GIGABYTE AM1M-S2H Review: What Can $35 Get You?
by Ian Cutress on August 15, 2014 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- Gigabyte
- Kabini
- AM1
GIGABYTE AM1M-S2H Conclusion
Low cost, low power motherboards are difficult to conclude. With high end motherboards containing controllers and where we discuss performance, it is easy to rule out $20 of controller improvements for a better overclocking range. But when the whole motherboard is $35, and the motherboard/CPU/DRAM combo for $120 or so, it all comes down to the market.
If we imagine a digital signage seller, in the prototype stage they will buy a set of units in order to design the system. Because the motherboards are cheap, if they accidentally get the wrong one, then buying another is relatively trivial. The same goes for replacement parts: rather than take the time to RMA, it becomes cheaper just to bin and replace where necessary.
The biggest issue for this type of environment for the AM1M-S2H is the position of the SATA ports. Because they are both right in the middle of the motherboard, SATA cables for the hard-drive and ODD have to reach over components to get there. The only way to mitigate this would be to boot from USB, which is not uncommon for digital signage, but what would make that setup better is an onboard USB port akin to some server designs.
In actual fact, I wonder if having an onboard microSD card reader might be more pertinent for this type of platform. Rather than using a bulky SATA device, or relying on a USB that sticks out, how about an onboard microSD card reader that you can install an OS and boot from for the signage. Although the barrier to this, as always, is cost of implementation.
For users looking to build a daily system, without an add-in card you will have to decide between two HDDs or a HDD/ODD combination. The full-length PCIe slot helps if you want to add in more screens or a full-size GPU, although the CPU performance might be the main barrier to doing anything more than web browsing and word processing. One might argue that for GPU compute work, such as some video conversion or rendering, if it can be offloaded onto the GPU effectively with little CPU involvement then it might be worth a shot.
As a motherboard, it worked in our testing and the results are in-line with what we would expect for $35, if not slightly more impressive than we presumed. There are some style changes that I would put forward, especially the SATA port positioning. Unfortunately users have to put up with the older style software. It might help GIGABYTE in the future to develop some base fan control software for any platform to replace EasyTune 6, which might get bundled with the next generation of AM1 (if there is going to be another).
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fteoath64 - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link
Yes and something different as well like the Asrock AM1 board that had a DC 19v input as well as 24pin psu connector but using the DC input instead!. This is where a cheap or sometimes existing adaptor block is already available for use and being used. Now that would be different. AM1 cpu is disappointing in total cost as BayTrial is way cheaper giving similar performance (though lesser a bit) at half the power consumption as AM1.jospoortvliet - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link
Every review I have seen shows the AM1 performance better per watt than the atoms, as AM1 idle usage is lower and performance is better.... but I have seen only a few. Care to link me to one showing the atom has higher performance and lower idle use than the AM1? Load performance matters little, as in typical usage you load these systems .5% of the time...jabber - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link
Used a lot of Gigabyte boards with Dual BIOS over the years.....never used it.bebimbap - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
I thought that dual bios might be marginal benefit of dual bios was nothing till one day I decided to change my Cpu from a k series to non-k. I reset the bios in between but it still became corrupted. Though I have other methods of recovvering from this, the board auto recovered and copied the second bios over the first. In the last eight years and over a dozen systems I have only encountered this once and it saved me time. If it were my only system it would have been much worse if I didn't have dual bios. Also I can imagine this happens to reviewers who test multiple chips on multiple boards and with multiple settings. I can see it now: "We would have loved more time on this board but, it's bios failed and we had other boards to review."HardwareDufus - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link
I look at this system and I think: $50 120GB SSD, $35 MB, $30 CPU, $50 4GB DDR2...Perfect drop in replacement for ancient PII or AMD K6 systems..... $170..... reuse your existing case, powersupply, keyboard, mouse, monitor.. Sell the old stuff (harddrive, cpu, motherboard, memory) for $20 to somebody. Your out like $150.... and you've got a cheap SSD... It will boot fast and feel fast relative to what you had...
