I talked to Intel presales support, i was informed that essentially this motherboard's BIOS has been locked down so that it will not support the core i7.
unfortunately i did not discover this until after i purchased this motherboard and a i7-860.
I was very hopeful when I saw this review showed a i7-860 that worked, how ever i still can not get my system to boot.
Do the moderators have any suggestions for me, i very much want to run this combo but I am running out to time to return these parts if they will not work
I would love to use the M350 case from mini-box, but the largest power supply I can get is 102 watts. With this board and a i3 530 (using integrated graphics), along with a SSD drive, it seems like 102 watts would be enough, if pushing the edge a bit. Any thoughts?
Yeah im interested in that also... I see that actually u tested a Core i7 in the board but i read in the documentation of the board that it is designed to support cpus up to 87W TDP only, while the i7 has 95 W. What does that mean? Is some kind of hardware part ( e.g. circuitry) of the board not sufficient to support an i7 or what? Or does it support it only at lower speeds? Im a bit confused. What does this mean: "We managed to get the board to post at 21X150 BCLK, but found processor core frequency throttles down to 3GHz or so under full load to ensure safety for the CPU VRM". Does it mean that if u put a stock core i7-860 into the board it wont be able to operate over 3ghz? What about turbo boost then? It cant go over 3ghz either? Thx for any reply.
Inoticed your comment about not reviewing many intel boards. Yes I do agree with you on the fact that they do not offer the best package of thrills and frils. But it has been my experience with many of the other manufacturers that the quality and length of service of their boards are no where near that of Intels. I have run into many issues with other boards after a year of 24/7 use. Some of the board components would fail or the boards would die.
Over the last 12 years I have only had 2 Intel boards die with less than 5 years of service. None of which were my workstation/server boards or high end PC boards. Intel does put in a tremendous amount of quality that lasts.
Currently I run 1 dual xeon that is 6 years old with 2 3.6 GHz xeons with 64 bit Windows 7. It stills runs flawlessly. I run a core 2 on intel uBTX 3 years now flawlessly.
So please your crowd out here is not just enthusiests that like or have to overclock everything. Many of us want the high quality and long lasting systems. Intel boards must be in that mix.
Jet Geyser is one of my favorite thermal features in Yellowstone. Around the corner from the Fountain Paint Pots. It's not a very big one though. Wonder if Intel had it in mind when naming their board
Hi
I love these powerful low power systems!
I would be very interested in tests of a file server based on these board.
Like using a Highpoint RocketRAID 2322 system.
I think it would be neat if Intel came out with an 'extreme' m-ITX motherboard although they might have to omit the glowing skull. More robust components and options for overclocking might make it a superior choice to other mITX motherboard for SFF enthusiasts. It's nice that Intel at least properly implements VRM cyrrent protection, it is rather sad that there were many insteances of blown VRMs on some P55 boards.
You guys need to check that spec chart and take a look at the actual mobo. I only see 4 internal SATA and one eSATA, no coax S/PDIF on the I/O panel (a two-pin header is mentioned separately)
Any nice ITX gaming build articles coming out any time Raj? I'd like to see what awesome/cheap kind of tiny LAN party box I can get with a nice single slot card to run modern FPS. Do it under $1K for sure if possible.
i.e. (possibly?)
XFX single slot 5670
Any solid, non-OCable ITX board is fine as long as it is good value and has good location of PCI-E x16 slot etc. (USB 3.0 if/when possible and either Intel or AMD is fine)
4GB of ram (8GB if possible on two slots provided you find an excellent value ram set on the cheap)
Case, preferrably black with solid PSU (or even better if you can fit a full modular one in with proper capabilities)
Periphrals not required in the build, but it would be nice to see the OS added into the system, as Windows is required for LAN parties. Nobody hosts Linux gaming parties around here that I'm aware of.
Might also make mention of a solid gigabyte switch like the 8port Rosewill one listed on Newegg for $29 (currently), and the free games available like EA's recent free release of a good portion of the C&C franchise series.
I'm currently looking for a Micro ITX case to replace my Atom board in an Acer Easystore. I really like how the Easystore looks and how easy it is to add/remove drives, but the Atom isn't capable of handling software like PlayOn, and I want to use the EasyStore for streaming to my PS3.
