Re: [coreboot] Well supported energy efficient HTPC motherboard

[Oliver Schinagl]

On 22-07-13 10:47, David Hubbard wrote:
> Hi Oliver,
>
> By "hold those the recommendations" -- did you mean, "do those hold the
> number one position as a recommendation" ? Can you clarify this question?

"Get this board and it works really well!" ;)
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2013 at 2:07 AM, Oliver Schinagl
> <[e-mail] > wrote:
> I see E-350 boards and F2A85 boards as being WiP/Supported but hold
> those the recommendations?
>
>
> You should be able to use either the ASRock E350M1 or F2A85 for an HTPC
> board. I'm not personally familiar with the E350 status, but the only
> issue from the wiki is after a reboot, and an HTPC could just be powered
> off and back on. The F2A85 audio may have problems but only due to
> incomplete ACPI tables, which can be fixed easily enough.

E350 boards seem to be a dying breed (but tend to be better supported 
because they've been around for a while)
> Since you are looking for an HTPC it sounds like you are interested in
> power usage and noise levels. I put the F2A85 with an A10-5800K on a
> Kill-A-Watt and it idles at 52W when displaying text, or 35W after X11
> has started. Most likely, any socket FM2 chip from AMD will have a
> similar idle load. Peak load is 110W which is close enough to the rated
> TDP of 100W to make a power estimate easy for any CPU you choose.

Ouch, those are pretty big numbers. I was acking towards the Asus F2A85 
aswell but will probably look at a very power efficient APU variant. 
Don't they come in 65W TDP's? Granted these tdp's are including a GPU.

I'm also leaning towards an external video card, due to the shared 
memory thing. Then again, it doesn't do a whole lot of heavy lifting so 
that shouldn't really be an issue.
> The stock heatsink/fan is nearly silent and does not get loud even under
> a full CPU load. If you actually want a fully silent PC you should
> probably get a larger heatsink/fan. My F2A85 system's power supply makes
> more noise than the CPU fan.

I have a fanless PSU in my HTPC box ;) So maybe i'll get a huge heatsink 
(2 very silent exhaust fans do exist) or keep my zalman that I currently 
use.
> Hope that helps,

It does indeed, but due to financial situation right now, may have to 
put this off for a few months anyway. It never hurts to look around and 
see what's ot there and what's supported.
> David