jabber - Friday, August 15, 2014 - link
Is anyone really running such systems? It's pretty rare I get a single core box older than 2004 dropped in to me nowadays. 20th century computing is pretty much extinct.wintermute000 - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
Its indeed a cheap system, but what person who knows how to build a PC, is still using something that old and worthless. The bother + risk on ancient PSU = just throw that PII/III away, but a new box. Which may very well be a cheapie with a 5350, but I don't think system building comes into it in any way shape or form.jabber - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
Mmm yes running your new hardware off a 15 year old PSU and yellowed beige plastic PC case...like that'll work.A system to be proud of.
HardwareDufus - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
Although I am Irish/American, I have lived 8 1/2 years in Mexico. So yeah.... $170 to build a system, even if it has an old powersupply and a beige case is a fantastic idea. You need to understand just how much of the world's population lives on the edge of poverty.I personally am an odd one because I build a new Mini-ITX rigs for myself about every 2 years. The last was with an 3770K, IGP for video on 2 24" LCD 1920X1200 monitors. (No discreet video cards for me)... SSD and 16GB of ram.... and I spend too much in the process each time.
However, I truly see the value in recycling old stuff... everytime I build a new system... I pass on the old stuff. I know of an elderly couple in upstate NY that is still using my AMD k6-III+ build overclocked to 600Mhz with 768MB of Ram on Windows2000 Professional with Office2000 Professional. THey turn the computer on... then go start brewing coffee... Eventually the coffee and the computer are ready. There was a time when I was buying up every K6-III+ I could find on EBay, overclocking them to upgrade ancient Socket7 machines for people for almost Zero money.
My old Server machine with Dual PIIs overclocked to 400Mhz (B21 tape trick), 1GB of Ram and 4 4GB UWSCSI drives is still running (WinXP Pro) at another person's house. What a ridiculous machine to surf the web and check email... but I passed it on for free!
Last year I purchased 13 Dell Optiplex755s with 13 Planar 18" LCDs (1280X1024) at less than $120usd a piece. These boxes all had leagal copies of WIndows7 Professional. Yeah, they've only got 2GB of Ram... and 40GB harddrives.... but they are perfect for teaching Physical Computing with Arduino microcontrollers..
Nothing like putting 13 PCs on a couple of plastic coca cola tables and connecting them up to a single 16port Netgear switch and uplinking to your 5mbs DSL that cost you $349mxn a month (About $30usd) and letting folks check email, surf, learn to use Google Docs... learn to program in C/C++ using Arduino software and $15 microcontrollers...All for free.
I grab up all of the obsolete netbooks I can find with WindowsXP on them.... stick on Arduino Software and Adobe Reader... Stick on a bunch of downloaded PDFs on Basic Electronics, C Programming with Arduino in Spanish, etc... and put it all a plastic OXXO (think SevenElven) with an Arduino UNO clone microcontroller, usb cable, handfull of LEDs and Resistors.... and send them off with young people. Too slow for browsing content on the internet kids shouldn't be browsing... but more than they need to learn programming and electronics.
I know a poor family that is using the composite video of the Rasberry Pi (overclocked to 1Ghz) hooked up to their old TV using a usb keyboard, mouse and 2GB microSD to surf the internet and check mail. Cost me $25usd to gift that to them (keyboard, mouse and coax were freebies I got). (I have 2 rasberry pi...I haven't found a thing to do with them excpet to show off really slow $25 computers)..
Yes, I'd rather be handing out Surface 3 Pros to everyone... But in the meantime... $30 cpus, $35motherboards and $50SSDs..... that's good stuff. Cheap SSDs can make the slowest system feel adequate!!
jabber - Saturday, August 16, 2014 - link
I put far newer stuff than that in the trash. There comes a point in the civilised world where it just becomes a liability and a dust trap.