This board would be a pretty good fit (6 SATA is great- I only need 4, but a lot of mini ITX don't even have 4). However, what I don't want is a power hungy processor, and even the i3 is a 73W, which seems rather high.
Hopefully Intel will come out with some lower power 1156 processors. Either that, or a Mini ITX board comes out with support for the mobile i3/i5/i7 processors. Actually, I really don't understand why no one sells mini ITX w/ mobile processor sockets. That would be ideal for really small HTPC or Home Server setups.
There were mini-ITX boards for previous generation mobile processors (though they were expensive), I imagine there will be for current generation ones as well at some point.
You might want to check out SPCR's i5-661 article. Thought the i3 processors are given a 73W rating, actual power draw is much lower than that.
In their tests, playback of an h264 blu-ray disc showed power use of 43W DC. Full system with CPU and GPU at load didn't even hit 70W. And that's with the i5-661, which would draw more power than a regular i3 due to its increased CPU and GPU clock:
They are already lower power than advertised. I think the i3 series could have been listed as 60W or even lower and still have had plenty of headroom in the power rating.
This is, incidentally, one of the reasons I made the suggestion of testing in a more realistic system configuration than the test setup used here.
TDP doesn't mean power draw and was enver meant to imply power draw anyway so they aren't 'rated' to draw that much power in the first place. (Sorry, it's just one of my pet peeves when people equate TDP to power draw.)
Aren't benchmark numbers for CPUs almost always lower than reported TDPs? Intel/etc have to design for peak theoretical power draws even if they're extremely unlikely in real life. The intel burntest utility will run your CPU hotter and draw more power than any "normal" CPU benchmarks because it's designed to run everything at the highest power load possible.
It would be great if you all could look into testing with less... beefy power supplies, though. I think a lot of people (myself included) would be interested to see the power draw in a more "realistic" setup.
For example, Antec's ISK 300-65 with a 65W power supply, or 300-150 with a 150W power supply, are a much more likely configuration than a system with a 610W PSU (as used in the recent Zotac H55 ITX article) or a 950W PSU (as used in this article). And the difference in power supply could make for a noticeable difference in idle/load numbers.
For low-power purposes, perhaps the boards could also be tested with low power memory modules (1.35v instead of 1.5v / 1.65v) and 2.5" hard drives (as many ITX enclosures may not have space for a 3.5" hard drive).
Anyways, these are just a few suggestions that I thought would help make the information presented here more practical. Feel free to ignore them. :)
Loving these articles on ITX boards, keep 'em coming!
Yeah 600W PSU is crazy. As well there is no mention of stability or quirks versus the other H55/57 boards tested.
For those looking for virtualization intel has a Q57 board with VT-d support with an i5 or i7 processor.
I'd like to second this request. PSU efficiency drops off at the low and high ends of their output ranges. Optimal levels are generally around 50% of max and while performance doesn't suffer much in the 20-80% load.
If you're concerned about noise you generally want to avoid going above about 70% with normal desktop PSUs to keep the fan spinning at idle. I'm not sure if the fan noise thresholds are true of the low power models designed for mini-itx systems with onboard gfx or not.
DH57JG, DH57G, and a DH55JG; either you’re reviewing 3 different boards or breaking a NDA. Hopefully the latter, as I’d really like to see a cheaper H55 option. ;)
This board is pretty much the successor to the DG45FC, so it would have been better to run performance and power consumption comparisons with that.
It would also be worthwhile to explain the market for these boards and what they're capable of. These boards are for people who want silence and a small form factor, but don't want to sacrifice performance. True, an Atom box costs less and consumes significantly less power, but you might be surprised to know that an E8400 on a DG45FC with a few drives can still run on 80W DC adapter + 120W picoPSU. I'm doing this myself and have never had a hiccup. I'd imagine that 80W would not be enough if you added a video card, but I don't do that.
This board is nice overall. I have two of them with SSD's for HTPC and BRPC. Both overclock overclock my i5's nicely. 3.2Ghz 650 pushed to 3.6Ghz and 3.33Ghz 661 pushed to 4.Ghz.
