SPCR

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I agree.

Plus..wtf is with not putting a cheap aluminum heat sink on the SB chip? seems silly if you ask me...I guess they deemed it not nessisary, and saving a dollar times thousands of boards = thousands of dollars. but still..its begging for a heat sink!

You didn't sat in the beginning that the board used the G41 chipset before you started talking about the differences with the G45. It is not entirely clear the board uses the G41 until later in the article.

RoGuE wrote:I agree.

Plus..wtf is with not putting a cheap aluminum heat sink on the SB chip? seems silly if you ask me...I guess they deemed it not nessisary, and saving a dollar times thousands of boards = thousands of dollars. but still..its begging for a heat sink!

No, you really don't need a heatsink for that ICH7 chip. I've never seen a board with a heatsink on it -- usually see it as part of the 945G chipset.

croddie wrote:which is moot because lack of digital video output rules out for uses requiring displays

What do you mean? It has DVI (which means it will also support HDMI via an adaptor).

croddie wrote:and high power consumption rules out for basic home servers.

High? 35W using a non-optimal PSU hardly seems high. Is it the best possible, no, but we are talking only about a 5W difference. Still for a file server, one of the 945G based Atom board would be better just because of base price. Any energy savings would just be icing on the cake.

I think the point of this board is for people who want to make very simple, tiny, general purpose computer. They need a little bit more horsepower than an Atom, but nothing else. The normal case wouldn't be to pair this with an E7200, but with a Celeron. This is the first affordable offering for this application in this form factor. The question is how big a market is this?

jessekopelman wrote:

croddie wrote:which is moot because lack of digital video output rules out for uses requiring displays

What do you mean? It has DVI (which means it will also support HDMI via an adaptor).

OK didn't look at the picture, just the conclusion which said "Lack of digital A/V outputs". Maybe Lawrence Lee can correct that. In that case it might be fine for an office system.

croddie wrote: OK didn't look at the picture, just the conclusion which said "Lack of digital A/V outputs". Maybe Lawrence Lee can correct that. In that case it might be fine for an office system.

Sorry about that. Fixed.