Mini ITX board choices are blooming

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cbn

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
12,968
221
106
21stHermit said:
How about this mini-ITX case:Silverstone mini-ITX case can fit Radeon HD 5970
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It will be interesting to see the reviews on this product. I like the idea of it already though.

With that 180mm fan I even think a self contained sealed watercooling unit (similar to Corsair H50) might be nice to have for the HD5970. But I have never owned tech of that caliber before so I don't know how much of a difference it would really make.
 
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Muse

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
40,895
10,224
136
widefault said:
I gave up on finding mini-ITX cases I like and am building my own. Seems like a majority are designed for the VIA boards, which means inadequate cooling for anything faster or a power supply that can't support much of a load. Also seen a few that mount the hard drive or CD in a place that will hit other components on any non-VIA board. Then there are some that are damned near the size of a MicroATX case, completely negating the idea of Mini-ITX for a small PC.

Yeah, not an option for most people, but maybe someone's home build will inspire a manufacturer to rip-off, er, steal, er, put some thought into their own ITX case designs.
Click to expand...

The case/PSU is what's holding me back now in building my first dedicated server machine, which I figure to include a D510 motherboard and two 1.5TB green HDs. Building my own is something that hadn't occurred to me, but I'm pretty handy and have a lot of tools including two sheet metal shears, jigsaw, vices, tons of screws/nuts etc. and other tools. Building a case would be quite a project, though. I'll almost certainly buy a case, but I have no idea what one just now. I'll probably have to wait until I see integrated Pine Trail systems out there and read customer reviews and see what is working before I go ahead and buy the components.
 
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Zap

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
7
81
Muse said:
dedicated server machine, which I figure to include a D510 motherboard and two 1.5TB green HDs.
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How many HDDs do you envision eventually having? Will you use an optical drive? Will you use a smaller HDD for a boot/OS drive? The reason I'm asking is because many of the Atom-based boards (old or new) have only two SATA ports.

There are a few exceptions that I know of off hand and they are NOT a mini ITX form factor.

Zotac has announced a mini DTX form factor (ITX plus one slot) using the Pineview platform that has SIX SATA ports.

Supermicro has some Flex ATX Atom based server boards (older chips/chipset, not Pineview) that seems very flexible for a low power server board.
 
Muse

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
40,895
10,224
136
Zap said:
How many HDDs do you envision eventually having? Will you use an optical drive? Will you use a smaller HDD for a boot/OS drive? The reason I'm asking is because many of the Atom-based boards (old or new) have only two SATA ports.

There are a few exceptions that I know of off hand and they are NOT a mini ITX form factor.

Zotac has announced a mini DTX form factor (ITX plus one slot) using the Pineview platform that has SIX SATA ports.

Supermicro has some Flex ATX Atom based server boards (older chips/chipset, not Pineview) that seems very flexible for a low power server board.
Click to expand...
Optical drive maybe, because I have to install the OS somehow. Not sure, but I may go with WHS. Don't know how I'd install it without using an SATA optical drive at least for the OS install (maybe to remove in order to install the 2nd HD). I think I heard it's possible to install WHS off a USB flash drive if you use a Vista system to set it up, don't know if it's true or how easy it would be to do that, but saw a site explaining how you do it.

It's hard to see beyond the horizon but right now two 1.5TB hard drives seems like plenty of headroom for me for a server. I figured to boot off one of those 3.5" HDs really because I hadn't even considered anything else. I've always booted off a HD. I was vaguely aware that some folks boot off USB devices and I tried to get that working on one of my XP systems a year or two ago and couldn't get it to work. It was more of an exercise than anything else, I had no need to do it. If I'd persisted, maybe it would have worked. Alyarb in another thread in this forum offhandedly suggested (he put out a lot of suggestions) that I maybe boot off a 16GB SSD. That one really caught me off guard! I asked him why, was it to allow me to run the 2 matched HDs in a RAID configuration (something I've never done and have no intentions of doing at least right now), and he said:

"the point of using a mini-PCIe SSD is to have a RAID array using only the limited onboard connectivity included on the D510MO board (they only give you two SATA slots). You can always add more SATA devices later with a PCI controller card."

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=29280907#post29280907

What I really want is a low cost, low power but reasonably quick central data read/write source for my desktop and two wirelessly connected laptops, which are currently accessing a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 router (not N). The easy and robust backup facility in WHS is appealing, but I may go with a Ubuntu or other distro (I've never dealt with any!) or XP and work out backups myself somehow.

A 3rd HD for the boot, is there an advantage other than to allow RAID? It's going to increase the power consumption to have another HD in there, right? I apologize for being such a noob! I've built a few desktops, etc. but building this server is proving to be my biggest challenge by far! I've been researching it for over a year but the only move I've made is buying my second laptop, which I'm using temporarily as a data server (wifi) until I build or buy the server machine.
 
M

master7045

Senior member
Jul 15, 2005
729
0
76
Muse said:
Optical drive maybe, because I have to install the OS somehow
Click to expand...

Couldn't you just use a USB or esata external optical drive to install the OS with? This probably isn't ideal if you would be ripping music/movies to the box though.
 
2

21stHermit

Senior member
Dec 16, 2003
927
1
81
Two H55 mini-ITX MB tested. Tom's

h55-comp1.jpg
 
Zap

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
7
81
Zap said:
I currently own FOUR mini ITX boards and ZERO mini ITX cases. :$
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Well, I now own two mini ITX cases as well. Picked up two of those cheap Apex cases (one for $30 shipped as a ShellShocker). I'm thinking of modding one to accept a bigger PSU and dual slot card.