The BIOS update on these board is a nightmare - I cannopt stress this enough - I may never buy an Intel MB again. Not once has it worked right, via either of the mothods. It doesn't get much worse than this for a BIOS update. I have built several hundred systems over the past 25 years and never have I seen a BIOS update process worse than this. I would love to watch anyone try and say otherwise.
Other than that, I love this ITX setup with my tiny Antec 150 cases.
I realize this is a necropost 6 years after the fact, but I've got an i7-870 on hand that i was trying to put in a mini-itx system. Does this board in fact lock out the i7? You guys said that an 860 was working but comments below report no-post with an 860? I forgot intel used to do these stupid locking things in 2010 and ended up buying one of these off ebay. Does it work or am i screwed?
Talk about timing - I just stumbled across this review today (feb 29 1016) because I have this motherboard and was hoping to be able to drop an i7-870 in it. But like you, the comments have me concerned that it won't work. I've been doing some googling but can't find any confirmation on whether or not that CPU will work with this board.
Maybe this is a crazy idea, but you could mail me your CPU and I could drop it in my board and try it out? (then return it obviously) :) Only half kidding here..
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Forgetsalvation - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
I talked to Intel presales support, i was informed that essentially this motherboard's BIOS has been locked down so that it will not support the core i7.unfortunately i did not discover this until after i purchased this motherboard and a i7-860.
I was very hopeful when I saw this review showed a i7-860 that worked, how ever i still can not get my system to boot.
Do the moderators have any suggestions for me, i very much want to run this combo but I am running out to time to return these parts if they will not work
Erick Thompson - Monday, March 22, 2010 - link
I would love to use the M350 case from mini-box, but the largest power supply I can get is 102 watts. With this board and a i3 530 (using integrated graphics), along with a SSD drive, it seems like 102 watts would be enough, if pushing the edge a bit. Any thoughts?fbd - Tuesday, March 16, 2010 - link
Yeah im interested in that also... I see that actually u tested a Core i7 in the board but i read in the documentation of the board that it is designed to support cpus up to 87W TDP only, while the i7 has 95 W. What does that mean? Is some kind of hardware part ( e.g. circuitry) of the board not sufficient to support an i7 or what? Or does it support it only at lower speeds? Im a bit confused. What does this mean: "We managed to get the board to post at 21X150 BCLK, but found processor core frequency throttles down to 3GHz or so under full load to ensure safety for the CPU VRM". Does it mean that if u put a stock core i7-860 into the board it wont be able to operate over 3ghz? What about turbo boost then? It cant go over 3ghz either? Thx for any reply.abnderby - Saturday, March 6, 2010 - link
Inoticed your comment about not reviewing many intel boards. Yes I do agree with you on the fact that they do not offer the best package of thrills and frils. But it has been my experience with many of the other manufacturers that the quality and length of service of their boards are no where near that of Intels. I have run into many issues with other boards after a year of 24/7 use. Some of the board components would fail or the boards would die.Over the last 12 years I have only had 2 Intel boards die with less than 5 years of service. None of which were my workstation/server boards or high end PC boards. Intel does put in a tremendous amount of quality that lasts.
Currently I run 1 dual xeon that is 6 years old with 2 3.6 GHz xeons with 64 bit Windows 7. It stills runs flawlessly. I run a core 2 on intel uBTX 3 years now flawlessly.
So please your crowd out here is not just enthusiests that like or have to overclock everything. Many of us want the high quality and long lasting systems. Intel boards must be in that mix.
Duane
MamiyaOtaru - Friday, March 5, 2010 - link
Jet Geyser is one of my favorite thermal features in Yellowstone. Around the corner from the Fountain Paint Pots. It's not a very big one though. Wonder if Intel had it in mind when naming their boardmschira - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
HiI love these powerful low power systems!
I would be very interested in tests of a file server based on these board.
Like using a Highpoint RocketRAID 2322 system.
Cheers
M.
