Should you be lusting after some of that
Core i7 oomph but have a distaste for the large thermal and physical footprint of desktops, you'll want to hear more from Congatec. A relative unknown hailing from Germany, the outfit has just announced its BM57 small form factor setup, which looks to be ideal for homebrew HTPC enthusiasts -- primarily because its
i7-620M CPU is both powerful (up to 3.33GHz with Turbo Boost) and relatively easy to cool (35W TDP, including chip-integrated graphics). The kit is able to support up to 8GB of dual-channel DDR3, as well as drive two video outputs concurrently. Choices include HDMI, DisplayPort and VGA, leading to some tantalizingly versatile possibilities for the creative self-builder. Prices are not yet available, but the BM57 will be demonstrated at the International Gaming Expo in London at the end of this month.
posted January 13th 2010 9:36AM
Where are the conncectors? And how can it be dual channel with one dd3 slot?
do want anyways...
@(Unverified) thats either a stacked slot, or a front/back config.
@(Unverified)
From only the one picture you can't tell, but there is likely another slot on the reverse side. As for the connectors, it might just be showing the bare motherboard.
@vlad the inhaler
Yeah it looks very much like the stacked slots on my laptop motherboard, which are very low-profile. There appears to be 2 sets of arms in the photo also. That said the other could be on the reverse.
@(Unverified) This is a COM-Express form factor, so the only connections to it are through two 200-pin .5mm pitch connectors (that's half a millimeter between each pin!). In order to use this module, you would need to fabricate your own carrier board, and have a pretty serious soldering setup to put it all together.
@boatzart I'd imagine if they sell it, they'll sell various carrier boards too. They'd be seriously limiting themselves if they made people build their own io connections.
I was doing a double take for a second. (I didn't see the mobile i7 part)
If it was a regular i7, the heatsink would be almost as big/bigger than the board itself. :D
Turbo Boost? Really?
@feeble11 In case you were refering to the turbo boost of the santa rosa chipset, this is NOT the same thing. Turbo Boost is basically manufacturer sanctioned overclocking. If all cores are not being used and thermals permit, the processor will automatically overclock the used cores. it just seems that the engineers need to get more creative with naming these things :)
@feeble11
Yep, we're officially back in the 1980's.
@feeble11
Ludicrous Speed
wasn't kitt - knight rider (80s) the 1st with turbo boost?
Make it the Core i7-640UM for only 18W and shove it in a range of 11.6, 13, 14, 15.6 inch laptops.*cough* ASUS UL and Acer Timeline *cough*
@dds1043 ooops looks like its actually the i7-620UE. Thats what I get for reading the article rather than reading the Intel chart.
Now I have to clean up this excitement mess I made.
"BM"57 - like, bowel movement? are they trying to give you an early warning that their product will be shit? :)
For graphics and video... and no dedicated GPU? OK if you say so.
@netsql Where did they say "graphics and video"? They said HTPC, which this would pull off very easily.
the i7-600 series is crap.
@SirNoDroin
Yep, highest performing mobile dual core CPUs ever. Utter garbage.
Idiot.
@SirNoDroin well i consider 99% of mobile PCs crap anyway.
I don't need to carry a computer around, I need it to be work done quickly.
The fact that we have sacrificed increasing computer speed (and therefore productive) with the need for mobility is stupid, if you had a faster computer that could get more work done quicker, you wouldn't have to be mobile computing in the first place.
50+% of laptop buyers never even travel with it, and buy it under the false notion of saving space.
So i stand by my statement.
@SirNoDroin
So do I.
@SirNoDroin Really? Your comment is to yourself?
Laptops /are/ smaller than desktops. Unless you're comparing laptops from 1986 to desktops of today... then your comment would be full of win. But the last time I checked, it's only 1986 at H&M.
@SirNoDroin Last time I checked, my 6 year old pentium 4 machine with a 9700 graphics card can render video at least twice as fast as my 1 year old required by school laptop with a Core2Duo with 9300m graphics card. Price wise, they were about the same. This is video production rendering, Majority of the rendering takes place on the processor, not the graphics card.
As i said, I stand by my statement.
@SirNoDroin
At this point I can't tell if you're joking or just brain dead.
@SirNoDroin
Yes because you know for 90% of the world that is not bound by the speed of their Renderfarm in how fast they do things, having a less mobile faster computer is the perfect solution.
Now lets move back to reality, where most people i know own and use laptops because they have to do work in multiple places. This is 99% of people employed in Scientific and Business related jobs, which last I checked compromised a larger portion of the workforce then people using Maya to make the next Avatar.
You != Everyone.
@SirNoDroin this troll is full
muhahahahaa
@postmasterSteve
I love this comment for so many reasons.
I have an i7 920 desktop at home, but there are times when I need to do drafting on the road. As such, when my current 3 year old lappy goes, I will happily get a mobile i7 so my work doesn't slow to a crawl. Then I do large renderings at home. Simple as that.
@SirNoDroin Funny thing is that only 1% of American are like you. Most American computer needs are pretty basic. So even if a laptop cleans up the mess of chord that you have to set up, it may be better for most Americans. I have a laptop and it video edits home movies like a champ, and when I want to surf the internet on my coach I can. Try that with your desktop. And your 50% statistic is crap. While 50% might leave it in one place most of the time, It's probable that every now and then they do move it for one reason or another.
Lastly, My laptop uses 1/3 of the electricity as your desktop and that can add up if you actually use your computer daily. So, laptops are more energy efficient for 90% of what most Americans do.
Please don't use your atypical needs as the standard for the rest of the world.
@SirNoDroin
I've read some of your other posts.
You being a troll, and you being an idiot aren't mutually exclusive.
nom nom nom.
I'd actually been wondering why this kind of thing wasn't more prevalent. If you really want a cool and quiet computer, why not do this more?
@Old fogie late bloomer because its slower.
Amount of Space > Time = Money
bigger and faster is always better.
@SirNoDroin
He's right, I use a quad core in by HTPC, so I can watch movies twice as fast. I can listen to music 10x faster too.
@SirNoDroin
I was hoping that you were being sarcastic and forgot your irony mark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark), though reading your other posts on this subject seems to rule out this possibility.
An HTPC does not need to be "bigger and faster", it only needs to be fast enough while remaining quiet and unintrusive. A motherboard such as this should provide more than adequate power for any task you demand of such a computer while fitting into an enclosure of comparable size to a Blu-ray player or game console.
That's one tiny mofo.
@MrAffrox : That's what she said!
@MrAffrox : That's one tiny mobo? :-)
@One Love: I call shenanigans. she doesn't know what a mobo is.
When someone says "i7", you dont think of mobile processors, you think of the i7 920.