Are any Celeron 1037U Motherboards actually available?

[cbn]

The single memory channel will affect graphics performance

I took at look at some SO-DIMM prices on Newegg.

At the 2GB level, upgrading to 1600 is only a few more bucks compared to getting a 1066 or 1333 stick.

At the 4GB level, some of the cheapest sticks are actually 1600 speed and upgrading to 1866 is only a few dollars.

At the 8GB level, the cheapest sticks are the 1600 speed ones with the 1866 sticks going for about 10 to 12 dollars more.

So I am thinking graphics performance shouldn't be hindered that much, if at all, by using a fast enough speed stick.

 

[Chime]

just noticed that amazon offers ecs NM70-I2 1037u board at $66.99 which is the lowest and no tax is collected, ordered one for next build, I'll refuse the newegg delivery of gigabyte 1037u.
Right now amazon has last one in stock, hurry if you want to grab it

Really tempted to grab this to replace an aging Atom + ION board that's been giving me some trouble lately. I wonder how one of these would do with a low profile R7 250 for 720p gaming.

 

[cbn]

and it's mated to an HM77 controller which brings with it USB 3.0, but is way overkill for a celeron or pentium.

These mobile chipsets are a relatively new thing for me, but one thing that is mentioned for HM77 in the link below (under chipsets) is RAID support. (NM70, HM70, HM75 and HM76 does not have this. However, UM77, QM77 and QS77 do have RAID support)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5192/ivy-bridge-mobile-lineup-overview

P.S. NM70 and HM70 are not shown in the above link's chipset chart, but I did notice they had less SATA ports, usb and in the case of NM70 less PCI-E lanes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_chipsets#Mobile_chipsets

NM70: 4 lanes PCI-E 2.0, 6 Gbps SATA (1 port) and 3 Gbps (3 ports), usb 2.0 (8 ports)
HM70: 8 lanes PCI-E 2.0, 6 Gbps SATA (1 port) and 3 Gbps (4 ports), usb 3.0 (4 ports) and usb 2.0 (6 ports)
HM77: 8 lanes PCI-E 2.0, 6 Gbps SATA (2 ports) and 3 Gbps (4 ports), usb 3.0 (4 ports) and usb 2.0 (10 ports)

 

[Namisecond]

I took at look at some SO-DIMM prices on Newegg.

At the 2GB level, upgrading to 1600 is only a few more bucks compared to getting a 1066 or 1333 stick.

At the 4GB level, some of the cheapest sticks are actually 1600 speed and upgrading to 1866 is only a few dollars.

At the 8GB level, the cheapest sticks are the 1600 speed ones with the 1866 sticks going for about 10 to 12 dollars more.

So I am thinking graphics performance shouldn't be hindered that much, if at all, by using a fast enough speed stick.

I've currently got the ECS NM70-I2 and the Giada N70E-DR, I'll try to get the same OS on them both and run some comparative benchmarks over this weekend to see how the memory bandwidth affects performance if it does at all.

 

[Namisecond]

Thanks, this will be my first build of pfsense. Will ssd be a significant help to improve the performance of pfsense, was thinking of putting a 2 yr old 64gb ssd in.

I'm currently using a 3 yr old 64GB sata II SSD myself. As for affecting performance, I don't think the SSD affects the build as drastically as it does with windows. Bootup seems to take just as long with an HDD, SSD or a USB flash drive. and because of the web interface for pfsense, I don't notice any performance difference.

I only used the SSD because I had one kicking around. I guess it would help with shock tolerance and saving the larger HDDs for future storage experiments.

 

[Namisecond]

These mobile chipsets are a relatively new thing for me, but one thing that is mentioned for HM77 in the link below (under chipsets) is RAID support. (NM70, HM70, HM75 and HM76 does not have this. However, UM77, QM77 and QS77 do have RAID support)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5192/ivy-bridge-mobile-lineup-overview

P.S. NM70 and HM70 are not shown in the above link's chipset chart, but I did notice they had less SATA ports, usb and in the case of NM70 less PCI-E lanes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_chipsets#Mobile_chipsets

NM70: 4 lanes PCI-E 2.0, 6 Gbps SATA (1 port) and 3 Gbps (3 ports), usb 2.0 (8 ports)
HM70: 8 lanes PCI-E 2.0, 6 Gbps SATA (1 port) and 3 Gbps (4 ports), usb 3.0 (4 ports) and usb 2.0 (6 ports)
HM77: 8 lanes PCI-E 2.0, 6 Gbps SATA (2 ports) and 3 Gbps (4 ports), usb 3.0 (4 ports) and usb 2.0 (10 ports)

Now that you mention it, there is a RAID option in the BIOS for the Giada board. I haven't had the opportunity to do anything with it yet, but it bears checking out. Also the Giada board offers options in BIOS for Hot Plug, External Port, SATA device typed and Port Topology on the SATA III ports.

