Seeking header pin-outs and advice for Wade ITX board

[Triophile]

Afternoon, everyone.

I'm just wondering if anyone might happen to have the full user manual for a Wade-8321-LU socket 988 ITX motherboard. This, I think, is a board intended mainly for industrial uses, but I managed to get it for a reasonable price off ebay, so I thought I'd have a crack at it. Only problem is, I can't get it to power up.

I've fitted a CPU (i5 second-gen mobile) and 2GB DDR3 RAM, hooked up a USB mouse and keyboard, and added a 20-pin ATX PSU (tested, and known working). When I turn on the mains power, I get a green LED on the mobo, and that's it. I know none of the header pin-outs, and there's nothing that looks like a standard front-panel header on the board.

When I short the Power On pin (on the 20-pin ATX connector) to ground, the fan starts spinning, and I get a couple more green LEDs, but as soon as I remove the short, the board shuts down again. Even if I keep the short in place for 5-10 seconds, nothing shows on the monitor, and I get no beeps from the sounder on the board.

I suspect the mobo may be duff, but it would be great to have the user manual, as there are lots of headers and jumpers on the mobo (for LVDS and power, etc), and none of them are labelled other than as JP1, JP2, etc. I suppose it could also be bad RAM or a bad CPU, but I'm a bit worried by the lack of beeping.

Any help much appreciated.

Cheers, Jon.

 

[Triophile]

Sorry, forgot to add that a search of the Portwell web site turns up no search matches for this board, and the only matches on google appear to be some Russian Sisoft Sandra references.

 

[Idonotwanttosignup]

http://

Use the info from the 8021 line and let us know if that worked for you.

 

[Triophile]

Thanks for that. I'll dig up the info and let you know how I get on.

Regards, Jon.

 

[Triophile]

Bingo! Thanks for that, Idonotwantosignup. You get the bonus prize too if you can tell me what the BIOS password is. Clearing the CMOS doesn't prevent either the password box appearing, or clear the password itself, unless there's a default PW I'm missing

 

[Sergey Ildiryakov]

Bingo! Thanks for that, Idonotwantosignup. You get the bonus prize too if you can tell me what the BIOS password is. Clearing the CMOS doesn't prevent either the password box appearing, or clear the password itself, unless there's a default PW I'm missing

Do you decided this problem (not have default password)?
Thanks

 

[Triophile]

After some rooting around, it turns out that the password, at least on the board I have, is: liveu4us

The BIOS is really quite extensive, and contains some entries I've not seen before (I don't have much experience with industrial boards aside from a couple of other Portwell SBCs with more limited BIOSes). Anyway, JP5 is the front-panel header, and shorting pins 6 and 8 boots the board. The BIOS defaults to a video output on the VGA socket only, but that was easy to change to DVI. There's also a setting for Solid State Drive rather than Hard Drive.

I've just left the defaut password in place and made some BIOS changes, and the board runs very well. The single-channel memory doesn't seem to slow it down much for everyday browsing and word-processing, and with an i5 2410M in there, 2GB RAM and a 128GB Samsung 830 SSD, it's quite nippy running Linux Mint 17.1 Mate.

The only couple of problems I had getting Mate on there were:

1) Mint thinks the mobo is a laptop (understandably, I suppose), and I had to fiddle with the screen settings to persuade the OS to think I had a desktop screen connected to a laptop mobo with the laptop's own screen disabled.

2) There's a bit of tearing in use (videos, desktop, browsing, scrolling, etc). Installing Intel's own driver made no difference. Frankly, I'm not prepared to bang my head against a brick wall to solve this (I had weeks of fun trying to get the VIA graphics in an HP thin client to run properly under Tiny Core Linux), and might try Zorin or something else instead, or a bit more RAM. It's hardly the end of the world though, one way or another, and I'd prefer to stick with the onboard GFX for the time being.

