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View Full Version : Smallest Mobo/Powerful


Vital
07-06-2009, 06:52 PM
Hey, I am planning to build a small portable device. What are my options as far as motherboards. I was looking into the Nvidia Ion, but the Zotac board is two thick and draws too much power. So let me know please!
x88x
07-06-2009, 07:11 PM
There's a variety of options available, mostly in the x-ITX sizes. What kind of performance are you looking to get out of it?

If you're looking for power, Zotac makes a mini-ITX Socket 775 board with a 16x PCIe 2.0 slot (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500022), though since you were looking at their ION board, and that was too big, it occurs to me that you probably aren't looking for power...oh well, it's still a cool board :D

If you're just looking to get as small a device as possible, you might be interested in the pico-ITX boards (http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/mainboards/pico_itx) though if you want it portable, at that point you might really just be better off modding a netbook.

EDIT:
Also, you could get the Zotac ION board, and mod a new HSF for it that would be thinner.
Vital
07-06-2009, 09:17 PM
Well they have an Ion the same size of that one you linked to. It's too thick. I was looking for one of those OMAP ones, I'm just not sure where to look. What's HSF btw?

Edit:

Also can you remove ports and will the motherboard still be functional? Or can I remove and wire them to position them differently?

Edit:

Oh heat sink fan. Well the case is going to be unibody, so I may be able to use the case as it's own heatsink.
widefault
07-06-2009, 09:55 PM
What are your performance needs? Graphics or CPU? If it's graphics, you're pretty much locked into Ion in some shape or form. If CPU, do you want x86, x64 or would something else work? I can't help much beyond x86/x64, unfortunately.

What are your size limits? You're probably going to want to go into embedded boards if ITX is too big.

PicoITX seems nice, but the CPU is underpowered and the graphics are worse than Intel GMA in most cases. There are PicoITX boards with the Atom, but they're either paired with the Intel GMA950 or the GMA500. They're also expensive, $500 and up.

One step up would be the 3.5" Embedded/ECX form factor(4" x 5.75"). Those are also expensive, but you can get up to a Penryn Core 2 Duo mobile chip on them with the Intel GMA 4500 graphics. Better, but still lackluster. They are pretty thin, depending on cooling most are only about 1" thick.
Vital
07-06-2009, 10:03 PM
I heard that the OMAP 4 by TI is capable of 1080p? Is there anything similar out like that? Do you have anymore information that I can read? And where I can purchase it?
x88x
07-07-2009, 10:52 AM
From a quick check on the almighty Wikipedia, it appears that the OMAP4 boards haven't been released. Also, you're gonna run into problems with OMAP b/c it uses an ARM chip.

What exactly are you trying to do with this portable system?/What's it going into? That might help in leading recommendations.
billygoat333
07-08-2009, 01:20 AM
http://www.logicsupply.com/

those guys have some sweet stuff. :)
x88x
07-08-2009, 04:16 PM
I just remembered about this project:
http://beagleboard.org/

Again, depending on what you're wanting to do, this may or may not work for you. It's based on the OMAP3 ARM CPUs, and is the project that the hardware in the TouchBook is an offshoot of.
Vital
07-08-2009, 10:18 PM
Well it's going to be basically a portable tablet run off a battery, mostly geared to video content and web browsing. I am really liking the Zotac Ion boards, I think I may just rewire the ports on it and get a new heatsink built to reduce it's thickness.
x88x
07-09-2009, 02:47 PM
Especially for wanting to run it off battery, I feel like it might be easier to modify a cheap laptop...
NightrainSrt4
07-09-2009, 04:36 PM
The ION will be okay for most video stuff, but you mentioned web as well, and if you are even thinking about playing flash it is probably best to look elsewhere. At least until Adobe gets flash running on the gpu.
Vital
07-09-2009, 07:31 PM
One of the Zotac boards features a dual core atom. I think that should be sufficient for running flash, wouldn't you think?
nate
07-10-2009, 02:22 AM
or you could go the route i am going and get this mobo. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153124
replace the heatsink with something shorter and voila.
have you figured out a battery system yet?
x88x
07-10-2009, 11:26 AM
One of the Zotac boards features a dual core atom. I think that should be sufficient for running flash, wouldn't you think?

It should probably be fine. I've seen video of that board running 10080p video, though with w GPU-accelerated codec, but I don't think flash would be a problem with it.
NightrainSrt4
07-10-2009, 06:09 PM
Encoded video if fine, but everything I've read about the dual core atoms is that they play flash a little bit better than the single cores but any monitor/tv at or higher than 720p is going to be choppy.

Flash is all cpu based currently, and even though the 330 is 1.6ghz dual core, it just doesn't have the grunt to push enough frames in flash.

If you are going to have all encoded video then it seems like it would be fine, but for the sake of sanity do not try and do the encoding itself on the atom either.