Power, Heat, And Noise
AMD would like the E-350 to be your efficiency champion, and it appears that Zotac would like to be your E-350 efficiency champion. Jetway’s IPC-based solution is runner-up, while Asus’ fully-loaded board beats Gigabyte’s half-loaded model.
Things should get even more interesting when we look at heat, since several of today’s motherboards are passively cooled.
Industrial applications often require a system to be heat-tolerant, so Jetway’s superior cooling comes as no surprise, even though there is a trade-off in noise. The Foxconn AHD1S-K runs so hot that we actually had to lower our office temperature to prevent thermal throttling, which is a performance-destroying feature that could occur when this part is placed within the confines of a small case. Zotac appears to have the best silent cooler, though much of that enhanced cooling surely comes from the same low voltage that caused it to use the least amount of power in our consumption charts.
We’re certain that many builders are choosing these platforms for use in low-energy media players, for which they will also want low noise. Jetway’s IPC-oriented cooling fan is ill-suited for living rooms, though it might be perfect for the industrial environments it was designed to address.
