I'm still looking for some HTPC board with 10 W idle and 1080p capability and it looks like, that Intel boards with onboard bay-trail CPU's are slowly rolling out. Maybe it would be nice to keep them in one thread. So let me start and feel free to add others:)

Portwell WADE-8078 http://www.portwell.com/products/detail ... 8078#order

ECS BAT-I/J1800 (V1.0) (Celeron J1800, 2 cores @ 2,41 GHz, up to 2.58 GHz) http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Produc ... 17&LanID=0

ECS BAT-I/J1900 (V1.0) (Celeron J1900, 4 cores @ 2,00 GHz, up to 2.42 GHz) http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Produc ... 17&LanID=0

ECS BAT-I/J2900 (V1.0) (Pentium J2900, 4 cores @ 2,41 GHz, up to 2.67 GHz) http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Produc ... 17&LanID=0

ASRock SBC-210 http://www.asrock.com/ipc/overview.asp?Model=SBC-210

ASRock IMB-151 http://www.asrock.com/ipc/overview.asp?Model=IMB-151 buy here: http://www.steatite-embedded.co.uk/fanl ... e-cpu.html

ASRock IMB-150 http://www.asrock.com/ipc/overview.asp?Model=IMB-150 buy here: http://www.steatite-embedded.co.uk/fanl ... cpu-1.html

EDIT1: Some benchmark on new Bay-Trail vs Core2Duo http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LEWyxpkbiwQ/U ... RE2DUO.gif

EDIT2:
MSI J1800I (2X SATA) http://www.msi.com/product/mb/J1800I-.html


EDIT3: SuperMicro strikes!
X10SBA - 4x SATA3, 2x SATA2, DC in, HDMI http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... X10SBA.cfm (idle around 12W? Would be nice)


X10SBA-L - 2x SATA2, DC in, HDMI http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... 0SBA-L.cfm


EDIT4:
Biostar J1800NH (2x SATA) http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/int ... p?S_ID=688


EDIT5:
Gigabyte J1800N-D2H (2x SATA) http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... id=4881#ov


EDIT6:
Intel NUC Kit DN2820FYKH http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ ... 0fykh.html buy here: http://www.tranquilpcshop.co.uk/dn2820fykh/


EDIT7:
DFI BT160 http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... age=false#


DFI BT161 http://www.dfi.com.tw/products/ProductD ... uctId=1583


EDIT8:
Gigabyte GA-J1800N-D2P http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... x?pid=4895


Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V http://www.gigabyte.com/products/produc ... x?pid=4918


EDIT9:
Asus J1800I-C https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/J1800IC/

Can't wait to see a review of these boards.

I'm one of these people fascinated by the idea of a computer that consumes very little energy, makes no noise, doesn't suck loads of dust in, etc. So far Atom has been the closest real option, but Intel has failed to deliver... all early Atom boards came with noisy & small fans and chipsets that consumed way too much compared to the CPU. Later on things improved a little bit, but it's still been next to impossible to find any fanless Atoms in my country. And these CPUs have been at a standstill with no remarkable improvements in either TDP or performance; just look any comparison of Atom 330 to the newer D2xxx parts. Yet Intel kept promising fanless operation and better performance with each new iteration.

Now both of my computers have Atom inside, both of these are getting old, and both of these also have a goddamn fan. Both are noisier than I like, and for one I cannot change the fan (it's a netbook) while the other has had me deal with way too many fans already. I've been waiting to upgrade forever. Maybe the new Bay Trail-D will finally deliver? At least the couple benchmarks I've seen suggest these are a huge upgrade on the performance front. The 10W TDP and fanless boards from ECS are a good sign too...

Where and when do we get to buy these things?!

Now there are other alternatives on the market though. ARM boards like the Utilite or Cubieboard2. I'll wait for a proper review of the BT-D systems, and if things look bad, I'll have to say goodbye to x86..

ARM boards like CubieTruck (Cubieboard 3) looks very promising, but they mostly have 1x SATA slot and the support for linux is very limited. You have to run some special distros and acceleration of video isn't working properly.

Therefore my only hope is that, those lazy bastards in Intel will finally release at least one board with Atom, performance for 1080p and idle around 10W.

Intel released decent, cheap fanless Atom boards... nearly 4 years ago! Main disadvantages were: no digital output, only two SATA ports.
Within a year, Shuttle was marketing fanless Atom barebones globally. From Asus to Dell, many vendors had fanless Atoms products at the time.
How is it you could not find any of those products in your locale?

There's a big difference between a 330 and a D2xxx in terms of what's included in the part. So of course the systems based on later Atoms consume less while the "CPU" retains a sizable TDP. TDP ratings mean very little anyway.


Intel has already released boards that idle at 10W and which play 1080p years ago.
They said the only consumer boards they're going to sell going forward are NUC boards. So don't hold your breath.


