Intel 847 with NM70 ECS NM70-I2 gets tested and a review

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

In this article we test the cutest Mini-ITX motherboard from ECS today, the ECS NM70-I2, have a look at some of its performance on the CPU and GPU side of things but most of all, we'll discuss featur...

Intel 847 with NM70 ECS NM70-I2 gets tested and a review

[Ven0m]

Thanks for the review.

It should be a great system for NAS, as you suggested. I hope it can handle ZFS raidz (RAID-5 equivalent).

However... you know there may be some other issues. Recently I had a computer, which one of the main purposes was just keeping data with RAID-1. And the RAM went bad and caused a lot of headache. Perhaps it's just better to get a regular AMD mobo, and throw some ECC RAM in it? If we add cost of 4 3TB drives, then the relative cost difference isn't that high.

[Hilbert Hagedoorn]

Originally Posted by Ven0m

Thanks for the review.

It should be a great system for NAS, as you suggested. I hope it can handle ZFS raidz (RAID-5 equivalent).

However... you know there may be some other issues. Recently I had a computer, which one of the main purposes was just keeping data with RAID-1. And the RAM went bad and caused a lot of headache. Perhaps it's just better to get a regular AMD mobo, and throw some ECC RAM in it? If we add cost of 4 3TB drives, then the relative cost difference isn't that high.

ECC RAM only works with server class processors like Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron, so inserting it will simply result in the system memory not being ECC enabled.

I've been evangelizing for years now to see desktop products with ECC, but it has become a sales tool to increase server class processors pricing.

[Ven0m]

Originally Posted by Hilbert Hagedoorn

ECC RAM only works with server class processors like Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron, so inserting it will simply result in the system memory not being ECC enabled.

I've been evangelizing for years now to see desktop products with ECC, but it has become a sales tool to increase server class processors pricing.

Yeah - Xeon prices for home NAS are ... well ... out of my range. However I heard you can just stick regular AMD desktop CPU into proper mobo and get ECC support, so it made me interested in this topic.

For example ASUS explicitly lists ECC support over here: http://usa.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD...specifications

[Geo]

Thanks for the review, it is really good to have the small stuff tested too.

I found the article when this ECS board popped up on a local shop page during the search for mini-ITX. As this really is a entry level dual core stuff, nothing really surprising, but nice to have a proper test of it.

I just assembled another ECS board for a friend, which does not cost much more, but performance is much higher (at the expense of the power consumption of course). You can get a 1155 ITX board of your choice (ECS is the cheapest so far tho) and install a cheap dual core Celeron into it, and the price difference could be as low as 20$. If you don't need the high 2.4-2.6GHz performance, then lock maximum in the bios so you can save power (I have not tested how close I can get to your measurement)

Currently I am running an Asrock H61 ITX with a G1610 Ivy Bridge based Celeron and it has eSata and 2 USB 3.0 ports, together with all the standards. Idle and video playback consumption is comparable to yours, but I do have the horsepower to do RAW photo conversion too (but that raises power to 50W range)