- Aug 25, 2001
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It really depends on whether the BIOS is new enough to support booting NVMe devices, I've seen a few late-model H81 boards with support. These are Asus H81I CSM boards, with a recent / updated BIOS, that still allows overclocking the G3258.
I was originally planning on doing these up for gaming, but the fact that the CPU is only dual-core (2C/2T), kind of put the brakes on that idea. So, @ 4.0Ghz or slightly higher, they make really "snappy" web-browsers, and I was thinking, they have HDMI output (sadly, not @ 4K in Windows, due to driver limitations with CPUs branded "Pentium" rather than "i3" and above), they would make nice HTPC or web browsers.
Anyways, I bought some 128GB NVMe drives off of Newegg ("Vaseky"), and was trying to find uses for them. I've got some M.2 NVMe PCI-E x4 adapters, and these mini-ITX boards have a single PCI-E x16 slot (2.0? 3.0? I don't know).
I know that most people feel that this slot should be reserved for a GPU, but what if I put in an x4 NVMe SSD instead? That would even further increase the "snappiness" of the browsing experience, I think. I think that it could be a win. But it would also mean, that I couldn't upgrade the Haswell iGPU to a dGPU, not without down-grading the storage and re-installing or cloning to a SATA 2.5" SSD instead. (There are 2x SATA6G and 2x SATAII ports on this board.)
It would be an interesting experience, again, if the BIOS supports NVMe, that is. I figure, it's probably a 50/50 chance. (There are no NVMe slots on the board, sadly.)
What would be even MORE interesting, would be a hybrid sort of card, specifically for ITX mobos, that bifurcates the x16 slot, into an x4 for an NVMe, and an x8 for a GPU, using a riser cable. With some creative case modding, that could work, possibly. I don't think anyone makes anything like that, except maybe for 1U servers??? Possibly??? Anyone know?
I was originally planning on doing these up for gaming, but the fact that the CPU is only dual-core (2C/2T), kind of put the brakes on that idea. So, @ 4.0Ghz or slightly higher, they make really "snappy" web-browsers, and I was thinking, they have HDMI output (sadly, not @ 4K in Windows, due to driver limitations with CPUs branded "Pentium" rather than "i3" and above), they would make nice HTPC or web browsers.
Anyways, I bought some 128GB NVMe drives off of Newegg ("Vaseky"), and was trying to find uses for them. I've got some M.2 NVMe PCI-E x4 adapters, and these mini-ITX boards have a single PCI-E x16 slot (2.0? 3.0? I don't know).
I know that most people feel that this slot should be reserved for a GPU, but what if I put in an x4 NVMe SSD instead? That would even further increase the "snappiness" of the browsing experience, I think. I think that it could be a win. But it would also mean, that I couldn't upgrade the Haswell iGPU to a dGPU, not without down-grading the storage and re-installing or cloning to a SATA 2.5" SSD instead. (There are 2x SATA6G and 2x SATAII ports on this board.)
It would be an interesting experience, again, if the BIOS supports NVMe, that is. I figure, it's probably a 50/50 chance. (There are no NVMe slots on the board, sadly.)
What would be even MORE interesting, would be a hybrid sort of card, specifically for ITX mobos, that bifurcates the x16 slot, into an x4 for an NVMe, and an x8 for a GPU, using a riser cable. With some creative case modding, that could work, possibly. I don't think anyone makes anything like that, except maybe for 1U servers??? Possibly??? Anyone know?
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