21stHermit said:
Two H55 mini-ITX MB tested. Tom's
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

21stHermit said:
One H55 mini-ITX for sale: ZOTAC H55ITX
Click to expand...

Here's another new-ish ITX board. I can see that as the basis for really cheap builds because you can probably use the Celeron Dual Core E3XXX on it, plus it supports five internal SATA devices.
 
2

21stHermit

Senior member
Dec 16, 2003
927
1
81
Zap said:
Well, I now own two mini ITX cases as well. Picked up two of those cheap Apex cases (one for $30 shipped as a ShellShocker). I'm thinking of modding one to accept a bigger PSU and dual slot card.
Click to expand...
Oh NO, not another Zap mod. ;) ;)

100_1156.jpg
 
Zap

Zap

Elite Member
Oct 13, 1999
22,377
7
81
Heh, I will likely be cutting away material, not adding material. Besides, it's a lot easier to mod an existing case than build one from scratch. My track record is a LOT better modding cases than building cases. :D
 
cbn

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
12,968
221
106
Zap said:
Here's another new-ish ITX board. I can see that as the basis for really cheap builds because you can probably use the Celeron Dual Core E3XXX on it, plus it supports five internal SATA devices.
Click to expand...

I like the idea of Mini-ITX a lot, but $100 for one of these little mainboards seems rather steep.

Hopefully (knock on wood) the market develops a driving force to lower the price on these parts.

$50 ITX mainboards would obviously sell faster. If truly overclockable APUs could be made "embedded" to reduce total cost of ownership then so much the better.
 
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cbn

cbn

Lifer
Mar 27, 2009
12,968
221
106
coolVariable said:
Once these drop to sub $100 it becomes really interesting.
Click to expand...

I think they should be able to. The manufacturers just need higher volumes.

The packaging, shipping and warehousing costs should be cheaper with something like this. (Just like they are with laptops)

I am particularly looking forward to "embedded" and "overclockable" Mini-ITX APU boards if such a product is even possible to make. Maybe even ones with a "Tower cooler" built into the little case somehow.
 
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Elcs

Elcs

Diamond Member
Apr 27, 2002
6,278
6
81
My first ever look at and post in the HTPC/SFF forum :)

I have just made my first foray into Mini ITX. I just wanted a low power, very quiet system (my main rig with ~7v 1,200 rpm scythe slipstreams and Green Power drives is too noisy) just for the web browsing, instant messaging and the occasional youtube/trailer viewing. I also wanted HDMI output so I could display 1080p on my monitor (47" full HD LCD TV). 1080p playback wasn't a huge issue for me.

I plumped with an Asus AT3N7A-I (http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=xrR7wto9Z5BL42aU&templete=2) which is a dual core Atom 330 with ION. 3 SATA ports which give me room to upgrade

An Antec ISK 300-65 (as reviewed here http://www.silentpcreview.com/Antec_ISK300-65). A nice and small case with adequate cooling for a low power system. Only not fun part really is the slim optical drive. I can pick up a blu-ray slim optical drive with Lightscribe for £70 which isnt too bad, would be a nice upgrade down the line. A small external PSU comes with it and will be more than acceptable for my usage.

To add to this I have ordered 1 stick of 2Gb 800mhz DDR2 and a 250 Gb WD Scorpio HDD. I would have went with a larger drive and 4 Gb of DDR2 but I wanted to keep my costs down a bit further and in real terms I do not forsee me using 250 Gb of HDD space on the machine in the near future.

Overall, these 4 components cost me £220 or approximately $330 USD if you convert. Probably sounds like a lot of American money but in most cost comparisons for components, we almost always come out unfavourably.

In the future as i have mentioned, I might add a blu-ray drive in there so I can watch blu-rays on my TV or take the machine downstairs to plug into the parents HDTV (1080i) to watch one. I also think a Wireless card N standard might be on the cards too. We only have a A/B/G router in the house at the moment but when that looks likely to pop it's clogs (already ~3 years old) we'll be upgrading to an N standard anyway. Hard drive may need enlarging as I find more and more movie usage coming from the box and the Antec case has two slots for 2.5" drives, allowing for expansion or perhaps an SSD :)

It may lack the upgradability from a processor/motherboard standpoint but it fits most of the remit for an HTPC. Small, quiet, can play 1080p movies over HDMI, low heat and reasonably stylish. Despite having extreme reservations that the Atom processor is so much slower than the desktop processors I have been used to, I feel that I could not ask anything more of a dedicated internet/movie machine.

I am most looking forward to receiving these items on Monday. Got my memory stick ready and laden with Windows 7 64-bit to install :)
 
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Muse

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
40,895
10,224
136
Computer Bottleneck said:
I am particularly looking forward to "embedded" and "overclockable" Mini-ITX APU boards if such a product is even possible to make. Maybe even ones with a "Tower cooler" built into the little case somehow.
Click to expand...
I'm looking for a cool quiet, but mainly a low power efficient server machine for my network without glitches. If the idle draw is low enough, I may not even think about spindowns or suspend. I figure a D510 may be the way to go but I don't know what case/psu would work best. I just need two 3.5" drives, and maybe a DVD drive to install WHS. Oh, and maybe boot off CF, USB or SSD, don't know if that's smart or economical.
 
2

21stHermit

Senior member
Dec 16, 2003
927
1
81
You could see this coming, so I voted my $$$ for a Gigibyte microATX @ $105. Over/underclock, over/undervolt in any combination. Saving that last bit of space mini-ITX vs microATX was of no value to me. YMMV
 
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