Hardware Gigabyte GA-GC230D Atom Mini-ITX

No, both PATA/IDE and power will fit together, no problem

 

graphics

would a 8600 gt help or does that card cost more than it will benefit?

 

I should think that would help a lot, though I would imagine that they would suffer from lack of bandwidth. The only problem is, where do you get one from? Scan have one PCI graphics card, a Geforce FX 5200
OcUK:none
Dabs: nothing recent, Geforce 6200 is the best
Ebuyer: GF6200/5200 (but they do have an ATI HD 2400Pro)
Aria: Sis. Brilliant.
Micro Direct: the usual rubbish selection.
I can't think of anywhere obvious that I have left out

 

for idle power consumption.... that thing = fail...
a year old Acer T180 with an AMD single core 2.3ghz processor with 3gb of ram, and hd draws 39-41 watts (on a kill a watt).. granted at full load it pulls 87 watts....

Where is the power savings of this supposed efficient system?! Most of the time a computer spends is at idle...

 

I've had a call from mini-ITX.com today who claim the 270W PSU is still too powerful for it and recommend a 120W DC-DC, so I've got to find one and retest it. However, the power consumption is still plausible considering the northbridge is old and doesn't have any specific power saving.

 

They are compatible with ATX - it's 4 screws.

Mr. D - dunno yet, haven't tested the G45 board but I suspect the 780G/8200 NV equivalent to be better.

Jojii - It would still be underpowered - I'm finding today a 2.1GHz single core AMD CPU on a 780G is still having trouble with some things.

 

I find it funny that the north bridge needs active cooling and the actual cpu doesnt, seems ironic =p

 

Why 120W? I'm under the impression that 90W should be sufficient, at least that's what several vendors are recommending.

 

120W is a round number, 90W would do - it's all 12V dependent really, not wattage.

 

Does anyone else see consoles in the future being just computers with mainstream mods for enclosures? They are just that as of now, but I more mean like Voodoo or the Blackbird for the masses.

ITX-form factor
1 PCI-E 2.0 instead of 1 pci slot
2 DDR2 any speed, supporting 8gb's
2 SATA (SSD, velociraptor, or conventional 1tb)
1 AMD or Intel cpu

I really think AMD could produce this item above with no effort if a market was real for this kind of system. Having the chipsets, processors, video cards, and whole sale manufacturers already. it would be easy to create a computer console. stick a slim blu-ray player/burner as in a laptop on a mini-itx enclosure with a media card reader and you have something very special indeed...

I have really inspected this review after the thrashing Bit-tech just got from the AnAndtech forums- great review. I love Bit-tech and the blue collar nerd approach.

 

I just bought the Intel Atom board last month for RM250 (around 41 pounds). The difference that I can see with the Gigabyte one is that there's no heatsink on the southbridge.
It replaces my old (but trusty) Epox Pentium 3 board, so the Atom's much faster. Mind you I only use it for playing emulator games (mostly PSOne). I'm happy with it, though I would wish that it comes with either a AGP or PCI Express slot (AGP cards are still widely available here).
Cheap and cheerful in my opinion.

 

Reason I was bit.. loud in my post is, I'm looking refer a low wattage system to a friend off the grid. I was blown away that his Acer pulls less power than a modern mobo, with a modern low power CPU at idle.

btw I was surprised the PSU in the Acer T180 is a Fortron Source 250 watt. I'm glad to see such a quality PSU in a cheap system.

 

I've wanted a tiny, silent, NAS box that I could also use for occasionally downloads or general use for quite a while... I finally built it when I could get my hands on this board.

It's happily running Ubuntu, serving my network and gives me a landing pad into my network when I'm away from home... using it as a NAS is really secondary.

Shame about the North Bridge being a bit power hungry compared to the Atom.

 

The Gigabyte one uses better quality components, such as all solid capacitors... apparently Intel are being really strict on what vendors put out for Atom boards, so they are all almost identical.

 

I don't agree. I think a PCI-e slot would've pushed up the price and been even more redundant than a standard PCI slot, comparatively. You're not going to be using a dedicated graphics card in this system, it's just not realistic, there would be huge bottlenecks all over the place.

I imagine the PCI slot would be used by an enthusiast level sound card or a TV tuner, though that's just my opinion.

 

Might pick this one up for a all in one Carputer..

 

It's simpler than that - Intel doesn't want it to affect its Celeron and other chipset sales.

 

Does anyone know the overall height of the board?