I wonder if one could use an AMD Ontario C-50 (9W TDP) netbook with SSD as HTPC? Perhaps it could even be made fanless?

Then you'd get HTPC with the following features:

* Very small
* 0 dB (if fanless)
* 1080p capable
* HDMI output
* Keyboard input, which is nice when entering text to search for movies & songs
* 10.1/11.6" display, which can be used e.g. when searching for music without having the TV turned on
* Very low power
* Can be used as a regular netbook when needed
* Probably quite low price

Any opinions on such a solution?

fjodor2000 -- will let you know very shortly what netbooks/tops are in the works at CES.

The Asus mini-itx board for the E-350 looks to be passively cooled!

http://images.bit-tech.net/content_imag ... mi-i-1.jpg

That's great, but can we also have an on-board DC power supply, please?

Shame miniITX only supports 1 expansion slot.

Anyone know if there are any microATX fusion boards on their way anytime soon? i.e. the equivalent of these miniITX boards (with CPU included) but in microATX size

Yess. Asus has one coming -- fanless. There will be others.

fantastic, cheers Mike. i already have one on my mental shopping list.

Combined with a good PSU, TV card and SSD these should make for pretty much perfect small/silent do-it-all HTPCs

mmm... i'd prefer a mini-itx, i've always wanted one

i just hope general usage is fast and responsive, my atom powered netbook can be frustrating at times.

tru dat

mini-ITX would be ideal for a system mounted on the back of the monitor, but as I have a rack full of amps for my home-cinema and would like access to a blu-ray drive any case i'm likely to get will accommodate micro-ATX.

On the other hand, sooner or later the future is a server with TV cards in and very simple clients. mini-ITX systems like these are perfect for basic clients. Just a shame they don't support all that DDR-2 memory I'll have lying around.

I found the eeePC 901 very frustrating to use and put it down to the Atom chip in it. However, since replacing the SSD with a much faster model I've found the eee to be vastly more responsive which made me reassess the performance of Atom (the eeePC 901 has a single core atom). The E350 chip used on these boards is comfortably quicker than a dual-core Atom, and not too short of an Athlon X2 3250e

I would be tempted to spend more on a low end Sandy Bridge system when they get released in spring, but I understand Intel hasn't fixed the 23.976fps issues - I'm not paying more for broken functionality!

if zacate was too slow i would consider llano, it should be considerably cheaper than low end sandy and will probably have a better gpu. by all indications intel will stick to the hd2000 with their low end cpus, a shame really.

@JonScaife: you seem reasonable. I usually don't bother to correct people who seem to have entrenched beliefs about Atom CPUs.

Anandtech benchmarked the E-350 a while back. So if AMD improved their chips in the meantime the following will be wrong: the dual-core Atom was a bit faster at a few things but a bit slower at most tasks. Anandtech didn't use the fastest dual-core Atom so I think it's fair to say that these families of CPU are in the same league: the slow versions are going to be slower than the fast versions of the other family and vice-versa. What was clearly better about the E-350 was single-threaded performance. And the IGP of course. Current-generation Atoms also have interface limitations Intel put on them to make its more expensive chips more attractive. These new AMD chips may not be bridled in that way.
So there's a number of things which make these new AMD chips more interesting regardless of their raw performance. But if all you want is to multi-threaded number-crunching or to play videos (but only to your device's integrated display or VGA), an Atom will do the job for a good bit less money. I'd wait for data on the actual power usage of these boards before pronouncing that they're better than Atoms across the board: if they're more efficient than Atoms then yes, they're better. Otherwise a cheaper D525 (or an overclocked N330+Ion) might beat them at many tasks while consuming less power.

The low-power versions compete against slower Atoms which are more expensive and have more limitations so I expect AMD will score a clearer win against Intel in that space.

Zotac seems to already have built one for you. At CES 2011 the ZBOX Blu-ray AD03 HTPC which use the AMD E-350 was presented:

http://www.wegotserved.com/2011/01/04/zotac-adds-amd-e350-apu-zbox-bluray-ad03-minihtpc/

Looks sweet indeed. I like the fact that you can decide the hard drive / SSD & RAM to use yourself. Don't know how quiet it will be though? I wonder if such a small computer be made fanless?

PS. JonScaife: Unfortunately it doesn't have a TV card.

My current HTPC uses a regular Core2Duo so anything will be more efficient. Playing videos I do want to do, but CPU performance is largely irrelevant for that. The Atom platforms aren't what I'm looking for because of the very poor graphics they include. I don't see Atom (at present) as even in contention for a HTPC for me. I'm looking for something with sandy bridge / fusion grade graphics that is cheap and low powered. I reckon E-350 boads look ideal for those requirements.

I'd read the review on Anandtech (but cheers for pointing it out) - compared to the Atom in my eeePC 901 the E-350 is significantly faster at everything.

@ist.martin

Cheers for those links, those boards look ideal

@fjodor2000

having or supporting internal TV cards is a must (because I already own them!)

from the anandtech performance preview:

cool beans.

yeah, that about sums it up for me too

asrock e350m1 review at tom's hardware.

nothing new, but the power consumption looks high compared to earlier numbers taken from the engineering sample. i really hope that the motherboard is crap, and the preview sample wasn't optimised for low power.
on the plus side, asrock plan to sell this board for $110... cheap!

msi e350ia-e45 review at hardware heaven.

power consumption looks high again, partly in fault to the 1200w(!!!) psu and extra raptors, still worrying none the less.

So far, I've found six boards to be released soon:

ASRock E350M1
Asus E35M1-I Deluxe
Gigabyte GA-E350N-USB3
Jetway NC85-E350-LF
MSI E350IA-E45
Sapphire Pure White Fusion

From the reviews, it seems the AMD E-350 systems are just slightly faster and cooler than Atom + ION, while having much slower 3D. Plus, there are some more modern features, like USB 3.0, SATA3, and eSATA. I guess what will really attract people is the lower prices, though.

finally some overclocking!

gigabyte ga-e350n-usb3 2.36ghz@1.65v, unfortunately there aren't any numbers that would point to performance gains vs power consumption, or even effects on general usage -the fact that it can oc though is welcome news.

Hm... today E35M1-M Pro article is interesting, i expected a little lower power consumption, but it is acceptable. But what i didn't find out is how the slots work. I mean if i put a x8 HBA card in the x16 slot running in x4, how will the rest of the slots work ? Will PCI-E x1 still work ? Will PCI slots still work ? I'm asking about the PCI-E lane distribution to be exact .

My plan would be a HBA in x16@x4 slot and DVB-C card in PCI slot. That is why for me this information is important and why would i even think about this board (there are no mATX boards with full x16 PCI-E slot which is electrically at least x4).