I just need to get a Pico PSU and a suitable brick, and I'll be fitting it all into a little ITX case I got from a friend, who found it in a skip

Thanks again for your help.

Cheers, Jon.

Bingo! Thanks for that, Idonotwantosignup. You get the bonus prize too if you can tell me what the BIOS password is. Clearing the CMOS doesn't prevent either the password box appearing, or clear the password itself, unless there's a default PW I'm missing

Do you decided this problem (not have default password)?
Thanks

 

[mengfq1990]

Hello!

I bought the same style motherboard from the ebay. And thanks to your question, I got the way to turn it on. Now, I build a mini-ITX HTPC using I7 2670QM, 8G RAM, 840 EVO, GTX 760. It is awesome!

Hoping to discuss with you more about the motherboard!

Thanks!

BTW, my email is <REMOVED>

Fanqin

 

[SKiT_R31]

Hello!

I bought the same style motherboard from the ebay. And thanks to your question, I got the way to turn it on. Now, I build a mini-ITX HTPC using I7 2670QM, 8G RAM, 840 EVO, GTX 760. It is awesome!

Hoping to discuss with you more about the motherboard!

Thanks!

BTW, my email is <removed>

Fanqin

Hey mengfq1990,

You say 8GB RAM? The specs on the eBay ad say "up to 4GB" and it looks like it only takes one stick? Where there any complications running 8GB? Also, did you run into any issues outputting to the GTX 760?

Thanks,

-Dan

 

[Helgaiden]

Hello!

I bought the same style motherboard from the ebay. And thanks to your question, I got the way to turn it on. Now, I build a mini-ITX HTPC using I7 2670QM, 8G RAM, 840 EVO, GTX 760. It is awesome!

Hoping to discuss with you more about the motherboard!

Thanks!

BTW, my email is <REMOVED>

Fanqin

Im assuming you game with this too given your graphics card choice? im about to order one of these boards off ebay to try to pair with an i7-3610qm for a living room gaming/htpc system...how is the performance with your setup? What do you play? Thanks. Was gonna try emailing you but it was removed lol. Hopefully you see this.

 

[Triophile]

Hi guys.

Glad to hear there are other fans of this board I'm still loving mine, albeit only with a i5 2520M 2.5GHz at the moment (though soon to be upgraded to a quad core).

In terms of memory, there seems to be some confusion as to how much RAM this board can take. Portwell's basic spec sheet for the 8021 states 16GB on two sticks, but the board only has a single SO-DIMM slot. I'm running 4GB in mine with no problems, but I'm guessing the board will take more, as mengfq1990 says.


Helgaiden, I had a look at the spec sheets on Intel's site for the QM67 and it doesn't seem to list the i7-3610qm on the compatible CPUs list, only the QE-suffix versions. Are you sure that CPU will work with the board? If you try it and find out that it does, do please let us know

This is the ebayer I got my board from, and he seems like a really nice seller. Did you guys buy your boards from the same place: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SBC-Mini-ITX-Intel-i3-i5-i7-Mobile-Socket-G2-Intel-QM67-Supports-dual-display-/251713231078?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a9b4718e6
I got one of his other boards as well (the WADE-8020 SBC Mini-ITX with core i7 620M), and that runs really well. I have to say I love these little mITX SBCs


I've now got my 8321 board in an old Cubit case which a friend of mine rescued from a skip. It previously housed a little VIA board (which was incredibly slow), but with the WADE in it, it's near-silent with a fan controller and runs nice and fast

Cheers, Jon.

 

[Triophile]

Just found this page for my Hoojum Cubit 3 case, except mine has clear perspex front and back panels and the aluminium extrusion for the body of the case is metallic pink

http://www.hoojum.com/new/html/technical_c3.htm

Subtle it isn't, but I love the looks. Getting the PSU in turned into an interesting job, however; I could have gone for a pico PSU, but I wanted something with higher current output and lower ripple, but fitting the small PCB into the case was tricky. Does anyone have any suggestions for similarly eye-catching cases which don't cost an arm and a leg?

