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Build Your Own Mini-PC for $80
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1. Mini-Motherboard: Intel D201GLY2

A board like this can be the basis for any number of interesting projects. For example, it is ideal as a dedicated Web machine running 24x7 (instead of using your desktop computer with its expensive hard drive and power hungry graphics card for the task). Even when it’s left running around the clock, the platform only draws about 20 cents worth of power per day.

It’s also a good choice for a file server. You can keep all of your MP3s and movies in one place and give your family access to them over a home network.

The home automation enthusiasts out there could even use the mini PC to control various tasks inside your networked home. Imagine logging onto the system remotely through a web interface and turning the lights in your living room on or off, for example. Of course, you could always just use it as a classical router, too.

Even today, you can still find PCI graphics cards based on ATI’s Radeon HD 2400. So if you wanted to, you could upgrade to a comparatively current discrete graphics solution later on and use the box as a basic desktop.

2. CPU On-Board: Intel Celeron 220

Intel’s D201GLY2 motherboard comes with an Intel Celeron 220 CPU soldered directly onto the board. This single-core processor uses the Conroe-L design, based on the 65 nm Conroe architecture.

The Celeron 220 is the successor to the Yonah-based Celeron 215. Intel used this part on its previous D201GLY board.

Like all of Intel’s Celeron models, the 220 does not possess the SpeedStep power saving feature. The CPU is also not sold separately.

CPU Core Feature Comparison
Feature Pentium Dual-Core Celeron 220
Core Allendale Conroe-L
Process 65 nm 65 nm
Socket 775 479
L1-Cache 32-KB Data 32-KB Data 32-KB Data 32-KB Data
L2-Cache 1 MB 512 KB
FSB 200 MHz (800QDR) 133 MHz (533QDR)
64 Bit EM64T EM64T
Multimedia Extensions MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3
Hyperthreading - -
Virtualization VT -
Power Saving C1E Speedstep -
Thermal Monitor TM1&2 TM1&2
Execution Prevention XD bit XD bit

Since the BIOS does not offer any FSB speed controls, overclocking through bus speed manipulation is not an option. Our review board used the ICS 9LPR604AFLF clock generator; other versions use the 9LPR604AGLF that can be adjusted using software tools. This, unfortunately, did not work on our board.

3. Feature Set

Intel made an unusual design choice on its D201GLY2 motherboard by using a chipset manufactured by SiS. It consists of the SiS662 northbridge paired with the SiS964 southbridge. Intel makes two versions of the board: one with active cooling (D201GLY2A) and one without fans (D201GLY2). The board we’re testing here is the latter.

Specifications: Intel D201GLY2
Video 1x VGA
SATA 2x SATA-150
IDE 1x ATA-100
USB 2x USB 2.0 (I/O-Shield) 4x USB 2.0 (Onboard)
Serial 1x COM
Parallel 1x LPT
PS2 Mouse/Keyboard
PCI 1x PCI 33
Network 1x 100 Mbit Broadcom AC131
Audio ADI AD1888 2 Channel
Fan Headers 2x 3-Pin
Dimensions 7.9” x 6.7” (20 cm x 17 cm)
ATX Power 20-Pin ATX (24-Pin will work as well)

While the feature set looks like it can compete with some of the desktop boards out there, Intel did have to cut some corners as a result of the platform’s dimensions (7.9” x 6.7” [20 x 17 cm]) and the pressure to keep the price as low as possible. A good example of this is that the board only comes with a 100 Mb network interface, enabled through a Broadcom AC131 controller.

Also, the board’s layout leaves only enough space for a single DDR2 memory slot. On the plus side, it supports a DIMM size of up to 2GB. However, the maximum memory speed is DDR2-533. You can use faster modules of course, but they won’t run at full speed.

The board features just a pair of SATA connectors, with an IDE connector letting you add another two drives. A floppy connector is missing altogether, though the BIOS does support USB Floppy drives.

4. Feature Set (Cont’d.)

The board features a single PCI slot, so if you’re planning to build a router, you could add a second network card.

Sound is handled by an ADI AD 1888 controller (AC’97 codec). It offers neither an optical nor coaxial digital output.

The SiS chipset comes with an integrated Mirage 1 graphics solution. Like most integrated graphics chips, it reserves part of the system RAM as video memory (shared memory).

The included serial (COM) and parallel (LPT) ports will be appreciated by anyone wanting to use the board to control other devices. Only two USB ports are available on the ATX I/O shield; another four USB port headers can be found on the board itself.

