[geeks] Intel Atom MB - Initial Impressions

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Jonathan Groll <lists at groll.co.za>
>Date: 2008/06/10 Tue AM 05:59:17 EDT
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: Re: [geeks] Intel Atom MB - Initial Impressions

>On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 10:55:04PM -0500, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> Hello all,
>> 
>> My D945GCLF, the low-cost Atom-based MB arrived this morning, and I just threw it in a case and installed WinXP Pro on it tonight (for testing, I plan to also try Solaris, Ubuntu, and Server 2008. All 64-bit.
>> 
>> Anyway, so far it looks pretty nice - the MB is reasonably fast for general desktop use, and the board is dead-silent. Well, almost - with the lid off the case you can hear the chipset fan...
>
>What did you end up paying for it and was the price inclusive of CPU
>and RAM?

Rather than wait for discounters to ge the board in stock, I paid "list" price, or $79.95, with $8 S/H. It came without RAM, but I had a 1 Gig PC2-3200 DIMM lying around (FSB is 667 MHz, IIRC from spec sheet). I'm going to try and get a 2 Gig PC2-5300 DIMM ($37 AR), and I have a larger SATA II 3.0 Gb/sec HD I may swap for the current 80 Gig unit.

My system cost me:

MB - $80
RAM - $0 ($37 for 2 Gig)
HD - $0 ($100 for 500 Gig HD)
CD-R/W - $0 ($30 for DVD-R/W)
Case - $50

OS - Depends - this may become my vacation home server, as it appears beefy enough for Windows Server and frugal enough as far as power consumption goes running WinXP Pro. With one HD, 1 Gig RAM, 18" flat panel and a wireless bridge it consumes about 100 Watts (as registered on my Kill-A-Watt), and HALF of that power is in the flat panel (drops down to about 50 Watts when I switch the panel off...

And this is with a craptacular 250+ Watt PS (not a green, high-efficency model) that came with the chassis...

Lionel