 

[Namisecond]

just noticed that amazon offers ecs NM70-I2 1037u board at $66.99 which is the lowest and no tax is collected, ordered one for next build, I'll refuse the newegg delivery of gigabyte 1037u.
Right now amazon has last one in stock, hurry if you want to grab it

Oh yeah, be careful of the stock heatsink/fan. The one I got didn't contact correctly and my CPU was hitting 105C all the time until I replaced it. I think the problem was with the hard thermal interface they used. I just replaced the entire unit, but you should be able to get away with just scraping off the TIM and replacing it with quality thermal paste.

 

[Namisecond]

Really tempted to grab this to replace an aging Atom + ION board that's been giving me some trouble lately. I wonder how one of these would do with a low profile R7 250 for 720p gaming.

If you're going to game, I'd recommend the new Haswell Pentium 3220 and an mitx socket 1150 board and a low profile radeon HD 7750 instead of the R7 250 (unless you are constrained by budget)

Specwise, the 7750 is more powerful and has a lower TDP (neither requires additional power) the price is about the same. ($90-$100)

The cost of the S1150 mitx mobo+pentium would be significantly more, $140 vs about $70 for the NM70, but if you don't mind the higher TDP, the 3ghz chip is a significant step up and even allows 1080p gaming.

EDIT: Whoops, my bad, didn't see that the low profile 7750s are more expensive now. You'll probably pay a $10-$30 premium over the R7 250.

 

[Chime]

If you're going to game, I'd recommend the new Haswell Pentium 3220 and an mitx socket 1150 board and a low profile radeon HD 7750 instead of the R7 250 (unless you are constrained by budget)

Specwise, the 7750 is more powerful and has a lower TDP (neither requires additional power) the price is about the same. ($90-$100)

The cost of the S1150 mitx mobo+pentium would be significantly more, $140 vs about $70 for the NM70, but if you don't mind the higher TDP, the 3ghz chip is a significant step up and even allows 1080p gaming.

EDIT: Whoops, my bad, didn't see that the low profile 7750s are more expensive now. You'll probably pay a $10-$30 premium over the R7 250.

I'd thought about that too, for the money the 3220 is a lot of processor. Ultimately I may end up with that, but I'd like to have one of these 1037u boards to try out. I have a couple of HTPCs, an NAS and a pfsense box all using atom/e350 mITX boards that these would make nice upgrades for. I didn't realize the 7750 was more powerful than the 250 though, thanks for the tip :thumbsup:

 

[nForce2]

Oh yeah, be careful of the stock heatsink/fan. The one I got didn't contact correctly and my CPU was hitting 105C all the time until I replaced it. I think the problem was with the hard thermal interface they used. I just replaced the entire unit, but you should be able to get away with just scraping off the TIM and replacing it with quality thermal paste.

That seems to be a common problem with the 1037U systems... :\

 

[cbn]

I'd thought about that too, for the money the 3220 is a lot of processor. Ultimately I may end up with that, but I'd like to have one of these 1037u boards to try out. I have a couple of HTPCs, an NAS and a pfsense box all using atom/e350 mITX boards that these would make nice upgrades for. I didn't realize the 7750 was more powerful than the 250 though, thanks for the tip :thumbsup:

If you are looking for budget LGA socket in Mini-ITX here are some good options:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...67&ignorebbr=1

(ASRock H61MV-ITX LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Mini ITX Intel Motherboard, $49.99 with free shipping)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...59&ignorebbr=1

(ECS H61H2-I5 (V1.0) LGA 1155 Intel H61 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard, $37.99 AR with $3.99 shipping)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...23&ignorebbr=1

(ECS H61H2-I3 (v1.0) LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Mini ITX Intel Motherboard, $42.49 after promo code with $5.99 shipping)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...41&ignorebbr=1

(ECS H61H2-I v1.1 LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Mini ITX Intel Motherboard, $46.74 after promo code with $7.56 shipping)

All boards are usb 2.0 only, but have four SATA 3 Gbps ports.

(NOTE: The first ECS only has VGA out, but if planning to use a discrete video card that shouldn't matter. The Last ECS is pretty nice in that it has HDMI, DVI and VGA, 8 channel sound and mini PCI-E bringing total hard drive capacity up to five)

Combine with 2.6 Ghz Celeron G1610 for $42.99 plus free shipping --> http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B4BJYVU/...xtension-kb-20 and now a person has a system that is almost 50% faster than 1037U for only a modest increase in price.

Okay, now with that pricing information out of the way....I would be very interested (among other things) to find out the idle power differences between a Celeron G1610 system and 1037U system?

