J&W MINIX 780G mini-ITX HTPC mobo

I wold not even waste an extra GFX on this thing.. If the IGP can handle it why bother.. I smell meself a torrentbox straight to tv and a Z-5500 to go with it.

Originally Posted by toru173
Thanks, I'd appreciate that. The fact that the PCIe slot was only x4 according to the website is the only thing putting me off. If the bandwidth goes up to x8 it should be enough for my limited gaming aptitude.

That's certainly fair enough. I've got another review or two to finish first, so I'll try to fish it out asap

Just to confirm - I've been talking with J&W today and even though it's got the pins for an x8 slot it's still only electrically an x4 at PCI-Express 2.0. This is because of the space limitation and trace count available in a 6-layer PCB. :(

We also were informed that currently shipping motherboards come with an optional fan for the northbridge - so you shouldn't get over heating issues at all :)

Bindi, if this board was teamed up with an ATI 3650 would the PCI-E bandwidth cause issues with 1080i playback from HD-DVD and Blue-ray discs. My ideas were to let the 3650 do the decoding of H.264 and hook everything up via a HDMI cable, so audio via the 3650 aswell.

Can you see any problems with that..

Originally Posted by Burnout21
Bindi, if this board was teamed up with an ATI 3650 would the PCI-E bandwidth cause issues with 1080i playback from HD-DVD and Blue-ray discs. My ideas were to let the 3650 do the decoding of H.264 and hook everything up via a HDMI cable, so audio via the 3650 aswell.

Can you see any problems with that..

Mate, grab a 3*cough*5*cough*50 when they're available in a few weeks - it has UVD2 but should only be £25. The x4 interface should not affect HD playback.

Originally Posted by Bindibadgi
Mate, grab a 3*cough*5*cough*50 when they're available in a few weeks - it has UVD2 but should only be £25. The x4 interface should not affect HD playback.

UVD2? never heard of that! nor did i know of a 3550 being released...

UVD2 must be the new version of the below:

The UVD is based on an ATI Xilleon video processor, incorporated into the same die of the GPU and part of the AVIVO HD for hardware decoding videos, along with the Advanced Video Processor (AVP). The UVD, as stated by ATI, handles decoding of H.264/AVC, and VC-1 video codecs almost entirely in hardware. The decoder meets the performance and profile requirements of Blu-ray and HD-DVD, decoding H.264 bitstreams up to a bitrate of 40 Mbit/s. It has context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) support and dual-stream decoding support, which would make picture-in-picture possible.

Unlike video acceleration blocks in previous generation GPUs, UVD offloads almost the entire video-decoder process for VC-1 and H.264, requiring minimal host (CPU) attention. For example, neither ATI Radeon R520 series' AVIVO nor NVidia Geforce 7 series' PureVideo assist front-end bitstream/entropy decompression in VC-1 and H.264 - the host CPU performs this work.[3] In addition to handling VLC/CAVLC/CABAC, frequency transform, pixel prediction and inloop deblocking, UVD also contains an advanced video post-processing block. Post-processing includes denoising, deinterlacing, and scaling/resizing. AMD has also stated that the UVD component being corporated into the GPU core only occupies 4.7 mm² in area on 65 nm fabrication process node.

In terms of functionality, UVD is similar to the 2nd-generation of PureVideo HD, which Nvidia introduced with its GeForce 8500/8600 series family. But unlike UVD, PureVideo 2 does not assist VLC bitstream decoding for VC-1. Benchmarks have demonstrated UVD to use less CPU-power than PureVideo2 in both Bluray and HD-DVD playback.

I haven't yet tested UVD2 but it also supports LPCM 7.1 pass through too, whereas UVD only supports S/PDIF 5.1 - it basically handles more bandwidth.

Any news of its release in the UK?

Nothing sorry :( I'll let you know as soon as I hear something

I wonder if the people selling this board know that Minix is a (terrible) message-passing microkernel operating system...

So, what CPU would be good to use with it and where can i find a low profile cpu cooler for it?

Originally Posted by best49erfan
So, what CPU would be good to use with it and where can i find a low profile cpu cooler for it?

Well, anything 65W or lower, preferably 45W if you want to go low profile. Im not sure where you'd find a low profile cooler though.

I purchased this mobo about a month ago and set it up as an HTPC - I thought it would be helpful if I wrote about my experience for those that might be considering this board. There is no testing, just my observations after setting it up and using it. My goal in building this was to have an HTPC I could play music, DVD's (including Blu Ray), Netflix and sites such as Hulu.

I used the set up as described here (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2009/02/04/q1-2009-htpc-buyers-guide/1). The only difference is I used the Sony Optaric Blu ray drive. I also added a Radeon 4550 video card (more on this later) at one point but decided against using it so I took it out. I connected a Hitatchi HDTV and Yamaha amplifier via the HDMI connector and the sound via the optical connector (though you do not need this for Windows7).

