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ASRock Intros Two J2900 Bay Trail Motherboards

By - Source: TechPowerUp | B 12 comments

Two new ASRock boards have been revealed carrying the J2900 Bay Trail processor.

ASRock revealed two new motherboards, both of which are based on the Intel Pentium J2900 processor. This is a Bay Trail processor that consumes very little power. Both boards are passively cooled and carry the same processor, but that's just about where the similarities end. The Q2900-ITX is a Mini-ITX board, while the Q2900M is a Micro-ATX board.

The J2900 Bay Trail processor from Intel is a quad-core processor without Hyper-Threading. Its clock speed is set at 2.41 GHz, though it will burst up to 2.66 GHz if the thermal capacity is there. Intel HD Graphics are on board, the core of which runs at 688 MHz and can dynamically boost up to 896 MHz. The processor is manufactured on a 22 nm lithographic process, and will consume up to 10 W. That's what allows it to be passively cooled on these little motherboards.

Now, the Q2900-ITX has only a PCI-Express 1x slot, along with two DDR3 SO-DIMM slots. For storage connectivity you will find two SATA3 (6 Gbps) and two SATA2 (3 Gbps) ports, as well as a single Mini-PCI-Express por, where you can install a wireless radio. Read I/O connectivity is handled by a pair of legacy PS/2 ports, VGA, DVI, HDMI, two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and 8-channel HD audio along with an optical TOSLINK output.

The Micro-ATX Q2900M has a single PCI-Express x16 slot and two PCI-Express x1 slots. The memory slots are full-size slots, and aboard we only find two SATA3 (6 Gbps) ports. Rear I/O connectivity is identical, except that there is only one USB 3.0 port, and the audio is merely stereo.

Based on these specifications, we'd say that the Mini-ITX board is aimed more towards home use, with the possibility of home theater use, while the Micro-ATX board is intended for simple office PCs.

No word on pricing or availability yet.

Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

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  • 6 Hide
    burlyed , August 6, 2014 3:50 PM
    "The processor is manufactured on a 10 nm lithographic process"
    I believe it is a 22 nm process.
  • 6 Hide
    Nuckles_56 , August 6, 2014 4:09 PM
    Quote:
    "The processor is manufactured on a 10 nm lithographic process"
    I believe it is a 22 nm process.


    I am very impressed with intel, they managed two die shrinks without anyone knowing it and just used it for their bay trail processors
  • 6 Hide
    N.Broekhuijsen , August 6, 2014 4:45 PM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    "The processor is manufactured on a 10 nm lithographic process"
    I believe it is a 22 nm process.


    I am very impressed with intel, they managed two die shrinks without anyone knowing it and just used it for their bay trail processors

    Even I didn't know they were capable of this!
    Anyways, it's fixed!
  • Display all 12 comments.
  • 1 Hide
    rhysiam , August 6, 2014 4:50 PM
    No mSATA or M.2? That seems like a real miss on boards like these.
  • 2 Hide
    groundhogdaze , August 6, 2014 5:22 PM
    Wish they had an ITX version that has full sized DIMMS instead of SODIMMS. Got a ton of Standard DIMMS lying around.
  • 0 Hide
    sonofliberty08 , August 7, 2014 2:05 AM
    Quote:
    Wish they had an ITX version that has full sized DIMMS instead of SODIMMS. Got a ton of Standard DIMMS lying around.


    the kabini base ASROCK QC5000-ITX/WiFi are the one :) 

  • 0 Hide
    groundhogdaze , August 7, 2014 8:48 AM
    "the kabini base ASROCK QC5000-ITX/WiFi are the one :) "

    I was considering Kabini and might go that route but was really hoping for a fanless cpu cooler-- plus the Kabini draws 25 watts and costs more than the J1900/J2900. I've got a number of systems running so 10w vs 25w does matter to me.
  • 0 Hide
    sonofliberty08 , August 7, 2014 9:49 AM
    Quote:
    "the kabini base ASROCK QC5000-ITX/WiFi are the one :) "

    I was considering Kabini and might go that route but was really hoping for a fanless cpu cooler-- plus the Kabini draws 25 watts and costs more than the J1900/J2900. I've got a number of systems running so 10w vs 25w does matter to me.

    the Ontario C-70 APU base ASROCK C70M1 are cheap and was 9W TDP only, it play 1080p full hd movies smoothly, and it amazingly run Crysis as well at low setting :D 
    but too bad that it only came with D-Sub VGA port, lag of the DVI and HDMI port.


  • 0 Hide
    groundhogdaze , August 7, 2014 10:12 AM
    "the Ontario C-70 APU base ASROCK C70M1 are cheap and was 9W TDP only, it play 1080p full hd movies smoothly, and it amazingly run Crysis as well at low setting :D  but too bad that it only came with D-Sub VGA port, lag of the DVI and HDMI port."

    Hm... The C-70 is half the cores, isn't fanless, and much slower than the J-series. I used to own a Kabini e1-2100 which is faster than the C-70 but still felt too sluggish for me so I sold it on ebay. I own two J1900's now and pretty happy with them but just looking for mITX versions that have full sized DIMM slots. I'm using these systems as headless servers so I'm not worried about HDMI/DVI output-- I've got a Radeon 7950 attached to my HTPC so I can enjoy my STEAM games :) 

  • 0 Hide
    mcknigk , August 7, 2014 10:23 AM
    Was hoping to use thia for my first NAS + media server build. But only two SATAIII ports? It breaks the heart. Suppose I could use an expansion card? Can HDD saturate SATAII?
  • 0 Hide
    sonofliberty08 , August 7, 2014 10:41 AM
    Quote:
    "the Ontario C-70 APU base ASROCK C70M1 are cheap and was 9W TDP only, it play 1080p full hd movies smoothly, and it amazingly run Crysis as well at low setting :D  but too bad that it only came with D-Sub VGA port, lag of the DVI and HDMI port."

    Hm... The C-70 is half the cores, isn't fanless, and much slower than the J-series. I used to own a Kabini e1-2100 which is faster than the C-70 but still felt too sluggish for me so I sold it on ebay. I own two J1900's now and pretty happy with them but just looking for mITX versions that have full sized DIMM slots. I'm using these systems as headless servers so I'm not worried about HDMI/DVI output-- I've got a Radeon 7950 attached to my HTPC so I can enjoy my STEAM games :) 


    the tiny fan are very quiet and cool, u won't heard it went it lock in the casing, the fan on the psu make more noise than it, the C-70 can run Crysis and HAWX on DirectX10 at low setting without any discrete graphic card, which
    was really amazing for this cheap tiny little system,
    can your J1900 system run Crysis ? :ange: 
  • 0 Hide
    Wisecracker , August 7, 2014 5:30 PM
    Quote:
    ASRock Intros Two J2900 Bay Trail Fails

    FIFY

    The Cherry Trail of Fail can't get here fast enough for Chipzilla. The 'Trails have been Temash'd, Mullin'd and Kabini'd.

    Quote:
    the kabini base ASROCK QC5000-ITX/WiFi are the one :) 

    You cannot stop the Asus AM1I-A AM1. You may only hope to contain it (to 3GHz+ OCs ... )