Cheers, Jon.

 

[Helgaiden]

Hi guys.

Glad to hear there are other fans of this board I'm still loving mine, albeit only with a i5 2520M 2.5GHz at the moment (though soon to be upgraded to a quad core).

In terms of memory, there seems to be some confusion as to how much RAM this board can take. Portwell's basic spec sheet for the 8021 states 16GB on two sticks, but the board only has a single SO-DIMM slot. I'm running 4GB in mine with no problems, but I'm guessing the board will take more, as mengfq1990 says.


Helgaiden, I had a look at the spec sheets on Intel's site for the QM67 and it doesn't seem to list the i7-3610qm on the compatible CPUs list, only the QE-suffix versions. Are you sure that CPU will work with the board? If you try it and find out that it does, do please let us know

This is the ebayer I got my board from, and he seems like a really nice seller. Did you guys buy your boards from the same place: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SBC-Mini-ITX-Intel-i3-i5-i7-Mobile-Socket-G2-Intel-QM67-Supports-dual-display-/251713231078?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a9b4718e6
I got one of his other boards as well (the WADE-8020 SBC Mini-ITX with core i7 620M), and that runs really well. I have to say I love these little mITX SBCs


I've now got my 8321 board in an old Cubit case which a friend of mine rescued from a skip. It previously housed a little VIA board (which was incredibly slow), but with the WADE in it, it's near-silent with a fan controller and runs nice and fast

Cheers, Jon.

Just found this page for my Hoojum Cubit 3 case, except mine has clear perspex front and back panels and the aluminium extrusion for the body of the case is metallic pink

http://www.hoojum.com/new/html/technical_c3.htm

Subtle it isn't, but I love the looks. Getting the PSU in turned into an interesting job, however; I could have gone for a pico PSU, but I wanted something with higher current output and lower ripple, but fitting the small PCB into the case was tricky. Does anyone have any suggestions for similarly eye-catching cases which don't cost an arm and a leg?

Cheers, Jon.

Hey there. Yeah, I got the wade-8321-lu from that eBay seller too. Can't wait to receive it. My case came in already, a cooler master elite 130. Its nice. I've been emailing with their tech support and they told me ivy bridge should be supported with a bios update. I asked specifically about the i7-3610qm and they said it should work. So I'll give it a shot. If not, I'll just get a sandy bridge 2nd gen i7 socket g2 processor off eBay, they only run around $70. I'm really interested in how well this performs for gaming like the guy above has his configured. Can't wait to get it all together.

 

[Helgaiden]

Oh right, here's the link I was given for the bios update.

http://drivers.portwell.com/IPC_Driver/XPE_WES7_CE6/XPE_WES2009/SLX_SLD/others/WADE-8321LU/

 

[sutek89]

3610qm will not work. qm67 chipset only supports sandy bridge CPUs. Sandy/Ivy are not interchangeable like on desktop boards

 

[Helgaiden]

3610qm will not work. qm67 chipset only supports sandy bridge CPUs. Sandy/Ivy are not interchangeable like on desktop boards

How are you so sure? Their tech support told me ivy bridge should be supported with a bios update (and i specified i7-3610qm specifically as well). Also, competing boards from other manufacturers support ivy bridge on QM67 chipset. The SuperMICRO X9SCV-QV4 is a qm67 chipset but specifies "1. Intel® 2nd or 3rd Gen Core i7/i5/i3,
Celeron Processor B800 series
supported; socket G2 (rPGA 988B)" under key features for example. So theres that.


Ive reached out to reddit user cortex-power for feedback on this board (or rather, the sister of this board which is the Wade-8021 which is almost the same board and purchased his from the same ebay seller above), and as a matter of fact with a BIOS update on his board, is running an ivy bridge i5-3360m.