AmdInside - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
The P45 based mini-itx board from Intel had a lot of issues. I am not sure if I would jump on this one myself.hnzw rui - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
As far as I'm aware, Intel doesn't have a P45 Mini-ITX board. They do have an Intel DG45FC which is a G45 board.play2learn - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Usb 3.0 and 32 nm graphics...Then maybe!blyndy - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
It looks like m-itx is the new m-atx, which is great.hansblix - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Agreed. I think I'm on the Mini-ITX bandwagon now. A tiny, quiet, efficient yet reasonably powerful gaming system would be a fun project.MadMan007 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
I think it would be neat if Intel came out with an 'extreme' m-ITX motherboard although they might have to omit the glowing skull. More robust components and options for overclocking might make it a superior choice to other mITX motherboard for SFF enthusiasts. It's nice that Intel at least properly implements VRM cyrrent protection, it is rather sad that there were many insteances of blown VRMs on some P55 boards.MadMan007 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
You guys need to check that spec chart and take a look at the actual mobo. I only see 4 internal SATA and one eSATA, no coax S/PDIF on the I/O panel (a two-pin header is mentioned separately)Rajinder Gill - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Sorry, I've updated the table...JonnyDough - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Any nice ITX gaming build articles coming out any time Raj? I'd like to see what awesome/cheap kind of tiny LAN party box I can get with a nice single slot card to run modern FPS. Do it under $1K for sure if possible.i.e. (possibly?)
XFX single slot 5670
Any solid, non-OCable ITX board is fine as long as it is good value and has good location of PCI-E x16 slot etc. (USB 3.0 if/when possible and either Intel or AMD is fine)
4GB of ram (8GB if possible on two slots provided you find an excellent value ram set on the cheap)
Case, preferrably black with solid PSU (or even better if you can fit a full modular one in with proper capabilities)
Periphrals not required in the build, but it would be nice to see the OS added into the system, as Windows is required for LAN parties. Nobody hosts Linux gaming parties around here that I'm aware of.
Might also make mention of a solid gigabyte switch like the 8port Rosewill one listed on Newegg for $29 (currently), and the free games available like EA's recent free release of a good portion of the C&C franchise series.
Let's get gaming!
Rajinder Gill - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Hi JD,I'll pass on the request, I think we should have someone to cover cases and the like onboard soon.
regards
Raja
Murst - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
I'm currently looking for a Micro ITX case to replace my Atom board in an Acer Easystore. I really like how the Easystore looks and how easy it is to add/remove drives, but the Atom isn't capable of handling software like PlayOn, and I want to use the EasyStore for streaming to my PS3.This board would be a pretty good fit (6 SATA is great- I only need 4, but a lot of mini ITX don't even have 4). However, what I don't want is a power hungy processor, and even the i3 is a 73W, which seems rather high.
Hopefully Intel will come out with some lower power 1156 processors. Either that, or a Mini ITX board comes out with support for the mobile i3/i5/i7 processors. Actually, I really don't understand why no one sells mini ITX w/ mobile processor sockets. That would be ideal for really small HTPC or Home Server setups.
strikeback03 - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
There were mini-ITX boards for previous generation mobile processors (though they were expensive), I imagine there will be for current generation ones as well at some point.deruberhanyok - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Murst,You might want to check out SPCR's i5-661 article. Thought the i3 processors are given a 73W rating, actual power draw is much lower than that.
In their tests, playback of an h264 blu-ray disc showed power use of 43W DC. Full system with CPU and GPU at load didn't even hit 70W. And that's with the i5-661, which would draw more power than a regular i3 due to its increased CPU and GPU clock:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1013-page4.ht...">http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1013-page4.ht...
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1013-page5.ht...">http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1013-page5.ht...
They are already lower power than advertised. I think the i3 series could have been listed as 60W or even lower and still have had plenty of headroom in the power rating.
This is, incidentally, one of the reasons I made the suggestion of testing in a more realistic system configuration than the test setup used here.
MadMan007 - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
TDP doesn't mean power draw and was enver meant to imply power draw anyway so they aren't 'rated' to draw that much power in the first place. (Sorry, it's just one of my pet peeves when people equate TDP to power draw.)DanNeely - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Aren't benchmark numbers for CPUs almost always lower than reported TDPs? Intel/etc have to design for peak theoretical power draws even if they're extremely unlikely in real life. The intel burntest utility will run your CPU hotter and draw more power than any "normal" CPU benchmarks because it's designed to run everything at the highest power load possible.deruberhanyok - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
It would be great if you all could look into testing with less... beefy power supplies, though. I think a lot of people (myself included) would be interested to see the power draw in a more "realistic" setup.For example, Antec's ISK 300-65 with a 65W power supply, or 300-150 with a 150W power supply, are a much more likely configuration than a system with a 610W PSU (as used in the recent Zotac H55 ITX article) or a 950W PSU (as used in this article). And the difference in power supply could make for a noticeable difference in idle/load numbers.
