Hi,

I consider purchasing the following elements:

- a Thermaltake Element Q case, with no power supply
- an AT3IONT-I Deluxe Mini ITX motherboard, with an 90W external power supply. This means there won't be a power supply in the Thermaltake case.
- 2 x 2GB of RAM, equipped with small heatsinks.
- Radeon HD5450 passively cooled 13W graphics card (I will disable the on-board ION iGPU)
- any kind of solid state drive.

I don't need a DVD or Bluray drive.

This computer is meant to be in our living room for web browsing mainly, and occasional video playback through the HDMI port. The Radeon HD5450 is a must have, as I specifically need this card for development purposes. This configuration will be slow, but this is perfectly O.K. for me. I can even underclock the video card, if needed.

Do you think this configuration can run without any single fan? I mean really, zero fan.

I intend to drill holes on the top of the case, for heat to escape, as I will not have a power supply above the mainboard.

Thanks
MB

NB: this web site is good, kudos to the team.

I have no experience with that case or that board but since you've got no reply...

You can read about our experiences running fanless Atom systems on the forum. You're likely to get very high temperatures unless you're using mobile boards (unlike that Ion) or very open cases. Drilling a few holes in a case designed for non-fanless operation may not be sufficient to keep temperatures where you want them to be. My experience is that it doesn't take much to obstruct convection. You may be better off replacing the cover by a net or something. Alternatively, a custom heatsink or perhaps even a thermal paste reapplication may help. Depending on the board's heatsink and the amount of space in the case, temperatures may vary strongly depending on the orientation of the board.

Consider using a mobile Atom board instead of an Ion board since you're going to use a graphics card. I don't know which boards (if any) can take your card.

Hi,

Thanks for your reply.

What do you mean by a mobile Atom board? Do you mean one with an Intel 945 chipset? Does this chipset really use less energy than the ION (the ION also is a mobile chipset)? Remember I intend to switch off the graphics portion of the ION.
I do need a PCI express 16x slot for the graphics card. Any Mini ITX motherboard will work otherwise, regardless of the power of the CPU.

The position of the board in this case (Element Q) is horizontal, which means convection should work reasonably well. It should also work for the Radeon HD 5450, that only has a small 2" x 4" heatsink. Cases that receive a motherboard in a vertical position are much less good for me, because the heatsink of the graphics card looks down in this situation.

Since I only want to rely on convection, would a case like the Antec Skeleton-90 (*) work? As long as my motherboard is pretty much sitting in the air with the Skeleton-90, can I reasonably assume a fan wouldn't be needed?

This page suggests the load temperature of the AT3IONT-I chipset isn't too bad (42°C).
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3479/a ... dex11.html
But other pages where the board is in a case mention temperatures over 80°C...

If I do choose to use a fan, should I go for a case fan, or a CPU fan? My instinct tells me to go for a case fan since it would also benefit the heatsink of the graphics card.

If I go for a case fan, will I be able to program it so that it kicks in only when my temperatures go above a certain threshold (CPU fan connectors/controllers/BIOSes usually allow this, not sure about chassis fans)?

Thanks,
MB

(*) Antec Mini Skeleton-90:
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/2992/a ... index.html
This case is ugly, and I would not use the top fan obviously. It is unlikely I buy it but if you tell me convection REALLY does work reliably, this might be an option.

I mean the ones with Atom CPUs which have lower TDPs. Ion laptops have them I think but all Ion boards I've seen use desktop Atom CPUs. Maybe the Ion chipset is efficient once the graphics are disabled. But, if memory serves, Ion boards are less efficient than regular desktop Atom boards if the graphics are enabled.
Your 16x PCI-e requirement may be an issue. Is the bandwidth really needed? I think Pineview only supports 4x. And I think some boards don't even have PCI-e.


With the D510MO, vertical positioning works better in a small case (unless it is extremely open like the one used in SPCR's review). Different heatsinks may work better when positioned horizontally. Maybe the ElementQ is big enough to get convection going within the case anyway.


Yeah, that should work fine (I don't have experience with that particular board, only with Asus' regular D510 board which has a similar-looking heatsink). But that's not even a case. An actual case should work well as long as it has many fairly large holes in the right places.


I don't know for sure but I imagine heatsinks designed for fanless operation would perform very well with a slow case fan as long as the airflow doesn't end up bypassing the heatsink area.

There were a few boards with mobile Atoms (N270) and laptop Chipsets (945GSE/ICH7M), but they were all Intel. I've never seen an ION board with a mobile CPU. ION boards generally use the most power of any Atom boards, but as Hfat said they might be better with the on board graphics disabled.

If you are concerned about power usage but still need the PCIe slot then you should probably get a Pineview board. There are at least a couple with a physical x16 slot, but it's only an x4 slot internally as that is all the PCIe lanes that the NM10 has. They also sacrifice LAN speed as the NIC has to run off PCI.