Other things of note from talking with that user and with Portwell tech support:

-The headers for front panel connections and USB and stuff are 2mm pitch which is smaller/tighter than the standard 2.54mm pitch. I confirmed this with Portwell tech support. This shouldn't be that big of an issue for most connectors that single wire/female but would make it difficult to connect the all-in-one usb 2.0 block female connector that most front panel USB ports have. Moddiy.com sells an adapter that will correct this. http://www.moddiy.com/products/Mini-USB-2.0mm-9%252dPin-to-USB-2.54mm-9%252dPin-Internal-Header-Cable-(14cm).html

-Official word from portwell tech support is 4gb ddr3 1333 max. Cortex-Power runs a single 8gb ram chip, as well as the user further up in this thread, and the product page for the Wade-8021 board lists 16gb supported ram, but the board has a single SO-DIMM with an unsoldered stand-in on the underside, so i take it that factoring the unsoldered SO-DIMM on the bottom + the top SO-DIMM at 8gb+8gb factors to the official 16gb reported spec (http://www.portwell.com/products/detail.php?CUSTCHAR1=WADE-8021).

-The headers from that ebay seller come filles with some silicone junk that has to be picked out. I suppose to protect stuff during shipping.

-PCI-E seems to be limited to 2.0 from that guy's experience. What happened was that when using his GTX 960 in that board (defaulting to 2.0 mode worked) and he bumped it to PCI-E 3.0 in the (new) BIOS, the result is the device not being detected and getting a "no graphics card" BIOS beep code and the sata controller stopped working. Putting it back to PCI-E 2.0 fixed all that.

-Since it uses a mobile chipset, Nvidia Optimus works. How this guy used was since his monitor was VGA only, he switched the BIOS to use the internal graphics and used Nvidia Optimus to push the dedicated graphic's card operation through the VGA output of the motherboard (i assume this would also work using the LVDS connector on the board if you wanted to wire a salvaged laptop display to it and build a portable mini-itx box with an attached screen).

-Just heard back from Portwell support, official word on RAM capacity support is "the memory is a direct link to the CPU so it depends on the CPU specification. i3 will support 16gb according to Intel, but its for multiple memory slots up to 4 slots, so the result is 4gb per slot."


Other points of discussion for you all:
Did your board come with an I/O Shield? If not, did you find a compatible one? Or just running it with no I/O shield? What kind of CPU cooler are you using? Whatever came with the board or did you upgrade and if so, to what?

I myself have decided to run 2 hard drives but realized if i do that, i wont have any sata ports left for an optical drive (like if i want to use it as a blu-ray player in my living room as well, or dvd player, or whatever). Newegg sells a mini PCIe to 2-port sata adapter that can be utilized in the board's PCIe expansion slot (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124059&cm_re=mini_pcie_sata_adapter-_-16-124-059-_-Product) but then the question is, is the board's mini PCIe slot a full length mini slot or a half-length one? Also, the board's SATA ports appear to be SATA II specification and that expansion card is SATA III specification, so people with SSDs can get an improvement using that over the built in sata ports.

update: confirmed the mini PCIe slot is a full length type.

 

[Triophile]

Nice work, Helgaiden (and obviously cortex-power)! Thanks for all the extra info, especially that BIOS update (not something I've really put much consideration into so far). I'd be very interested to hear how the flashing goes, and the use of the Ivy Bridge CPU. I invested in a 2710 quad-core from the same seller I bought the board from (electronicsforyou-2012), and that's a considerable improvement over the i5 I'd fitted before. Everything runs a lot more smoothly and quickly than with the i5, even though I'm only currently using an HDD rather than an SSD.

Mmmm, nVidia Optimus. I remember reading about that quite a while ago, but hadn't made the connection with this board. I'll have to get my GTX 750 Ti in there and see how it goes

Yeah, nice cases those Elite 130s, but do they do them in colours so bright you have to wear shades to avoid retinal damage? ;-) OTOH, if my Dremeling skills are up to it, I was considering buying a vintage biscuit tin, and installing the board in that. Plus I've got a stock of Meccano awaiting some creative use...