I'm disappointed that yet another product line is turning out to be vaporware without even an excuse. Intel has left this market and is evidently not in a hurry to help its partners take on its former role. Since there's no real competition, Intel can keep on playing this game and collect its monopoly rent anyway.

Which Atom board you have in mind? I tried lately DN2800MT and it wasn't able to play 1080p.

It plays 1080p fine, as do older boards.
1080p isn't magic. Whatever the resolution, some files/streams are easier to play than others without compatible, dedicated hardware and matching drivers. CPUs which can consume 10 times more power can reliably brute-force it. Low-power CPUs can't. Not the N2800 nor any Bay Trail.

edit: you mentionned Linux. You must know there's a graphics driver problem with Cedar Trail!

I ddg'd and found a good list of upcoming Bay Trail based boards on a Germanese board. Scroll through and you'll find juicy images as well as links to product details...

http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f1 ... 85791.html

I tried Win 7 as well, since the PowerVr graphic chip is known for almost no support Linux. Videos with 1080p resolution were played, but you can see, there were not flawless. I compared with more powerful PC next to it and the difference was quite visible. Not to mention 1080p video on YouTube, that was horrible..

So I think only Atom board + ION Nvidia graphics was capable to play such videos till now.

Edit: Checkout the supermicro I added to first post... I hope the price wont be huge

Til now I've been drooling at the wibtek ( http://www.kingpic.net/uploads/e42wibtekbaytraild.jpg ) but that supermicro board looks quite fantastic.

I'm not sure about that tiny heatstink though?

SPCR about a 4-year old Atom's integrated gfx: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1010-page4.html
And yeah, I do trust SPCR's opinion about specific cases over unsupportable generalization based on your subjective impression of unspecific cases.

I've got this board inside my server. No matter it's power, it doesn't have digital video output, so I see no point in using that as 1080p player.

That's not the point. The point is that the hardware can play back 1080p, but since the system is quite slow stuff like what kind of decoder you use matters. The way I see it there are three ways to do it. Get a cheap media extender that can play stuff but little else. Power consumption is good but flexibility sucks. A step up from that is the cheap "light desktop" stuff like the Atom etc. Slow but flexible and still pretty low cost. But so very slow. Then we have what I usually end up with, the normal desktop type of system that has power to spare, can playback 1080p in software if it has to. Cost for this kind of system is higher though. The Haswell NUC is 6w idle, if money isn't a problem. Maybe the Raspberry Pi?

I currently wouldn't recommend an Atom even for a "light desktop" except in special applications.
The Celerons not only do a better job all-around but they come with a more modern and compatible IGP. And there are also cheap fanless versions now which are a long way from "normal desktop" in terms of performance.
The upcoming Bay Trial boards will probably be branded Celeron or Pentium as well instead of Atom.

For video playback, AMD has decent offerings as well even if they're not Intel-efficient.

I've tested media players (Xtreamer, Asus, Evolve, WD ...) more than year and I wouldn't recommend them to anybody. Mostly unbelievably buggy system, lack of support of certain codecs and in 99% very hard to connect to any samba share on local network. Extended capability like built in browser, was just a bad joke from manufacturer.


Price is horrible and also lack of regular SATA connector on most of the boards is deal breaker, at least for me.

Atom is on market several years, but so far I think there wasn't any made board with Intel graphics, which can deliver reasonable FullHD (mkv and flash) performance and of course appropriate video outputs. That is the main reason, why I hope for Bay-Trail to bring it... Question is, which manufacturer will do such a board and when

Here's what SPCR says about the N2800 Atom which comes on boards with HDMI (as do the more powerful, non-mobile versions): "The quality of HD 720p and 1080p video playback was consistently good"

There is no such thing as "FullHD (mkv and flash) performance". Containers aren't codecs!

I used a WDTV for a while, with modded firmware. Samba/NFS support, could use any remote etc. It was fun, but after a while the clunky interface became a real bother. XBMC on decent hardware is so much more smooth.


I'm going for H81 + cheap Haswell Celeron/Pentium in a passive case. Kind of expensive, but powerful and silent.

There are cheaper fanless Celeron boards, as HFat mentions, but they are built on Sandy or Ivy and will have the 24p bug. Maybe an option for you?

Out of curiosity, have you actually compared the quality of analog and digital outputs?

I use a 1920x1200 display on VGA and it really takes pixel peeping and unlikely patterns to find where it has any visible effect on the image. From what I can tell it would never show up on a movie (and compression artefacts & noise from the source would have a much larger effect anyway).

Quality of analog input is also an issue, as are environmental factors and such I guess.
It's certainly possible to display an effectively flawless analog signal. But there are no guarantees.

