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INTEGRATED POWER
So far, the i945GTt-VFA stands apart mostly because of its size and the components
it uses. And, while these are interesting, they are not what interests us most
about this board. In fact, our interest was piqued less by this board's computational
ability, than by the way it is powered: A 19V DC power brick.
The brick, which is fanless and eliminates the need for an external power supply,
is taken directly from the laptop market, right down to its unusual 19V output
voltage. It's manufactured by Delta, the world's largest power supply maker,
and is rated for 90W. We are told that the motherboard itself can handle up
to 180W, which should provide plenty of overhead for hot conditions that might
provoke a failure.
Because the board is not compatible with conventional ATX12V power supplies,
power for external peripherals such as drives must be supplied by the board
itself. This is done via a special adapter that plugs into a Molex header near
the center of the motherboard. The adapter supplies two Molex connections —
enough for one hard drive and one optical drive. A further adapter allows one
of them to be a SATA drive, but no other connections are provided, so the board
is essentially limited to two drives. And, given that the power must be routed
through the motherboard itself, it's probably best not to tempt fate by using
additional adapters to hook up any more.
This 19V power brick is the most "mobile" characteristic of the
board.
So it uses a power brick, you might say. So what? Why get excited over it when
a full sized power supply can support more devices and supply more watts? If
you have to ask those questions, you've probably missed the point of MoDT. The
power brick offers several advantages over a traditional power supply:
- It's much, much smaller.
- It's probably more efficient, as fewer intermediate conversion steps are
needed to obtain working voltages for the various chips on the board.
- It's quieter, as it eliminates the need for a fan in the power supply.
- It doesn't leave unused cables dangling all over the interior of the case.
CPU COOLING
Because mobile processors do not come with heatsinks, AOpen has included a
small heatsink of their own. This is fortunate, as the small dimensions of the
mini-ITX form factor do not work well with the massive aftermarket heatsinks
that dominate the market. The mounting holes for the heatsink are not compatible
with any current mounting systems, so we hope that AOpen's heatsink is up to
the task.
The heatsink appears to be the same one used on some of AOpen's earlier MoDT
boards, notably the i915Ga-HFS
and later versions of the i915GMm-HFS.
While hardly a high-performance part, it has been adequate to cool our Pentium
M processors in the past, and we don't foresee any problems this time around.
The heatsink is simple extruded aluminum, and is not large.
The fan is a low profile 50mm model from Young Lin Tech Co. (no web site available).
It has a clear blue plastic frame, is reasonably quiet, but is unreasonably
buzzy. It's not our first choice for a low-noise cooler, but it's livable enough.
Fan courtesy of Young Lin Tech Co., model DEB501012L.
BIOS
The BIOS is about what you'd expect for a midrange aftermarket board. There
are plenty of on-off switches for the various features, and basic hardware monitoring
is included. However, overclocking is limited to adjusting the FSB between 166
and 190 MHz. Adjusting the CPU clock or multiplier downwards is not supported,
and neither are any voltage tweaks — up or down.
Limited FSB overclocking, under the misleading title of "CPU Clock".
Fan control is included but is almost as limited as overclocking. The CPU "Smart
Fan" option can be enabled or disabled, but no temperature thresholds can
be set, and the fan curve cannot be tweaked. That's not necessarily a bad thing;
so long as the fan controller is indeed "smart" enough not to ramp
up until absolutely necessary. We'll find out more when we get to the actual
tests.
Fan control is limited to "on" and "off".
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