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AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com)
News.com
looks at new Pentium D-based computers from AOpen.
"Taiwanese computer maker AOpen is scheduled to release two versions of its Pandora desktop just in time for the holiday shopping season, the company said Thursday. The company said Apple Computer's Mac Mini inspired its latest desktop PC. Pandora is one of several 2-inch-tall computers being sold as home entertainment PCs.
A Linux-based version of the mini tower is expected to sell at retail for $399, while the Windows XP-based box will go for $499."
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AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com) Posted Sep 30, 2005 8:49 UTC (Fri) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104) [Link] Oh no! What happens of you open one of these desktops? Will we have to get Lara Croft to close it again? AOpen are playing with fire.
AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com) Posted Sep 30, 2005 18:50 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Pretty damn nice.
I also like how they have a Linux version. It's going to give me warm fuzzies about Aopen now.
And Pentium D.. those are the dual core units right? That makes it extra special. Also those 945G setups with the integrated intel chipset are decent AND supported by OSS/DRI drivers. (don't quite think support is in current X.org stuff, but if anybody is using a 945g board please chime in!). They are worlds better then the old 'extreme graphics blaster' silliness and are about on par with the ATI 9200 featured in the Apple Mini. Intel claims that they are about as powerfull as a ATI 9800 although due to the shared memory over PCIe sceme I think that's too optimistic.
So it should make a good little linux box as long as they can keep the heat under control with those dual core Pentiums.. which is the only serious snag that I can think of. If it's noisy then it's a bust and I don't think those pentium d's are going to be easy to keep quite and cool. If they are able to do that then it would be a machine that would be quite a bit more powerfull then the Apple Mini. By a factor of 3-4 times. (I have a ibook with similar 1.2ghz G4, and while nice and cool, it's much slower then my modest 1.8ghz AMD Althon desktop, even with it's 1280 megs of RAM.)
If then have something in the way of a expansion card allowed then it would beat the mini hands down.. if they keep the noise under control. Heres hoping for huge heatsinks.
This is nothing new Posted Sep 30, 2005 19:08 UTC (Fri) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] Mini-ITX and microATX mainboards have existed for years, and so have low-profile cases to put them in.
Your point? Posted Sep 30, 2005 19:31 UTC (Fri) by robla (subscriber, #424) [Link] So, you're saying "hey, someone could have shipped a finished product based on these components". Great. AOpen did it. It may have been obvious and simple, but the fact that someone is shipping a *finished* piece of hardware is nice. Not "oh my god, mark this day on the calendar, we'll be celebrating the fifty year anniversary" nice, but it's newsworthy because now we know the other shoe has finally dropped.
Your point? Posted Sep 30, 2005 21:52 UTC (Fri) by rqosa (guest, #24136) [Link] > the fact that someone is shipping a *finished* piece of hardware is nice That's also been done before. Here are some complete systems, here are more of them, and even some of IBM's "NetVista" series are microATX.
Your point? Posted Oct 3, 2005 12:16 UTC (Mon) by carcassonne (guest, #31569) [Link] "That's also been done before. Here are some complete systems, here are more of them, and even some of IBM's "NetVista" series are microATX."
The Shuttles are much bigger while the Hush computers, especially the high-end ones, are quite larger and way more expensive.
AOpen's offering is really small and while you can find similar devices at mini-itx.com that can inspire a home-made 'puter in a lunch box (there's actually one like that) it's a far cry from a $399 tiny Linux machine.
Your point? Posted Sep 30, 2005 22:09 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Thing is is that many mini-itx boards are pretty poor performers. The onboard video is terrible, very little in the way of acceleration 2d or 3d, and the cpus are _slow_. A 1ghz via cpu is comparable to a 400-600ghz pentium 3 in many benchmarks.
However the do have the advantage that they are cheap. Newer ones have mpeg4 hardware encoders and mpeg2 'accelerators' that make it great to be used with Mythtv. They have dual ethernet models that make top-notch firewalls. They have the Padlock technology so you can do things like encrypt high speed connections like microwave point to point transmissions faster then a dozen 3.0ghz pentium 4s. That hardware-based random number generator enable Linux/OBSD to do encyption/decryption like no other. Make great low-power file servers and such. Also usefull for low-price robotic controllers and such. They have onboard flash drives, and pcmcia slots aviable for some models. Great things for carputers. etc etc etc. (different models have different features, older stuff won't have the padlock encryption acceleration capabilities for instance.)
Absolutely wonderfull devices.
However they are crap for general desktop usage, unless you don't mind having a very slow cpu and video (which I know many people that don't mind at all).
This is what is very nice about this Aopen 'pandora's box' thing. It would be VERY adiquate for normal desktop use and even some video editing and such. It's got perfectly adiquate video (not for gaming though) and the cpus are dual core and plenty fast.
They have mini-itx boards that can take Pentium 4's and such, but are themselves very expensive...
Micro ATX stuff is priced well. It's just the same thing as any other consumer computer electronic device.
But MicroATX and normal MiniATX case designs in general suffer from very poor thermal properties. Hence the need for 'blow hole' style fans, extra large rear fans, fans for the harddrives, extra fans for the pci slots, etc etc etc. Very small cases are worse.. cases with large amounts of internal volume can absorb much more heat due to the large volume and hence smaller MicroATX cases tend to be quite load. (this is why Intel has created the BTX standard... you'd notice that in-spec mini btx cases can be quite a bit smaller then even microatx cases.)