I'm still on the original heatsink/fan with mine, but would like to find something quieter. I've had a brief look at some options, but nothing particularly different from what's on there now. I was thinking of modding another small case I have, to fit a bigger fan directly to the lid, and then use one of those fan-size step-down 'funnels' to guide the air down over the current heatsink. Not elegant, perhaps, but if it provides quieter cooling, it might at least be worth considering. Be great to know if anyone's water-cooled one of these boards

Thanks for the link to the USB-pitch adapter - much appreciated. That will make wiring up additional USBs much simpler

My board came without an I/O shield, and I'm just running without. Be nice to find a compatible substitute.

I think that, rather than trying anything involving RAID or multiple drives on this board, I'll just head straight for a suitable SSD (albeit limited by SATA II), and probably do without an optical drive (I bought my board mainly for daily, non-HTPC, non-gaming use). Of course, I could always stick a decent RAID card in the PCIe x16 slot, I imagine (not checked yet if that arrangement would be bootable to an OS).

Cheers, Jon.

 

[sutek89]

Hi Helgaiden. I'm just talking from experience, my 3610qm and 3632qm did not work in this, however I have not tried the BIOS update, Thanks for the tip!!!.
At the minute I'm using the stock cooler which seems fine if not a bit loud, might change the fan alone to something quieter. There is no point watercooling it/having a big heatsing, these CPUs are ratyed 45w max, so not much heat generated.

did anyone fine a header for the front panel audio on this, I seem to be blind.

Overall I'm very happy with this board, I downgraded from a 2500k for this and my r9 290 seems to be running fine with just a 500w PSU, If i can get the ivy bridge to run on this I'm basically running same speeds as my 2500k, so that would be perfect.

This is perfect for a steambox, which is my project.
Case-wise I'm considering the rvz01 or ml 07, however I'm very tempter to wait for the Node 202 to be available for sale as I love the minimalist touch.

 

[Helgaiden]

Hi Helgaiden. I'm just talking from experience, my 3610qm and 3632qm did not work in this, however I have not tried the BIOS update, Thanks for the tip!!!.
At the minute I'm using the stock cooler which seems fine if not a bit loud, might change the fan alone to something quieter. There is no point watercooling it/having a big heatsing, these CPUs are ratyed 45w max, so not much heat generated.

did anyone fine a header for the front panel audio on this, I seem to be blind.

Overall I'm very happy with this board, I downgraded from a 2500k for this and my r9 290 seems to be running fine with just a 500w PSU, If i can get the ivy bridge to run on this I'm basically running same speeds as my 2500k, so that would be perfect.

This is perfect for a steambox, which is my project.
Case-wise I'm considering the rvz01 or ml 07, however I'm very tempter to wait for the Node 202 to be available for sale as I love the minimalist touch.

Hey man give the bios update a try and report back! I am massively interested if it does the trick for you and that 3610qm!! Some BIOS update tips from Cortex-Power
What he did was extract "update.zip" in a flash drive with FreeDOS, then boot from that flash drive and run "update.bat". However, he found that this didn't quite work, for some reason. It would run, but not actually flash the BIOS. What did work however, was this:
1.Extract the file "Flash.exe" from "update.zip" in the flash drive ("Flash.exe" is a self-extracting zip)
2.Run "FLASH.BAT" If that doesn't work, run "FPT.exe /F temp.bin /Y" instead.

again, please report back as soon as you can if this does the trick for you! Thanks!

 

[sutek89]

Hi Helgaiden. I'm just talking from experience, my 3610qm and 3632qm did not work in this, however I have not tried the BIOS update, Thanks for the tip!!!.
At the minute I'm using the stock cooler which seems fine if not a bit loud, might change the fan alone to something quieter. There is no point watercooling it/having a big heatsing, these CPUs are ratyed 45w max, so not much heat generated.

did anyone fine a header for the front panel audio on this, I seem to be blind.