 

[Chime]

If you are looking for budget LGA socket in Mini-ITX here are some good options:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...67&ignorebbr=1

(ASRock H61MV-ITX LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Mini ITX Intel Motherboard, $49.99 with free shipping)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...59&ignorebbr=1

(ECS H61H2-I5 (V1.0) LGA 1155 Intel H61 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard, $37.99 AR with $3.99 shipping)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...23&ignorebbr=1

(ECS H61H2-I3 (v1.0) LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Mini ITX Intel Motherboard, $42.49 after promo code with $5.99 shipping)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...41&ignorebbr=1

(ECS H61H2-I v1.1 LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI Mini ITX Intel Motherboard, $46.74 after promo code with $7.56 shipping)

All boards are usb 2.0 only, but have four SATA 3 Gbps ports.

(NOTE: The first ECS only has VGA out, but if planning to use a discrete video card that shouldn't matter. The Last ECS is pretty nice in that it has HDMI, DVI and VGA, 8 channel sound and mini PCI-E bringing total hard drive capacity up to five)

Combine with 2.6 Ghz Celeron G1610 for $42.99 plus free shipping --> http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B4BJYVU/...xtension-kb-20 and now a person has a system that is almost 50% faster than 1037U for only a modest increase in price.

Okay, now with that pricing information out of the way....I would be very interested (among other things) to find out the idle power differences between a Celeron G1610 system and 1037U system?

Those are some nice options. I too would be interested in the power draw numbers. I'd also love to see one of these 1037U boards come with both an mSATA/mPCIE slot and a CIR header. It'd be a perfect HTPC board for my uses.

 

[cbn]

Those are some nice options. I too would be interested in the power draw numbers. I'd also love to see one of these 1037U boards come with both an mSATA/mPCIE slot and a CIR header. It'd be a perfect HTPC board for my uses.

The ECS 1037U thin mini-itx board (not for sale yet AFAIK) has a CIR header, two mPCIE slots in addition to being DC-in power.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Pr...goryID=1&DetailName=Feature&MenuID=17&LanID=0

(Not sure what other 1037U boards also fit this criteria as I haven't looked through all of them yet.)

P.S. The Sandy Bridge version (not sure if it is Celeron 807 or 847) is on sale now for $73.94 with free shipping after promotion code: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...68&ignorebbr=1

 

[cbn]

Speaking of idle power:

An interesting comparison would be ECS thin Mini-ITX 1037U (which has DC-in power) vs. ECS 1037U Mini-ITX with SFX PSU vs. ECS LGA 1155 Mini-ITX/Celeron G1610 (or whatever) with SFX PSU.

I wonder how much difference for the DC-in 1037U vs the SFX PSU 1037U. Then how much difference for a desktop Celeron (or Pentium even) with the same SFX PSU used with the 1037U.

 

[cbn]

just noticed that amazon offers ecs NM70-I2 1037u board at $66.99 which is the lowest and no tax is collected, ordered one for next build, I'll refuse the newegg delivery of gigabyte 1037u.
Right now amazon has last one in stock, hurry if you want to grab it

Still only one left, but it looks like the price increased to $73.40 plus $7.24 shipping:

http://www.amazon.com/ECS-Elitegroup.../dp/B00G237CYQ

......and newegg has discontinued that model--> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135350 EDIT: Newegg is once again stocking the ECS NM70-I2(1.0). ($67.99 plus $6.98 shipping after promo code)

However, the ECS NM70-I v1.0 Intel Celeron 1037U is on sale for $67.99 after promo code with $3.99 shipping:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135342

 

[Namisecond]

I'd thought about that too, for the money the 3220 is a lot of processor. Ultimately I may end up with that, but I'd like to have one of these 1037u boards to try out. I have a couple of HTPCs, an NAS and a pfsense box all using atom/e350 mITX boards that these would make nice upgrades for. I didn't realize the 7750 was more powerful than the 250 though, thanks for the tip :thumbsup:

The NM70 boards are great for testing and experimenting because of their cheap pricing and relative high performance. Now that you mention it, I think I may do some comparative testing on the 7750 I have lying around on the ECS board. The performance difference between the R7-250 and the 7750 is not very big, but the 7750 has an edge especially if you got one of the factory overclocked models. Considering the price difference now though, the R7-250 might be the way to go.

 

[Namisecond]

Speaking of idle power:

An interesting comparison would be ECS thin Mini-ITX 1037U (which has DC-in power) vs. ECS 1037U Mini-ITX with SFX PSU vs. ECS LGA 1155 Mini-ITX/Celeron G1610 (or whatever) with SFX PSU.

I wonder how much difference for the DC-in 1037U vs the SFX PSU 1037U. Then how much difference for a desktop Celeron (or Pentium even) with the same SFX PSU used with the 1037U.