There are also some with an x1 slot that you could mod if you feel up to it and there is nothing else on the board in the way. They are a bit more plentiful than the boards with x16 slots and they have full speed LAN and/or extra drive controllers. The ION2 boards run this way, they are mostly just a NVIDIA graphics card in an x1 slot.

Jetway had N270 boards at least. They've recently released a N550 board which is somewhat unique because it's a mobile dual-core. I don't know if anyone else has one. It doesn't look like it's got a PCIe slot however.

Oops, meant that for N270 boards "all Intel" = Intel chipset. Not that only Intel made N270 MBs. My bad. Yeah, Jetway had some along with a few "industrial" MB manufacturers.

We're all talking about mobile CPUs and chipsets, aren't we? I mean ION is a mobile chipset, just like the 945 or the NM10. Atom 'N' stands for Netbook, D for desktop.

I don't believe convection works better when the board sits vertically in the case, I trust more the horizontal position.

Regarding the Antec Skeleton-90 case, no I don't really want to buy one My daughter would put something in there

Regarding the 3 different setups you are talking about:

Atom N270 + Intel 945 chipset: the N270 is only 2.5W TDP (great!). Problem: no PCI express.
Atom D510/D525 (pineview) + NM10: Problem 1: 13W TDP, it's fine but the need for a fan is more likely. Problem 2: PCI express 1x or 4x only (the Asus AT5 board has an open-ended 4x slot accepting 16x cards, but it actually runs at 1x speed only - the config can either be 4 x 1x or 1 x 4x).

Atom N330 + ION: The N330 is 8W TDP. You have a real PCI express 16x bus and slot. This is the configuration I am interested in. Seems like a pretty good compromise. The AT3IONT-I Deluxe board from Asus seems fairly good.

Don't know about configurations with a N450 or N550. I don't believe that heat/power wise they will be more interesting than the AT3IONT-I board.

Here is what I am going to do:

I'm going to go for a AT3IONT-I Deluxe board, the Deluxe version has an external 90W power supply as I said. For the case I'm going to buy a SilverStone SG05:

http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/ ... 5&area=usa

Unlike the Thermaltake Element Q, the SilverStone has a 120mm front fan that I can set up to kick in when the temperature is too hot. Just to be on the safe side! I am assuming I will be able to replace the fan with a Noctua.

One last question:

The SilverStone has room for a dual-slot graphics card, in case I want to upgrade in the future. But 90W is not enough power to run a fast graphics card. Do you know if motherboards with 19V DC input can have their external power supply upgraded to something more powerful?

Here is an external 19V 120W power supply, not sure if this would work with the AT3IONT-I. I don't know if the plugs are compatible:
http://uk.farnell.com/xp-power/aml120ps ... dp/1005744

30W of additional power is already offering a bit more choice regarding graphics cards (a GT 430 card for instance, still passively cooled of course)

machinbidul, I think you are misunderstanding things a bit. The ION is a mobile chipset, but not paired with mobile CPUs in retail MBs. The 945 has more than one variant and can be mobile or not, plus it needs a separate southbridge chip. The NM10 is just a southbridge, the northbrige is part of the CPU.

Regarding TDPs, you have to include the TDP of the chipset and southbridge. Also, TDP doesn't mean the device will use that much, most use less in the real world.

The non mobile 945 would have a N230 or N330. CPU (4 or 8 ) + Chipset (22.2) + Southbridge (3.3) = 29.5 or 33.5 W

The N270 would be paired with a 945GSE and a ICH7-M. CPU (2.5) + Chipset (6) + Southbridge (3.3) = 11.8 W

ION + N330, no extra southbridge chip. CPU (8) + Chipset (12) = 20 W

Pineview. CPU (13) + NM10 (2.1) = 15.1 W

Pineview mobile, N550. CPU (8.5) + NM10 (2.1) = 10.6 W

So Pineview is ahead of the ION by about 5 watts. Also, the ION's TDP is suspect, most real world tests measure it drawing more than even non-mobile 945 boards. An ION setup is defiantly going to put out more heat than a Pineview, increasing the likelihood of needing a fan.

I've dug up my notes about Asus's regular D510 board and the temperatures are between 5C and 9C higher when the board is positioned horizontally (using a very open case without a fan). The heatsink looks similar to the one that comes with that Ion board.

The low-power boards tend to have smaller heatsinks. As long as the board is designed to be operated without a fan, the stock heatsink should be adequate (in the right case anyway).
Ultimately, whether you're going to "need" a fan will depend on how hot you're willing to let your board get. If you're comfortable with very high temperatures, you might get away with using a poorly suited case.

If memory serves, Ion boards consume less power at idle or CPU load than 945GC boards. But I wouldn't be surprised if the Ion boards consumed a good bit more power when loading the graphical subsystem. That shouldn't be an issue for the OP who wants to disable it.

Wow, I'm really surprised here. You're talking about 5°C to 9°C higher - that's a lot.

Hot air going upwards, I expect convection to work much better when the motherboard is horizontal.

What is the rationale behind the temperature being actually higher when the board is horizontal?
What's your opinion anyway HFat?