5. Heat Generation

Although the board only requires passive cooling, it still needs a certain amount of airflow. Intel’s documentation also strongly suggests blowing air over the two heatsinks. An 80 mm chassis fan running at 5V is easily up to the task, providing adequate cooling with a low noise level.

With the processor cooled by an 80 mm fan, the CPU temperature reaches 32° C when idle; under load the temperature rises to 68° C.

Without a fan providing airflow, the idle temperature increases to 45° C, reaching 95° C under load and, in our experience, resulting in instability. Providing adequate cooling to the system is essential.

6. Single Core Power Consumption

The Celeron 220 is rated at a TDP of 19 watts, but our measurements showed that the power consumption under load is even lower. Including voltage regulators, the CPU draws just under 14 watts; when sitting idle, it only needs about 5 watts.

7. System Level Power Consumption

We compared the power consumption of our review sample with current AMD and Intel platforms. Our Intel system uses Gigabyte’s G33-based GA-G33-DS3R, while the AMD platform is built around the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H using the AMD 780G chipset.

Since both platform systems we used for comparison support dual-channel memory configurations, we used two identical A-Data Vitesta RAM modules. The Intel D210GLY2 board we used only comes with one DIMM slot, so we chose a 2 GB DDR2-800 module made by TakeMS, carrying the designation TMS2GB264D082-805AP instead.

The remaining components are identical across all platforms.

Power Measurement Testing Platforms
Processor Platform
Athlon Sempron AMD 780G Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
Pentium Dual-Core Intel G33 Gigabyte GA-G33-DS3R
Celeron SIS 662 Intel D201GLY2
Hard Drive Western Digital 3200AAJS 320 GB, 7,200 RPM, SATA-300

As we can see in the chart, we shouldn’t expect huge power savings from Intel’s D201GLY2 mini-ITX board. When idle, it only consumes about 13 watts less than the G33-solution using the smallest Pentium dual core E2140 CPU. When compared to the AMD platform, the difference is even less pronounced. Paired up to the Sempron LE-1100, AMD’s processor/motherboard combo draws 1 watt less. Also, don’t forget that these systems also pack quite a bit more performance punch than the mini-ITX board.

Under load, the differences are much more pronounced. Equipped with a Pentium dual core E2140 (M0 stepping), the Intel G33-based system consumes 69.5 watts, while the Celeron 220 board gets by with only 55.4 watts. Meanwhile, the AMD System draws 70 watts under load even when only equipped with the Sempron LE-1100.

8. Integrated Graphics: Sizing up the Mirage

The SiS662 northbridge comes equipped with a Mirage 1 integrated graphics solution that borrows its video memory from the system’s RAM. Based on this, we should not expect high performance from this graphics processor.

Drivers for Windows XP are included on the CD that comes with the board and the SiS website also provides drivers for Windows Vista. Since the integrated Mirage 1 graphics core does not support the Aero interface, it is only validated for the most basic version of Windows Vista. Of course other versions will install on this hardware as well, but graphics performance will be very low.

Image quality is also sub-par: at 1280x1024 the VGA port still provides a decent image, but at 1600x1200 the image is washed out and blurry.

9. Picking an OS for a Low-Powered Platform

This board is underpowered for Windows Vista, regardless of which version of the OS you choose. The single-core CPU is too slow to ensure that the system runs smoothly without stuttering.

With Windows XP installed, the board proved quite snappy, though, as long as we didn’t throw large or memory heavy applications at it.

We also booted the system using the most recent distribution of Ubuntu Linux; as it turns out, the graphics solution was not supported. The result was that the screen was streaked, and the X-Server would crash after only a few minutes. Nonetheless, the board is well-suited to Linux-based router distributions like the current version of IP-Cop. Since the on-board NIC is recognized and installed without a problem, you just have to add a second network card and you’re set to go.

10. Web Page Load Times

Nowadays, most websites use scripts to make the user experience more interesting (our CPU Charts are a perfect example). The charts let you move the result bars around manually to allow for direct comparisons. Web pages like that require a good deal of processing power, which the Celeron 220 does not possess.

11. Benchmark Analysis

We compared all benchmark results with both the Sempron LE-1100 and the dual core Pentium E2140, and then analyzed the results. We purposely excluded synthetic benchmarks from the analysis.