The Build:
The build went fairly smooth - experiended builders should have no problem following the manual. Those that are new to building (I am) may have a harder time since the manual really doesn't give any instructions only the connector info and the case has no instructions. However, a search of the internet will find some instructions and pictures that will help. I am not very experienced at building (this is only my second build) and I figured it out.

The recommended case (Jou Jye NU-528i-B Mini-ITX Case 220W) is a very nice looking case and very small. When building an HTPC I want a small quiet case and this one works great. However, it is cramped and if you need to add anything (video card or tv card) forget this case, it won't fit and the riser card won't help so don't waste your money. Also, you may have problems if you have big hands since it is hard to get at some of the connections. One note - the case has this blue led light for the power switch and it is bright when watching a movie in a dark room - I disconnected it after my wife complained. Other than that, the build went fine.

Usage: I tried a few different operating systems and settled on a dual boot of Windows7-rc2 32 bit and Ubuntu 9.04 64 bit. I prefer Linux but without Blu ray and Netflix I could not go with just Linux. The reason for going with W7-32 bit was to play Blu Ray. I could not get Blu Ray movies to play in the W7-64 bit system. On W7-32 bit, Windvd9-plus worked right out of the box. The dual boot works fine and both W7 and Ubuntu work great on the system. I have to admit, W7 is a nice OS.- everything just works without having to set up drivers etc. Make sure though you do the upgrades, both recommended and optional (minus the language packs). But, it is Windows and of course that means you need anti virus, spyware etc and as soon as you load those the system slows down (now I remember why I prefer Linux). Also, of course you have to buy programs, though I only purchased Windvd9 - it is cheaper than Cyberlink powerdvd and the test version of powerdvd kept freezing my system. Thanks to Gizmo Tech Alert (http://www.techsupportalert.com/), I was able to find free open source utility programs for W7 so I did not have to purchase any other programs.

Note- flash the bios immediately using the newer drive on the J&W site- it fixes lots of problems. The bios drivers are easy to find on the J&W web site.

Installing Ubuntu is a little tricky because of the ATI drivers but once installed properly they work great (pm me if you need tips on how to do this) and I think on my system the ATI drivers do a slightly better job on Linux than Windows. They are not hard to install - it just takes a few little tricks (reminds me what I do not like about Linux). For transcoding music and videos you just can't beat Linux IMHO. I installed XBMC so I have a nice interface for media (would have installed Boxee but they do not have a 64 -bit version). I also tried the new Fedora 11 and I liked how it performed - support for ATI cards is much better right out of the box. KDE is just beautiful on this system.

Performance:
It is amazing such a small unit can do so much. The video and audio quality is excellent. I have no problems playing regular DVD, HD or Blu Ray and the graphics are excellent. I watched Master and Commander on Blu Ray last night and it was stunning. The only problem I ran into is playing Hulu in full screeen hi-res mode. W7 could not do this without skips and glitches, whereas I could play them in hi-res full screen in ubuntu. W7 was able to play low-res on full screen fine though and the quality is not much different. Other than that, the system performs well. It puts out minimal heat and the fans are fairly low noise (I don't notice them when playing a movie).

one note - I did at one point try out adding a Radeon 4550 video card because I read on the J&W forum that it did improve video performance. That was correct but not that much and it just won't work in this case so I took it out. If you do want to use a video card or other add-on you will need a larger case. Also, make sure you go in the bios and enable the "monitor for added hardware" (not sure what it is officially called but it is obvious) so it detects the new card. I did not overclock or mess with the bios other than flashing to the newest version.

As far as J&W goes, I had no contact with them. They do have a forum and appear to answer questions. The MOBO is not sold in the USA, at least I could not find a seller (they do list a company on the web site but I did not find the board on there web site). I had to purchase mine via ebay from someone in Asia. Overall though I am very pleased with the MOBO and I would recommend it. I still think they need a little more power for video but that is a minor complaint and can be remedied by adding a video card (nice to have the pci slot). The low power usage, quiet performance and small factor make this a nice HTPC.

I hope this helps. If anyone has any questions I will try and answer - just post or pm me.

You said that:
However, it is cramped and if you need to add anything (video card or tv card) forget this case, it won't fit and the riser card won't help so don't waste your money.

Does that mean I cannot even install a half height tv card if I wanted to?

And, how is the thermal performance, how hot does it get?

/J

Originally Posted by best49erfan
So, what CPU would be good to use with it and where can i find a low profile cpu cooler for it?

The Scythe Big Shuriken apparently fits this board, height is only 58mm. Note that the original Shuriken will not fit, it gets in the way of one of the ram slots.

I think the J&W MINIX 780G is the best AMD mini ITX board on the market right now, and it would be a great combo when paired up with the upcoming 45w Athlon II cpus. However, I am a Linux user and ATI Linux drivers do not offer any hardware video acceleration yet. I hope ATI fixes this soon as I have a liking for AMD/ATI products, otherwise I will be going for the ever popular Zotac 9300 ITX with its Nvidia GPU.