Hardware AMD Zacate mini-ITX Motherboards Preview

Asus, MSI and Gigabyte reveal some tasty HTPC motherboards based on AMD's new Zacate APU.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2011/01/04/amd-zacate-mini-itx-motherboards-preview/1

 

Nice.

I would love to pick a Gigabyte (or Asus, if price was right) one up for my impending DVR & NAS build; but just four SATA ports is a deal breaker for me. The NAS part is to serve up ISOs (Including BD) to PCHs around the house. So 12TB is a minimum, won't be that long before it's full, so I need 6 ports for 6 x 2TB = 12TB.

I was planning on getting a mATX s775 board to reuse my Q6600 (And replace my desktop with Sandy Bride) - looks like I'll still have to. Unless some more of these drip out that meet my requirements.

 

Oh man, if these can play DVDs, use word and excel (with no complex calculations) and browse the net then it may very well be my next PC .

Do these have a release date/any performance reviews about?

 

can anyone point me in the direction of where one would get a nice small PSU for these?
I am thinking about finally diving into a custom case build

 

Buying a miniITX-case with integrated PSU might be the cheapest option for a very small PSU, even if you rip the case apart and only use the PSU.

Something like this http://www.scan.co.uk/products/antec-isk-300-150-mini-itx-case-black-desktop-slimline-with-150w-psu

 

Pico PSU is the thing if you're looking to do a custom build and want to keep it small. Obviously most any discrete GPU is out.

Needs an external power brick mind, but still worth it imo. Scan have a uATX section also...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Shop/Computer-Hardware/All/Power-Supplies/MicroATX-and-Fanless

 

I might plonk one of these into a custom NAS build if the price is right.

 

It'll easily handle all that. PCPerspective shows the E-350 running Left4Dead 2 @ 1280x800, medium settings at an average of 30fps, while drawing less than 30W for the entire system.

Full HD playback uses only around half of the CPU. Even with the CPU fully loaded in Cinebench the whole system is only drawing 20W, so you'd be looking at 12-14W power consumption for DVD playback I reckon.

What I really want to know is how well the APUs score in the CustomPC benchmark suite, in comparison to atoms, ULV parts and even low-end desktop CPU/integrated graphics combinations from both AMD and Intel.

 

ta for the suggestions,
I only really want it to replace my IRC/email/torrent/msn laptop thats a bit old now so I dont need anything too fancy. Need something cheap to run that I can leave on all the time. my main gaming PC is too power hungry for that

 

thankyou bit-tech, best coverage of fusion i have seen anywhere.

i like the gigabyte version, just wish silverstone still did lots of htpc style itx cases.

 

£96 for motherboard & APU? Think i might have to change my next buy from a netbook to a mini-itx build..

 

After seeing this and looking around I can't wait for some more benchmarks but if this finds its way into a laptop form its easily going to be my choice. Enough performance to work well and play some games even if it is at fairly low settings, while hopefully carrying on the amd way of being cheaper than intel but finally cutting back on the power usage.

 

Laptops and netbooks already starting to appear:

http://www.laptopspec.net/2011/01/hp-pavilion-dm1z-11-6-inch-laptop-with-amd-zacate-chipset/

http://www.trustedreviews.com/laptops/news/2010/12/29/MSi-Unveils-Zacate-based-Wind-U270/p1

 

not true, you can get 3TB drives from hitachi

 

Pretty impressive stuff!

Man I love Amd

 

Looks like the promo cost less than a Mini ITX board http://www.youtube.com/user/AMDUnprocessed#p/c/8E8F9496223D0A47/1/qUrXyDlfdXQ

 

Oh wow, a spanner has firmly lodged itself into the works.

I was about to sell my 4gb of DDR3 and either get a 775 mini itx and stick my e8200 in it or a dual core atom/ion board. But maybe I will be better off keeping the DDR3 and selling my entire second system...

Any opinions/suggestions?

 

Look pretty good and I'm happy to see more than 4 SATA ports on the ASUS though I'm with Fordy on this one at the moment.
6 would be perfect (5 currently + 1 for expansion), maybe soon

 

+1
One the latter 2 boards might be perfect for my NAS plans. But I need a 16-lane PCIe slot (4-lane PCIe slot = fail) for future expansion. Will eventually get a multiport SAS/SATA 6Gb card (currently using port-multipliers.)

So BitTech get back soon to us with the full MB specs.!! Seems like this article was a tad premature...

 

I really want to see how well these will rip and encode, if its reasonable time wise then I will certainly wait for a 1.4 HDMI capable version and build a killer HTPC out of it.