MSI's Bay Trail-D Mini-ITX Board Launching This Month

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By Jane McEntegart
published

MSI's Mini-ITX board powered by Intel's Bay Trail-D is coming before the month is out.

CES is full of products that might never see the light of day or aren't set to launch for a very long time. This Mini-ITX board from MSI is one of the isn’t available yet, but will apparently be out by the end of the month. When it does become available, it will be priced under $60. 

 

The J18001 boasts Intel’s 2.4 GHz dual-core Celeron J1800 (hence the name of the board), as well as support for up to 8 GB of RAM via two DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM slots, and two SATA Gbps ports, one PCIe slot, Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1 channel audio, USB 3.0 (x1), D-Sub, DVI, and HDMI. If you’re not feeling the dual-core version, MSI says there will be a version with the more powerful quad-core Bay Trail-D out in January/February for only ten bucks more.

The quad-core Bay Trail-D comes with 2 MB of L3 cache as opposed to the 1 MB in the dual-core model and comes in two flavors, the Pentium J2900 and the Pentium J2850. The former packs a graphics clock rate of 896 MHz, while the latter boasts a graphics clock rate of 792 MHz. The Celeron J1800 features the same 792 MHz graphics clock rate as the Pentium J2850.

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26 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Sicundercover
    This would be more interesting if it wasnt Intel graphics.
    Reply
  • shafe88
    It would be great to have an AMD version, the ultimate HTPC board. Small with decent graphics.
    Reply
  • oj88
    Don't forget that Bay Trail SoC CPUs are for cheap netbooks, tablets, 2-in-1s, and AIOs, with 32-bit, 2GB RAM. The full system's (including touch screen, keyboard, mousepad and OS) price range is between $200 to $400. I don't see its value in the DIY market here.
    Reply
  • navalweaponsofficer
    I agree great HTPC option and 64bit OS capable. These Bay Trail D chips are a great value for low power computing and pack a lot of compute power for their power rating.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    12472689 said:
    I don't see its value in the DIY market here.
    DIY NAS, HTPC, various types of home servers and appliances... basically anything where power efficiency and small size are more important than processing power and expansion options.
    Reply
  • mrcoolbreeze704
    Would a a6 or a8 not be better for a htpc build? Seems and has the edge in integrated graphics at this price range.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    12475706 said:
    Would a a6 or a8 not be better for a htpc build? Seems and has the edge in integrated graphics at this price range.
    Unless you plan to play more than trivial 3D games on your HTPC, then the IGP does not matter much.

    I know if I personally built an HTPC, I would try to aim for fan-less and that would be far easier to achieve with a 7.5-10W Bay Trail than a 45-65W A6.
    Reply
  • Jaroslav Jandek
    Looks like my server/HTPC is getting an upgrade (I am also considering the boards from ECS). Looks like this one will fit nicely on the back of my TV or wherever I eventually place it.
    Board (< $60) + 4GB RAM (~$30) + pico & adapter (~$22 + $9) = ~$121. Relatively cheap platform for an HTPC... I will 3D print the case for the board myself. I already have the RAM, the adapter and some HDDs.
    Reply
  • antilycus
    my mini itx case w/ external power supply is about the size of a Wii. It has a 256SSD and just upgraded to FM2+ A10-7850k. This is the ULTIMATE HTPC + gaming machine. Go run the Heaven (unigine) benchmark on your PC and let me know what it gets. This APU got 30fps on basic settings (720p). This thing listed above. wouldn't even get 4 fps.
    Reply
  • Jaroslav Jandek
    @antilycus: My primary concern is audio/video playback and web browsing. It is also a server (VPN, NAS, various services) running 24/7 => low power and low noise are the most important features. We have 2 PCs with dedicated GPUs if we wanted to play games.

    Just FYI even the Atom Z3740 can do 40+ FPS in Starcraft 2 and 20+ fps in more graphics-intensive games (like Crysis) at 720p/min.settings (and that's a 2W part).
    Reply