Celeron 220 1.2 GHz
Benchmark Pentium Dual-Core E2140 1.60 GHz Sempron 64 LE-1100 1.90 GHz
iTunes 60.2% 29.6%
Lame 27.7% 19.7 %
AVG Antivirus 40.0% 23.7%
WinRAR 48.5% 1.2%
Cinema 4D Release 10 40.7% -13.5%
Overall 43.4% 12.2%

As the table shows, the Celeron 220 lags behind the dual core Pentium by a wide margin, trailing it by up to 60% due to its single-core architecture. Yet even when compared to the single-core Sempron LE-1100, the Celeron still falls short by up to 29%. Cinema 4D is the only exception here, since it is heavily optimized for the Conroe Architecture, giving the Celeron a 13% edge over the Sempron.

12. Benchmarks and Settings

Hardware
Component Details
AMD Motherboard Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe; nVidia nForce5
AMD 780G Motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H; AMD 780G
Intel Motherboard Gigabyte GA-G33-DS3R; Intel G35
ITX – Intel Celeron 220 Intel D201GLY2; SIS 626
Memory 2x 1GB A-Data DDR2-1066+ Vitesta Extreme Edition TakeMS 1x 2GB
DVD-ROM Samsung SH-D163A, SATA150
Graphics Card Foxconn nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX GPU: 575 MHz Shader Frequency: 1350 MHz Memory Frequency: 786 MB DDR4 (900 MHz, 384 Bit)
Power Supply Coolermaster RS850-EMBA, ATX 2.2 850 W

Software & Drivers
Component Details
Operating System Windows Vista Enterprise Version 6.0 (Build 6000) Windows XP SP2 VL
DirectX 10 DirectX 10 (Vista Default)
DirectX 9 Version: April 2007
Sound Driver Vista Driver 2.13.0012 (15.03.2007)
Graphics Driver nVidia ForceWare Version 158.18 (32 Bit) WHQL
Intel Chipset Driver Version 8.1.1.1010 (21/11/2006)
nVidia Chipset Driver nForce Driver: 15.00 (02.02.2007) WHQL
Java Java Runtime Environment 6.0 Update 1

Audio Benchmarks and Settings
Benchmark Details
iTunes 7.2 Version: 7.1.1.5 Audio CD (Terminator II SE), 53 min High Quality (160 kbps)
Lame MP3 Version 3.98 Beta 3 (05.22.2007) Audio CD Terminator II SE, 53 min wave to mp3 160 kbps

Application Benchmarks and Settings
Benchmark Details
Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus Version: 7.5.467 Virus base: 269.6.1/776 Benchmark Scan: Vista Enterprise (Windows folder) 8 GB
WinRAR Version 3.70 Beta 8 Compression = Best Dictionary = 4096 KB Benchmark: THG-Workload
Maxon Cinema 4D Release 10 Version 10.008 Rendering from a scene (Water drop at a rose) Resolution: 1280 x 1024 - 8 Bit (50 frames)
Deep Fritz 10 Version: Nov 16 2006

Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings
Benchmark Details
PCMark05 Pro Version 1.2.0 CPU and Memory Tests Windows Media Player 10.00.00.3646 Windows Media Encoder 9.00.00.2980
SiSoftware Sandra XI SP1c CPU Test = CPU Arithmetic / MultiMedia Memory Test = Bandwidth Benchmark

13. Benchmarks - Sandra CPU, Multimedia

14. Benchmarks - Sandra Memory, PCMark

15. Benchmarks - AVG, Cinema 4D, iTunes, Lame

16. Benchmarks - Fritz, WinRAR

17. Conclusion: Sufficient Performance in Special Cases

In the end, we can say that this board is only suited to a few specific scenarios. Compared to current desktop systems, our Celeron-based mini-PC looks and feels underpowered. In part this is due to the chipset, whose single-channel memory interface makes it a bottleneck.

Therefore, the system is only a good choice for applications that don’t require a large amount of processing power. For example, you could use it as a DIY Internet router or as a replacement for your old mechanical typewriter. Alternatively, it makes a decent control box and wouldn’t do badly as a car PC.

We can’t really say that the board’s power consumption was especially low—an AMD 780G board paired with a Sempron processor draws even less power when idle. On top of that, the AMD system offers markedly better performance and can even decode HD video content thanks to its 780G chipset graphics.

All things considered, the only real argument in favor of this board is its affordable price. After all, you’re getting a motherboard with integrated graphics and a CPU for around $80. However, in our opinion you should only spend the money if you really need such a small board and won’t be running any CPU-heavy applications. If flexibility and expandability are on your list, you’re better off looking for an affordable micro-ATX board.