Not saying though that thru extra work and a couple extra hundred dollars you can't get nice quiet powersupplies and nice fans, and large oversized heatsinks and such that will help out in the noise department considurably.
IF (big if) Aopen managed to keep these things quiet, then I am pretty sure that I've found my next desktop system...
Pretty hard to achieve Posted Oct 1, 2005 0:27 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] The biggest problem is still CPU power consumption. From what I have googled, those Pentium D seem to consume as much as a P-IV, which is a lot; even if it has two cores and twice the power, it will be difficult to cool those things.Let us suppose you want to make a fanless machine. Old G3 iMacs were fanless, and they got to 600 MHz or so. Some mini-itx cases are fanless, but I think even the 1 GHz VIA processor requires a small fan. I have only seen a couple of fanless boxes that accepted P-IV processors, and they were well over $1000 -- expensive jobs targeted at sound studios. Suppose you can do with a small quiet fan, like the mac mini. Apple can do it thanks to the wonderful G4 processors: you lose some processing power but still they make nice desktop machines. Some mini-itx manufacturers make P-IV computers, but they are not cheap and have noisy fans. If you start with one of these and spend $200 more in heat sinks you have an expensive machine. And you still have a lot of heat to dissipate. A Pentium M processor should have worked much better IMHO, even if it made the product more expensive. In short, I think that this AOpen machine is going to be noisy as hell.
Pretty hard to achieve Posted Oct 1, 2005 6:37 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] It's a distinct possiblity it will be noisy.. but Aopen has been able to pull off some interesting stuff before.
Check out this silent PC review of their XC box. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article140-page2.html
Now the pandora box is much smaller and will use a hotter cpu.. but the computer they reviewed had room for expansion slots, full size harddrive, full size dvdrom, and used a internal power supply with it's own fan.
The pandora box will use laptop-style parts, external fanless power supply (probably will double as a nice feet-warmer) and will have a single fan for the entire box. Also the chip has the speedstep stuff to allow it to undervolt during normal use.
During cpuburn (which makes the cpu much hotter then any thing you'd ever do to it) the XC thing peak sound of 31 dBA measured from behind the computer, which isn't that load at all. Probably about the same as my Ibook at full tilt.
I give it a 50/50 chance of being quiet-enough vs being a load and annoying crapbox.
Pretty hard to achieve Posted Oct 1, 2005 10:19 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] The review of the AOpen XC box makes my point nicely. With a P4 2.54 processor, it draws 51 W idle (29 dB), 97 W max (31 dB). However, when a P4 2.8C was used, it drew 81 W idle (36 dB), 150 W max (42 dB). The CPU alone accounts for differences of 30 to 50 W, which is more than the whole mac mini consumes.If the Pentium D is the power-hungry beast it seems to be, it will be difficult to make it quiet. I would take bets at 50/50!
Pretty hard to achieve Posted Oct 1, 2005 10:36 UTC (Sat) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] In the second test it included a Ti4800 card with a big fan. The fan on that card alone made 39 dBA outside the case.
Also those types of cards are notorously power-hungry, even at idle. The design of them is purely for performance with very little concern for economy of noise or energy.
At idle the cpu differences should be minimal. If the machine is not using the cpu power then the differences would, at most, be within a few watts of each other. But at idle there was a 30 watt difference. I don't think you'd get that from simply a 10% increase in clock speed, most of that from the vid card.
Pretty hard to achieve Posted Oct 1, 2005 12:12 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Ooops, you are right. That explains a large part of it. Still, I would take bets at 50/50 :)
This is nothing new Posted Sep 30, 2005 23:24 UTC (Fri) by sjj (guest, #2020) [Link] Please. Slashdot is ----> over there for all the "this is nothing new" posts you can dream up.
AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com) Posted Oct 1, 2005 23:41 UTC (Sat) by wartstew (guest, #9819) [Link] I also agree with the sad state of affairs of the P4. When they went to the 90nm Prescott series, everyone including Intel expected a drop in power consumption that would then allow them to advance the processor speed. That didn't happen. It is basically "back to the drawing board" for Intel.
Except for one thing: The Pentium-M.
AMD's stuff are power hogs too, but not as bad as the P4. VIA's C3 & Eden line are low power and cheap, but also low performing. Their latest offering seems to have comparable power/performance ratios as an underclocked Coppermine PIII, so why not build one of those instead?
I did this research recently while trying to recommend hardware for a critical server application where the electrolytic capacitors in the otherwise amazing on-motherboard switching power supplies that have to provide over 80 amperes(!) of current to these processors don't literally explode after about 2-3 years of constant use.
AOpen box inspired by Mac Mini (News.com) Posted Oct 2, 2005 19:35 UTC (Sun) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] One thing that I've been told about Intel (and possibly in general for the cpu industry) is that when they are designing cpus they design them 2-3 generations out.
Meaning that when the current crop of P4 cpus were designed Intel was dealing with the ghz wars with AMD around the the time they broke the 1 ghz barrier. Then after that it takes a long time for testing and then to design and perfect the fabrication facilities for it. Back when the P4 systems were designed the power considurations were relatively minor.
Then when people started getting tired of the loud machines, expensive power requirement in the server rooms, and the hot laptops with only a hour and a half of battery time.. then that's when they switched gears and started designing the Pentium-M.. it's just taken them this long to get it to market.
The only possible exception to this would be the Pentium-D chips with the EM64T stuff to couteract AMD's opteron threat. I think those were rushed to market relatively quickly, but are mostly P4 anyways.
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