To contribute to your curiosity, I have the ECS NM70-I2 m-itx board sitting in a case with a 60W DC to DC converter board PSU (came with the case). With a standard 2.5" SSD and 2 sticks of DDR3 1333 ram, that system sips about 15W at the desktop idling, according to my kill-a-watt from the wall outlet.

 

[Namisecond]

That seems to be a common problem with the 1037U systems... :\

Wow, first time I've heard of this, I thought I just got a defective board!

 

[Namisecond]

I've currently got the ECS NM70-I2 and the Giada N70E-DR, I'll try to get the same OS on them both and run some comparative benchmarks over this weekend to see how the memory bandwidth affects performance if it does at all.

Ok, did some basic benchmarking using passmark 8.0 and the difference in graphics performance just didn't show up.

the ECS NM70-I2 scored around 260 in the 3D portion, It was running dual channel DDR3 1333, windows 7 pro SP1, x64

the Giada N70E-DR scored around 257 as well. It was running single channel DDR3-1600, windows server 2008 R2, x64

It could be the Giada and the hm77 chipset can actually run the DDR3-1600 at that speed.

One of things I noticed, the Giada scored significantly worse in the CPU portion of the benchmark. averaging 1780, whereas the ECS was averaging 1950.

 

[86waterpumper]

This confirms what I figured...that it just doesn't make much of a difference. The cpu speed and graphics onboard aren't fast enough for dual channel to matter. It seems those interested in a gaming rig or much graphic work would go with at least a g3220 pentium or a i3 and discrete graphics.

On another note, my parents have been running their foxconn system for several weeks now without much event. It has been a good stable system. I hate to hear some are having problems with temps. Sloppy quality control right there.

 

[Namisecond]

Please understand that those were just initial informal benchmarks for 2 different systems with differing components and OS. I intend to do a more apples to apples comparison this weekend when I have more time.

I think I got a little carried away with the 3D stuff, was trying to show video decoding differences, but couldn't find a good way to test that in the time I had.

The problem with the ECS board cooling didn't show up on the Giada board. It kept cool with what it came with. temps in the low to mid 30's in a well ventilated case.

 

[nForce2]

Wow, first time I've heard of this, I thought I just got a defective board!

Nope - check a bit back in this thread, there were some significant variations in temps for the Foxconn boards... and one of the industrial systems (Habey?) also had some wild temperature swings for a reviewer. I can't remember, but I think there was someone else that had problems too? :hmm:

 

[nForce2]

Ok, did some basic benchmarking using passmark 8.0 and the difference in graphics performance just didn't show up.

the ECS NM70-I2 scored around 260 in the 3D portion, It was running dual channel DDR3 1333, windows 7 pro SP1, x64

the Giada N70E-DR scored around 257 as well. It was running single channel DDR3-1600, windows server 2008 R2, x64

It could be the Giada and the hm77 chipset can actually run the DDR3-1600 at that speed.

One of things I noticed, the Giada scored significantly worse in the CPU portion of the benchmark. averaging 1780, whereas the ECS was averaging 1950.

If you really want to minimize the variables, how about just taking one of the two sticks out of the ECS? That way *everything* is the same except the memory configuration. :thumbsup:

 

[nForce2]

Found another motherboard that looks interesting, the Yueson TN-ION4.
http://www.yueson.com.cn/index.php?act=pShow&id=52

This has most of the typical specs, but it has NVIDIA GK208 graphics onboard, as well as the built-in power converter. :thumbsup:

All the way from Page 2, finally some news on this one!
PConline.cn has posted a thorough review!

http://diy.pconline.com.cn/399/3999196.html
http://translate.google.com/transla.../diy.pconline.com.cn/399/3999196.html&act=url

This will be an incredible HTPC board when it finally hits the market. Discrete graphics with 2GB of video memory, and 4K video support right out of the box. :thumbsup::thumbsup: Thin form factor, USB 3.0, 12/19V DC power input, two Mini-PCIe (one supporting mSATA), and a single fan. Power draw is a reported at 24W idle, 36W full load CPU, and 50W under graphics benchmarking. :thumbsup:

 

[SinceCCF]

Still only one left, but it looks like the price increased to $73.40 plus $7.24 shipping:

http://www.amazon.com/ECS-Elitegroup.../dp/B00G237CYQ

......and newegg has discontinued that model--> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135350

However, the ECS NM70-I v1.0 Intel Celeron 1037U is on sale for $67.99 after promo code with $3.99 shipping:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813135342

that's from 3rd party seller on amazon. NM70I2 is also available from ebay at $71.99 shipped, I think the seller imicro is mp3superstore aka superbiiz.