10W Bay Trail-D Coming To Market from GIGABYTE and Biostar
by Ian Cutress on February 4, 2014 10:36 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- CPUs
- Biostar
- Gigabyte
- Fanless
- Silvermont
- SoCs
- Bay Trail
News on the grapevine is filtering down for Bay Trail-D. We have had the 20W Avoton server equivalent processor in our offices for a little while now, but alongside this Intel have 10W consumer based Celerons to market. With the chips being a ball-grid-array arrangement it is up to the motherboard manufacturers to provide the base on which these processors sit. Alongside some display from MSI at CES, GIGABYTE and Biostar are coming to market with their versions.
From GIGABYTE, this is the J1800N-D2H, using the 10W Intel Celeron J1800 Bay Trail-D SoC, a dual core Silvermont CPU starting at 2.41 GHz with turbo up to 2.58 GHz. N in the name indicates mini-ITX, and D2H positions the motherboard at the lower end in terms of specifications. The board itself uses a passive heatsink to cool the CPU (more than understandable for 10W), two DDR3L SO-DIMM 1333 MHz slots (1.35V memory only), a D-sub and HDMI audio output, two PS/2 ports, USB 3.0, a USB 2.0 hub, two SATA 3 Gbps ports, a PCIe 2.0 x1 slot, a mini-PCIe slot, Realtek ALC887 audio and Realtek NIC, all in a 17cm square form factor.
The Biostar J1800NH is a similar product with the Celeron J1800 SoC, using instead a single DDR3L SO-DIMM slot, fewer USB 2.0 ports and a Realtek ALC662 audio codec instead.
What is perhaps more surprising is the pricing. The Biostar motherboard is currently available for $56 with a $60 MSRP – the GIGABYTE motherboard, and the MSI one at CES, should be around $60 as well. However this SoC, sold by Intel, is listed as $72 tray price (i.e. in batches of 1000). This means either that these manufacturers are getting them at a discount, or selling them at a loss.
The purpose for Bay Trail-D is tablet like performance in a desktop form factor, with perhaps the added advantage of expandability and connectors. Users wanting quad core solutions will have to keep eyes peeled for J1850/J1900 versions, or jump to Pentium J2850/J2900. We saw that ECS was going to release a line of these motherboards last year. As mentioned, we have Avoton in to test, specifically Intel’s 8-core Silvermont solution for IPC/servers. Keep your eyes peeled for that review.
Sources: Fanless Tech via Liliputing via Tech Report.
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damianrobertjones - Friday, February 7, 2014 - link
Why? Why not simply install Windows and get straight to the point!andrewaggb - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
Unfortunately it needs either more sata ports or a raid card, or more network ports or a network card. There is an expansion slot, so it's not a deal breaker, but if it had dual nic's and more sata ports built in, it could be a real interesting file server or router for cheap.Kevin G - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
I'd be nice if these boards had a full sized PCI-e 16x slot even if electrically they were only 1x. Far from ideal but it opens up so much expansion.Similarly, I'd have liked to see full sized DIMM slots.
And the last thing on my wish list is mounting holes for socket 115x coolers. Not that I'd really want to overclock these Baytrail systems but rather they provide more variety.
Then again these boards are ~$60 with a processor so those compromises can be seens as tolerable given this price segment.
Flunk - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
You can cut the plastic of the slot at the rear edge to accommodate larger cards if you like.HardwareDufus - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
You all are funny. It's a $60 board/cpu combo capable of running 64bit Windows.... but you all expect it to be tricked out and accomplish superhuman feats. It's a Budget SOC. If it doesn't suit your needs, it's because it's not marketed/created for you. So spend $100 on something else. Big deal.Bambooz - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
... or just buy a cheap flexible PCIe x16 riser/extender thingy and use that without losing the board warranty in the process of modifying the x1 slot.Something like this (just an example)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/131089100694
MrSpadge - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
For enhanced cooling you could simply screw a fan into the aluminum of the heatsink, like in the "good old days" where cooling was either passive or noisy.BMNify - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
No , if youare goingto do anything than you want a Mini USB PC Fridge Refrigerator £14.69http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/181155933245?hlpht=...
and bung that in there :)
oc i mean just the cooler plate as i cant seem to find a USB fridge that's big enough to take the whole board inside....
extide - Wednesday, February 5, 2014 - link
Ahh, yes Peltier's. Those remind me of the good old days as well, heh.wrkingclass_hero - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
"The purpose for Bay Trail-D is tablet like performance in a desktop form factor" I didn't know that this was a desirable thing. I understand the opposite, desktop like performance in a tablet form factor. Are you talking about power usage?