Thanks
MB

12W is the power consumption of the 9400M iGPU integrated in the ION, not the ION as a whole, which might be 14W (edit: the ION TDP seems to be 15.5W, which means the chipset part consumes 3.5W)


Unless I turn off the graphics subsystem of the ION.

The whole equation with the ION: will I really be able to completely turn off its graphics subsystem and thus save power (12 Watts, basically) and decrease heat?

I imagine that's because convection gets air flowing along the heatsink in the vertical position. The air that rises from the lower part of the heatsink, while hot, is still cooler than the heatsink and this slight airflow (there's not much of it since we're talking about fairly low-power parts) cools the heatsink a bit. Intel for example said in its manual that, since there's no CPU fan, the heatsink should ideally be positioned so that air flows along the largest dimension of the heatsink.
Outside of a case or with the cover removed, the Pineview boards I tried cooled well when positioned horizontally. But cases tended to obstruct airflow in that position. When the boards were positioned vertically, the cases had less influence on the temperatures. Maybe that's because the convection flow is concentrated on a smaller area.

I can't say for sure, but given my experience with other integrated graphics chipsets the answer is no. It won't be like you were running furmark all the time, but the graphics subsystem is going to use some power even if not in use. You'll save a few watts, but not the whole 12.

You are forgetting that the same applies to Pineview, just in a different place. Some of that 13 W on the CPU is the graphics, so you might save a few by turning it off.

This is a very difficult choice. Your arguments for the N550 are good.

The N550 only accepts 2GB of RAM, whereas the N330 can handle 4GB. I would like 4GB, I can't develop with only 2GB without swapping.

I have found the following thread which suggests the ION will reach a very hot temperature on idle (80°C):
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=101433

What I understand from the last message in this thread, is that the temperature does get lower when the GPU frequency gets lower. Not to mention the OP's motherboard is still RUNNING the GPU, eg. the GPU still has to handle the display (read the video memory, etc.). My GPU would be totally disabled. I could force it to run at a low frequency too (nvidia control panel > device settings > graphics clock) if I see disabling it in the BIOS isn't sufficient to hide it from the OS.
PCI express would still run at the locked frequency of 133 Mhz in all cases I guess.

It's difficult to tell without trying though.

Isn't there a simple Mini ITX Pineview mobile board around with at least 4x PCI express for me?

Unfortunately it's a limitation of the CPU, the N550 has 2GB max no matter what the MB. The N330's max RAM is determined by the Chipset. Theoretically the N330 could be paired with something that supports more than 4GB, but no one has done that.


I haven't seen any, but given that you need more than 2 GB the mobile boards are out anyway. Take a look at the JetWay JNC94FL-525-LF (or -510-LF). Not mobile, but still has a 4X PCIe and 4 GB RAM.

Good find, I can live with PCIe 4x. I can say this board competes with the AT3IONT for me.

However it has no external DC power supply. If I add an ATX/SFX power supply in my case (fanless too, obviously, and fanless SFX power supplies are very difficult to find and generally not good brands), it will be warmer.

There are low-power cases which come with a power supplies and an external brick. I doubt they would be much less effcient than what's on that Ion board and the heat would be generated off-board.

But I agree the old Ion boards are still attractive if price is no object. They aren't crippled like the Pineviews. I wasn't even aware of the 2G limitation of the mobile CPUs. What Intel is doing with the Atom is an outrage.

Why not get a Pico or other PSU where the brick is outside your case an there is just a DC-DC board inside?

I mean it's the very initial scenario (even if I've never seen that ASUS bundled with such PSUs): maybe machinbidul isn't aware of the Picos and the likes?

You guys are correct, I was only looking at the standard SFX or ATX fanless power supplies, not the picoPSU's, which seem much more interesting.

As for a Jetway D510 vs an Asus N330, I still think the choice is very tough. There is a 5 Watt difference. It all depends on what happens when graphics is disabled. I think this is pretty much the bottom line.

Have you guys heard about a Jetway JNC94FL-525-LF or JNC94FL-510-LF system setup here in this forum/web site, that is known to work completely fanless with acceptable temperatures?

Thanks
MB

I have an element q case
http://forums.hexus.net/small-form-fact ... build.html

The case quite happily fits a 120mm fan on it side.

The standard PSU is a little noisy without modding so your optin may be better.
Without bluray and the psu there will be plenty of room in the case for airflow.

Hi sorrera,

There is one thing I don't see very well on your pictures: did you attach the fan to the case? (how?)

Do you think any standard 120mm fan can fit?

The case manufacturers have designed the case to fit an additional 3.5 HDD in rails down the side of the case. It was in this spot that I slotted in the fan. Doesn't need pins it just wedges in. although there are holes to fix if required.

I tried this out following a tip on another forum. Not sure if the frame of a 120mm fan is a standard size (i assume they dont differ much) but this position at the side of the case does seem a perfect fit, it is also where the holes in the sideie of the case are, so makes perfect sense to put a fan there.