Overall I'm very happy with this board, I downgraded from a 2500k for this and my r9 290 seems to be running fine with just a 500w PSU, If i can get the ivy bridge to run on this I'm basically running same speeds as my 2500k, so that would be perfect.

This is perfect for a steambox, which is my project.
Case-wise I'm considering the rvz01 or ml 07, however I'm very tempter to wait for the Node 202 to be available for sale as I love the minimalist touch.

Hey man give the bios update a try and report back! I am massively interested if it does the trick for you and that 3610qm!! Some BIOS update tips from Cortex-Power
What he did was extract "update.zip" in a flash drive with FreeDOS, then boot from that flash drive and run "update.bat". However, he found that this didn't quite work, for some reason. It would run, but not actually flash the BIOS. What did work however, was this:
1.Extract the file "Flash.exe" from "update.zip" in the flash drive ("Flash.exe" is a self-extracting zip)
2.Run "FLASH.BAT" If that doesn't work, run "FPT.exe /F temp.bin /Y" instead.

again, please report back as soon as you can if this does the trick for you! Thanks!

I can confirm that both 3610qm and 3632qm are working after the bios update.
I just flashed in freedos with running the update.bat

 

[sutek89]

By the way, I'm running 8gb ddr3l ram at 1600mhz with no issues. The official page said 1333 is max, but that's not true

 

[Helgaiden]

Hi Helgaiden. I'm just talking from experience, my 3610qm and 3632qm did not work in this, however I have not tried the BIOS update, Thanks for the tip!!!.
At the minute I'm using the stock cooler which seems fine if not a bit loud, might change the fan alone to something quieter. There is no point watercooling it/having a big heatsing, these CPUs are ratyed 45w max, so not much heat generated.

did anyone fine a header for the front panel audio on this, I seem to be blind.

Overall I'm very happy with this board, I downgraded from a 2500k for this and my r9 290 seems to be running fine with just a 500w PSU, If i can get the ivy bridge to run on this I'm basically running same speeds as my 2500k, so that would be perfect.

This is perfect for a steambox, which is my project.
Case-wise I'm considering the rvz01 or ml 07, however I'm very tempter to wait for the Node 202 to be available for sale as I love the minimalist touch.

Hey man give the bios update a try and report back! I am massively interested if it does the trick for you and that 3610qm!! Some BIOS update tips from Cortex-Power
What he did was extract "update.zip" in a flash drive with FreeDOS, then boot from that flash drive and run "update.bat". However, he found that this didn't quite work, for some reason. It would run, but not actually flash the BIOS. What did work however, was this:
1.Extract the file "Flash.exe" from "update.zip" in the flash drive ("Flash.exe" is a self-extracting zip)
2.Run "FLASH.BAT" If that doesn't work, run "FPT.exe /F temp.bin /Y" instead.

again, please report back as soon as you can if this does the trick for you! Thanks!

I can confirm that both 3610qm and 3632qm are working after the bios update.
I just flashed in freedos with running the update.bat

By the way, I'm running 8gb ddr3l ram at 1600mhz with no issues. The official page said 1333 is max, but that's not true

Awesome news. Now this is everything i could have asked for. Thanks for the follow-up, sutek!

 

[Triophile]

Great news, and thanks for sharing it! Time to consider some BIOS flashing

Cheers, Jon.

 

[htpcdude]

Has anyone been able to use a storage controller in the PCI-e slot? I can't get any of mine to show during POST nor see the drives attached. Slot works for video cards.

Edit: Nevermind, I got two working so it's just a compatibility problem.

 

[sutek89]

I have not tried any storage controllers unfortunately. Did you try changing the pcie settings in bios?