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Re: [LUG] Atom 330 setup wanted

 

Rob Beard wrote:

Does it specifically have to be an Atom 330?

Not really, I guess.  I do want something low power though.  My desktop
box spends around 16 hours a day switched on, which actually makes a
significant contribution to the electrickery bills.

I believe Intel have released a new range of Atom's, the D410 (1.6GHz single core with HT), D425 (1.8GHz single core with HT), D510 (1.6GHz dual core with HT) and D525 (1.8GHz dual core with HT). I gather they have a few tweaks and are faster (and also from what I've seen a bit cheaper too).

I have found a few D510 boards.  Not much based on the others though.

If you really want an Atom 330, you might be worth looking at the Ionstar 330 from Asrock. It supports up to 4GB Ram, Gigabit LAN (although it doesn't say what it is), NVidia ION Chipset, 6 USB ports, 7.1 HD audio, HDMI and VGA output and a Slimline DVDRW drive.

It doesn't appear to have a card reader, internal Bluetooth or front audio.

I'll have a look.  I can live without the card reader etc. if necessary.

The only drawback is that the only take a 2.5" notebook size hard drive, although you can get them in 7200RPM (I have on in my notebook, it's as fast as a desktop drive and only slightly more expensive than a normal 2.5" 5400RPM drive).

Hmmm.  I've always found 2.5" drives to be signficantly slower than 3.5"
ones and this box does take a fair bit of beating.  OTOH, if it isn't
paging stuff out, I can possibly live with a slower disk speed.

For all that though you're not going to get much change from about £250 though. Seems that small is expensive.

OTOH, look at the maths:

Originally I had a P4 3GHz which was sucking around 270W, which works
out at somewhere around £240/year for electricity at 16 hours a day.  My
current 330 box draws less than 40W, but lets call it that.  That works
out at £35/year.  It doesn't take long to pay for itself.

James

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