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One Bay Trail-D And Two AM1 Motherboards

AMD Athlon 5350 And AM1 Platform Review: Kabini In A Socket
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We're testing two AM1 motherboards and a single Bay Trail-D platform.

ASRock AM1H-ITX

ASRock's AM1H-ITX is, as its name suggests, a mini-ITX board. Measuring just under 7" square, it doesn't occupy much space. Yet it offers an impressive number of interesting features. For instance, the platform comes equipped with an ATX power connector, but it can by driven by a 19 V DC adapter (and it has the corresponding input to prove it).

You get a lot of connectivity, given the motherboard's footprint. There are two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports on the I/O panel (plus a USB 3.0 header on-board), four display outputs (VGA, DVI, DisplayPort, and HDMI), GbE, and eight-channel audio with an optical output.

On the board itself, you'll find four SATA connectors, a SATA power connector, two DDR3 memory slots, a PCIe x16 expansion slot, mini-PCIe for a wireless card, and a trio of fan headers, one of which is for the APU. That's a comprehensive suite of features, to be sure.

Gigabyte AM1M-S2H

Measuring roughly 6.5" x 9", Gigabyte's AM1M-S2H is a slightly larger microATX motherboard. The extra length creates room for two PCIe x1 slots, in addition to a PCI Express x16 slot. Gigabyte's I/O panel features VGA and HDMI video outputs, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 connectors, GbE, and three analogue audio outputs.

The board also hosts two SATA connectors, a pair of DDR3 memory slots, two fan headers, and three more USB 2.0 headers for additional peripheral connectivity.

ASRock Q1900B-ITX

Our Bay Trail-D representation also comes complements of ASRock in the Q1900B-ITX, armed with an integrated Celeron J1900 CPU. The rest of the board's attributes reflect a similar approach: it employs SO-DIMM slots and a single PCI Express x1 interface, with no support for full-sized graphics cards.

Moreover, the back panel hosts legacy parallel and serial ports, exposing the platform's embedded focus. You do get one USB 3.0 port, three USB 2.0 connectors, a VGA output, and HDMI connectivity. GbE and six-channel audio output are standard fare.

ASRock enables two fan headers, a USB 2.0 header, and a pair of SATA ports on the little board's surface. Passive cooling is made possible by the Celeron, which is another reason Intel's approach works so well in industrial environments.

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  • 0 Hide
    EdgeT , 9 April 2014 15:01
    They look like great little platforms. But a whole lot of people go the AMD route for homeservers (myself included). And just like me, a lot of people think that 4 SATA ports are just not enough. If it had like 8, like a lot of AMD motherboards I've looked at, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, and I bet a lot of people would.

    It's just convenience and cost efficiency, really, on the one hand, you've got 1 motherboard, CPU, tower, PSU, OS and IP adress for remote control and 8 HDDs and on the other, you've still got 8 HDDS, but 2 of everything else. Power consumption wouldn't make THAT much of a difference, since storage servers mostly idle, but the noise and size do take their toll.
  • 0 Hide
    EdgeT , 9 April 2014 15:10
    They look like great little platforms. But a whole lot of people go the AMD route for homeservers (myself included). And just like me, a lot of people think that 4 SATA ports are just not enough. If it had like 8, like a lot of AMD motherboards I've looked at, I'd buy it in a heartbeat, and I bet a lot of people would.

    It's just convenience and cost efficiency, really, on the one hand, you've got 1 motherboard, CPU, tower, PSU, OS and IP adress for remote control and 8 HDDs and on the other, you've still got 8 HDDS, but 2 of everything else. Power consumption wouldn't make THAT much of a difference, since storage servers mostly idle, but the noise and size do take their toll.
  • 0 Hide
    fergus1 , 15 April 2014 10:33
    For its price the AMD CPU is clearly a bargain, I thought it was a joke when I saw quad core CPUs for £30-£40! And running on 25W I think this just shows how much Intel are losing the low end CPU war. Don't get me wrong, I have an I5 adn wouldn't swap it for the world, but for >£100 Intel have very little to offer.
    I think the 1920x1080 and 1600x900 graph for Dota 2 are the wrong way round? And it would be good to also have had a graph for its performance with dedicated GPU.
  • 1 Hide
    subtitlefa , 18 April 2014 09:07
    I LOVE AMD :) 
  • 0 Hide
    Jakoob , 14 May 2014 22:40
    Im a bit worried about the test of power consumption. Both Athlon 5350 and J1800 are idling around 30 W, which seems too much compared to other tests around the world. Both should be somewhere around 10-15 W for idle.

    I think the problem is the PSU. Using 850W XFX is total overkill and even being certified as gold class, it has high efficiency at 20% load, which is 170 W. Therefore the PSU is used in non-efficient area and can simply add 15 - 20 W extra to the final power consumption.

    Next time maybe borrow PicoPSU and some efficient brick.

  • 0 Hide
    leeb2013 , 16 June 2014 00:11
    yeah, my Xeon uses <5W idle and 35-40W loaded.