. The physical hardware on the board generally cannot cope with the demands of Lynnfield CPUs: 3 phases can only offer so much. Most mini-ITX H55 boards have a 75-95W recommended TDP limit for consistent use. Some people have put 1.5+V through a 655K at >5GHz on XS recently though, but that was for short term benchmarking.

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/05/27/will-mini-itx-will-lead-to-disappointment/

 

The guy also oced a 875k on the gigabyte mobo to over 4 ghz stable

 

But for how long? A Gigabyte engineer told me the FETs can handle at most 95W, so an 875K will push them harder shortening their life.

 

The Giga miniITX H55N USB3 has been benched @ over 5.0GHz by dinos22 and youngpro, check it out @ XS

 

From what Bit-Tech has been saying, the board can't handle the power and will likely pop at some point.

Let's face it, under the covers it's just a desktop motherboard where it might not be routine but it wouldn't be amazing. The difference is it's got less hardware attached so it's less suited to overclocking.

 

Yes. http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/news/cpu/asus-maximus-iii-gene-p55-matx-crowd/

EDIT: not to mention Gigabyte's P55M-UD4 has x8/x8 support and EVGA even has some SLI certified mATX boards. http://www.evga.com/products/moreIn...erboard Family&series=Intel P55 Series Family

 

I only read this part of your post today. What I'm planning to do is not particularly revolutionary, because it's only a slightly less technical advanced version of the Asus Xpander.

The below image is a Supermicro riser card - it converts an electrically x16 slot into two electrically x8 slots. This is no different to a normal P55 motherboard's setup.



As you can see, an extra power plug is necessary to provide the 75w that can be provided through the slot.

Using two other PCIe flexi risers, it's possible to connect two cards up. Based on what I know about how Crossfire works, because there's no manufacturer validation Crossfire will work on any Intel chipset, even if there's no physical second slot by default.

 

does it actually work?? Im interested simply from a tech point of view

 

I have absolutely no idea xD

All I'd say is that in my opinion the theory is sound (Asus use a similar idea, with more bells and whistles for their Xpander), whilst SuperMicro is a big server company - I doubt they'd make products that didn't work. Speed wise, I'm not sure, but that would be something to test before committing