The first tablets and notebooks with Intel’s low-power Bay Trail processors are now shipping, but what about desktops? They’re on the way too, and if you don’t feel like buying a pre-built system, it looks like you’ll be able to build your own.
ECS has introduces a Mini-ITX motherboard called the BAT-I which is designed to work with Intel Celeron and Pentium chips based on Silvermont/Bay Trail architecture.
The motherboard is designed to fit into tight spaces such as tiny desktop computers or thin all-in-one PCs. It’s also designed for low-power applications. With maximum power consumption of 10 watts, the system shouldn’t generate a lot of heat and it can work in a case with silent heatsink instead of a noisy fan.
ECS will offer three models, featuring a choice of 2.4 GHz Intel Pentium J2850 quad-core, 2 GHz Intel Celeron J1850 quad-core, and 2.4 GHz Intel Celeron J1750 dual-core processors.
While they’ll come packaged with a processor, you’ll still need to supply your own memory, storage, and other components.
The boards feature USB 3.0 support, a Mini PXI Expres slot, and two 3GB/s SATA connectors as well as HDMI and VGA ports.
via AnandTech
For Bay Trail, I’m looking for small SBCs with dual Intel GigE ports. Even better if it comes with a case. Better still, the case is fanless.
I’ve been Googling around and only read of announced dual GigE E3800 (embedded Bay Trail I based Atoms) boards in 3.5″ SBC, Nano-ITX and Pico-ITX form factors with no pricing info. They’re targeted towards industrial applications so I assume they’re going to be very expensive when compared to the conumer market products.
I hope some inexpensive consumer targeted dual GigE Bay Trail I/M mini boards come out.
Saw a post on logicsupply’s blog about ASRock’s Industrial mini-itx roadmap and there’s seems to be some thin-itx with Baytrail D/M with dual LAN. Might be okay/decent price. Sad to see Intel out of the mini-itx area because it’s harder to get consumer level pricing.
https://www.logicsupply.com/blog/2013/10/16/asrock-ipc-and-logic-supply/
Intel seems to be trying to push the NUC, though.
A guy at AnandTech posted these boards. They’re all embedded boards (ie. Silvermont based E3800 Atoms) so they’re likely out of most consumer’s price ranges. I hope some consumer level micro-boards come out.
AAEON GENE-BT05
https://www.aaeon.com/en/n/intelligent-systems-and-platforms/
3.5″ SBC – 5.75″ x 4″
Portwell NANO-6060
https://www.portwell.com/products/detail.asp?CUSTCHAR1=NANO-6060
Axiomtek CAPA841
https://www.axiomtek.com/products/ViewProduct.asp?view=1104
3.5″ SBC – 5.75″ x 4″
DFI BT551
https://www.dfi-embedded.co.il/products/ProductDetails.jsp;jsessionid=DB22ACE56FC4013C7317E75C35FE99DB.node1?productId=1588&mainCategoryId=4&subCategoryId=17&productDetailsPage=false
3.5″ SBC – 5.75″ x 4″
Interesting, some of the pages listed above makes mention of “celeron J1900 / N2920” Neither of which have been announced yet, anyone hear anything about them? Quick google search is turning up a lot of hits in the industrial sector for products using them, but no specs… 🙁
Edit: nevermind, found some info on the N2920 at least: 1.6ghz 4-core, 4.5W SDP
https://embedded-computing.com/news/attractive-5-watt-sdp/#
I think you can get the NANO-6060 individually if you have deep pockets. the rest of them start around $400 and go up from there.
Ya, with the lower TDPs, I’d like to see some mini boards. Kind of tired of using ARM SBCs with the whole can’t update the Linux image yourself due to proprietary drivers (not just the GPU) thing. Getting other OS’s to work is almost impossible like FreeBSD based ones.
Hopefully, fairly inexpensive and low power mini boards come out with Bay Trail I/M/D chips. I’m even interested in Intel Rangeley based Atoms for headless network oriented projects.
Prices are up on the full Rangeley line and they’re not looking very good. Intel isn’t even showing pricing on all their desktop silvermont processors, but from their llisting of J1850 they are looking to be quite high.
I’m with ya. Would even prefer it if the SoC was one of the Z-series chips rather than the desktop J-series…it would probably be cheaper too…a real tiny NUC-sized board with dual GbE, msata, passively cooled, wouldn’t even care if it had soldered on memory as long as it was at the 4GB max. Would love to make a sub 10W (whole system power consumption) pfsense box.
Now you’re talking!
Been looking to match the size and power consumption of consumer level devices for a while, Bay Trail may be the ticket to that dream, but only if the manufacturers are willing to take some risks and think a bit outside the box. Right now the Z-series bay trail chips are the cheapest and the most power efficient. Only thing it might lack is integrated GBE and too few PCIE lanes to squeeze in the gigabit…
I may buy one of these boards. Great platform for Bittorrent Sync.