I like to be able to watch a BluRay remux or great 1080p encode of a visually stunning movie and smile knowing it's pure 1080p all the way. 1:1 pixel output on my TV, no scaling no nothing. Knowing that the system does a conversion to analog for the transport, where digital really makes sense, and back again in the TV would screw up the whole experience. "Is that an artifact I see, or is it in the movie?" over and over again..

Analog issues are pretty easy to tell from other types of artifacts in my experience.
It's not only a problem for obsessives and such. Normal folks would be pissed to have an obviously distorted picture. People have described some of these obvious issues to me as "waves" or "flickering" (different problems). Which is why you don't want to rely on analog for high-res video. It can work reliably in some situations but what are you going to do if it doesn't work well with the combination of devices you want to use?

The trouble with most mitx boards, even when they are very energy efficient like that Supermicro linked by the OP (which btw, appears just about nowhere else, not even Supermicro's site), they still call for a 24-pin/4-pin PSU.

This means a conventional PSU or picoPSU. Typically, no conventional PSU has good efficiency at the idle or normal use power levels of such boards. picoPSU is much better in this regard, but it's additional complexity and somewhat higher cost.

If we're looking at an efficient media PC with say a small SSD and one or 2 high capacity drives, the most convenient, cost-effective solution looks like thin-mitx equipped with a low power CPU. For example, a Gigabyte GA-H77TN + Celeron 1610 (or the 1610T). Together, they run maybe $160-170 at best prices. You can run an mSATA SSD and still add 4 HDDs with just a single 80~100W AC/DC adapter (we're working on a home server article based on something like this). With the 35W TDP 1610T, AC power consumption will be close to 10W, perhaps 15W-18W during HD play. I doubt I need anything more than this for a media PC with 4G RAM, 120G SSD, and perhaps a single 1~2TB HDD. (I do have a home server and gigabit network). Total cost including a small case would be well under $400.

On the other hand, I'd love to see Bay Trail thin-itx boards!

I don't really mind needing the PicoPSU or see it adding that much complexity. It is just as efficient as having on-board regulation for the power coming in off the external brick. What I do mind is the extra cost...

Also, on their recent miniITX boards, SM power input has been 24 pin ATX or 4-pin 12v. Not both - or. This is true on their recent Avoton and Rangerly boards and appears to be related to a new approach to power for SFF semi-embedded systems. From the brief features list on the sellers web site that appears to be the case with this board too, though we won't know for sure until somebody can get the manual from SM.

The SuperMicro Bay Trail board is up on Amazon marketplace through EBiz for $275
http://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-X10SBA ... B00F0YHTOQ

pretty hefty price... are they all in that range?

Also, I see that the ASRock boards cite "9~19V DC-In (2-pin PWR Con)" and ATX compatible, tho could not see power info on the cached google pages for Supermicro... so you're right, adding a back panel DC in adapter would be simple for a modder.

The feature set on these boards is an odd mix, typical, perhaps of industrial boards. All seem to have a max of 2 SATA3 ports.

Their older Atom boards seem to have been in that range at one point (here anyway) though some are cheaper now. I guess they're supposed to be server boards which is supposed to justify the price... but I'd rather use a server board with an actual server CPU (underclocked) and actual server RAM!

At least some the newer low-power boards like the Centertons (which have been available for a while) can sort of justify their price (maybe not the ones you've looked).


When talking about Bay Trial boards, I assume most of us are thinking about consumer boards which ought to be priced at something like $75-$95 (a bit more if they come with mobile parts and/or DC in).

Two things:

- SM boards are always pricey
- This board is not 'officially' available in the USA and this seller is grey-marketing them in and charging a premium for making them available.

I'd expect this one to be about $200ish when officially released here and available in quantity and the more mainstream boards quite a bit lower.

I ordered one just to play with. I'll write something up in a couple of weeks.

I believe that certain movies were ok, maybe even certain videos on Youtube as well, but from what I tested, I wasn't satisfied with the "speed". I asked several members of my family and they also saw the playback a bit slower, than on other more powerful PC next to it.

Have to check them, till now I only found Celeron boards with active cooling and 24-Pin ATX power connector.

It is hard to explain, but I have (and hopefully will have) very good seeing. When I was testing VGA connection I always observed some small artifacts in the image and in bothered me a lot. (Tried on 22" 1920x1200 and 40" 1920x1080). Maybe the cable wasn't good enough.

Second disadvantage of VGA is absence of audio layer. I've got a pass-through Onkyo receiver, that can split Audio from HDMI and send image further, so I would be glad for a motherboard with HDMI output.

Everything has HDMI these days. I want optical for my audio and that interface is disappearing. Soon I will have to adapt I suppose.

Jakoob, check out www.fanlesstech.com. Lots of fanless boards presented there, and a lot of cases etc.