For low-power purposes, perhaps the boards could also be tested with low power memory modules (1.35v instead of 1.5v / 1.65v) and 2.5" hard drives (as many ITX enclosures may not have space for a 3.5" hard drive).
Anyways, these are just a few suggestions that I thought would help make the information presented here more practical. Feel free to ignore them. :)
Loving these articles on ITX boards, keep 'em coming!
FATCamaro - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
Yeah 600W PSU is crazy. As well there is no mention of stability or quirks versus the other H55/57 boards tested.For those looking for virtualization intel has a Q57 board with VT-d support with an i5 or i7 processor.
Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
Hi,Point taken on the PSU. For a rundown of stability and quirks of the other boards used check out these articles:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3732">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3732
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3748">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3748
later
Raja
DanNeely - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
I'd like to second this request. PSU efficiency drops off at the low and high ends of their output ranges. Optimal levels are generally around 50% of max and while performance doesn't suffer much in the 20-80% load.If you're concerned about noise you generally want to avoid going above about 70% with normal desktop PSUs to keep the fan spinning at idle. I'm not sure if the fan noise thresholds are true of the low power models designed for mini-itx systems with onboard gfx or not.
JonnyDough - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
I concur with your post. Realistic PSU makes a huge difference.Rajinder Gill - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Thanks, we're working on it...GeorgeH - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
DH57JG, DH57G, and a DH55JG; either you’re reviewing 3 different boards or breaking a NDA. Hopefully the latter, as I’d really like to see a cheaper H55 option. ;)gtrgtgt - Sunday, March 7, 2010 - link
http://www.ccshoper.com">http://www.ccshoper.com
Rajinder Gill - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
Sorry about that - fixed..BansheeX - Monday, March 1, 2010 - link
This board is pretty much the successor to the DG45FC, so it would have been better to run performance and power consumption comparisons with that.It would also be worthwhile to explain the market for these boards and what they're capable of. These boards are for people who want silence and a small form factor, but don't want to sacrifice performance. True, an Atom box costs less and consumes significantly less power, but you might be surprised to know that an E8400 on a DG45FC with a few drives can still run on 80W DC adapter + 120W picoPSU. I'm doing this myself and have never had a hiccup. I'd imagine that 80W would not be enough if you added a video card, but I don't do that.
SKE4826 - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 - link
This board is nice overall. I have two of them with SSD's for HTPC and BRPC. Both overclock overclock my i5's nicely. 3.2Ghz 650 pushed to 3.6Ghz and 3.33Ghz 661 pushed to 4.Ghz.The BIOS update on these board is a nightmare - I cannopt stress this enough - I may never buy an Intel MB again. Not once has it worked right, via either of the mothods. It doesn't get much worse than this for a BIOS update. I have built several hundred systems over the past 25 years and never have I seen a BIOS update process worse than this. I would love to watch anyone try and say otherwise.
Other than that, I love this ITX setup with my tiny Antec 150 cases.
Teknoman117 - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link
I realize this is a necropost 6 years after the fact, but I've got an i7-870 on hand that i was trying to put in a mini-itx system. Does this board in fact lock out the i7? You guys said that an 860 was working but comments below report no-post with an 860? I forgot intel used to do these stupid locking things in 2010 and ended up buying one of these off ebay. Does it work or am i screwed?eagle63 - Monday, February 29, 2016 - link
Talk about timing - I just stumbled across this review today (feb 29 1016) because I have this motherboard and was hoping to be able to drop an i7-870 in it. But like you, the comments have me concerned that it won't work. I've been doing some googling but can't find any confirmation on whether or not that CPU will work with this board.Maybe this is a crazy idea, but you could mail me your CPU and I could drop it in my board and try it out? (then return it obviously) :) Only half kidding here..