Asrock ION 3D 152D for hybrid ??

[daci92]

Hey ppl ,
Few days ago i started making plans about new hybrid but i made many changes and in the end i have one last change, the space where the core/hybrid should be.There are no chances for normal or midi,mini,micro ATX tower case to get in the rack so i should use nano tower case or simply complete pc with ion platform.As my country has limited choice of hardware i was not able to find just mother board from ITX form factor nor more than 2 cases for those MB, I found only two complete solutions.As the Subject of this topic says i found AsRock ION 3D 152D in one of the stores here but the problem is that it is not upgradeable trough expansion slots and it has only one integrated NIC and one Integrated Wireless NIC (you can see that on the link provided) . And the other was the Foxconn NT330 which i already use as MD and in fact i dont think that the foxconn could be Hybrid.

My question's if this computer can be hybrid and if it can would i be able to use those NICs for the needs on the hybrid and could i use USBtoLAN adapter if it is not possible to use the wireless for external network?
Does someone has experience with this computer?

I would appreciate if someone help me ...

Thanks,
Daci.

[merkur2k]

i would not recommend something like that for use as a hybrid, it just doesnt have enough power.
if you are limited on space at the tv, consider using a dedicated core and separate media director setup, or use cat5/6 cable extenders to connect the media equipment to a md or hybrid in another location.

[daci92]

i would not recommend something like that for use as a hybrid, it just doesnt have enough power.
if you are limited on space at the tv, consider using a dedicated core and separate media director setup, or use cat5/6 cable extenders to connect the media equipment to a md or hybrid in another location.

The hybrid is in server room but in rack not in front of a TV there will be MD ,i cannot put bigger pc case than nano box in the rack ,always some of the dimensions are making me problems.Most of them are the longer (the rack is 250mm deep).

[totallymaxed]

Hey ppl ,
Few days ago i started making plans about new hybrid but i made many changes and in the end i have one last change, the space where the core/hybrid should be.There are no chances for normal or midi,mini,micro ATX tower case to get in the rack so i should use nano tower case or simply complete pc with ion platform.As my country has limited choice of hardware i was not able to find just mother board from ITX form factor nor more than 2 cases for those MB, I found only two complete solutions.As the Subject of this topic says i found AsRock ION 3D 152D in one of the stores here but the problem is that it is not upgradeable trough expansion slots and it has only one integrated NIC and one Integrated Wireless NIC (you can see that on the link provided) . And the other was the Foxconn NT330 which i already use as MD and in fact i dont think that the foxconn could be Hybrid.

My question's if this computer can be hybrid and if it can would i be able to use those NICs for the needs on the hybrid and could i use USBtoLAN adapter if it is not possible to use the wireless for external network?
Does someone has experience with this computer?

I would appreciate if someone help me ...

Thanks,
Daci.

Well Atom based Core's work fine as long as you recognise there limitations and those are mainly in the area of regens. My home Core is in fact Atom N270 based and it happily serves 3 zones and a heavy MythTV recording schedule. Regens are the single most intensive processing task that Core handle on a regular basis. So what this means in practice is that the more Orbiters & MD's you have and the higher the resolution they are set to the more complex the Regen process becomes and on even a fairly fast Atom based system this can mean very log regen times if you are regenning the whole system.

Now this next statement is not intended as a plug for Dianemo at all (Honest!) but when we were in the process of transitioning to Dianemo 10.10 we noticed that there was a massive performance leap in a whole raft of areas when compared to earlier versions of LinuxMCE/Dianemo and these were particularly noticeable on boot up of MD's, in the Orbiter and very much during Regens. This performance gain was not because we had done any incredibly efficient patches or code changes (although we had done many of those too!) but because of numerous performance improvements in mysql and a whole raft of other packages. The end result is that these performance improvements make Atom based Cores even more viable now. We currently ship the new NC35 Atom based Hybrid Core and that is proving very popular indeed and the performance is more than good enough for upto 4 MD/MM's and a simialr number of audio Zones. The NC35 is a small unit will minimal internal expansion capability so the decision as to whether this type of Core is right for you swings back to expansion, expansion slots and other internal expansion options... all of which are limited on any Atom based Core.

Now I don't know if those improvements are in the 08.10/10.04 builds of LinuxMCE but they may well be and if they are then Atom based Cores & Hybrids are definitely viable.

All the best


Andrew

[daci92]

Well Atom based Core's work fine as long as you recognise there limitations and those are mainly in the area of regens. My home Core is in fact Atom N270 based and it happily serves 3 zones and a heavy MythTV recording schedule. Regens are the single most intensive processing task that Core handle on a regular basis. So what this means in practice is that the more Orbiters & MD's you have and the higher the resolution they are set to the more complex the Regen process becomes and on even a fairly fast Atom based system this can mean very log regen times if you are regenning the whole system.

Now this next statement is not intended as a plug for Dianemo at all (Honest!) but when we were in the process of transitioning to Dianemo 10.10 we noticed that there was a massive performance leap in a whole raft of areas when compared to earlier versions of LinuxMCE/Dianemo and these were particularly noticeable on boot up of MD's, in the Orbiter and very much during Regens. This performance gain was not because we had done any incredibly efficient patches or code changes (although we had done many of those too!) but because of numerous performance improvements in mysql and a whole raft of other packages. The end result is that these performance improvements make Atom based Cores even more viable now. We currently ship the new NC35 Atom based Hybrid Core and that is proving very popular indeed and the performance is more than good enough for upto 4 MD/MM's and a simialr number of audio Zones. The NC35 is a small unit will minimal internal expansion capability so the decision as to whether this type of Core is right for you swings back to expansion, expansion slots and other internal expansion options... all of which are limited on any Atom based Core.

Now I don't know if those improvements are in the 08.10/10.04 builds of LinuxMCE but they may well be and if they are then Atom based Cores & Hybrids are definitely viable.

All the best


Andrew

From my experience with LMCE it needs too much regens so the option with atom is limited to couple of MD's and few Orbiters.My project is in early stage and it has 2 MDs and 2 Orbiters , but the plan is to have more than 6 Orbiters (in-wall mounts or android based tablets on the wall's) and 3-4 MD's, then i need something more powerful like Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. I would go with Athlon II x2,x4 or maybe Phenom II or an Intel solution based on Core 2 or i3,i5 but i cant find solution for the case and board , and i dont have time to make it by my self.
The Dianemo solution is good ,but the first problem is that it is expensive for me.
The problem with Atom platform and atom based systems are not upgradeable especially from expansions slot's ,like the Asrock i mentioned and i hate that...

Thanks for ur answer Andrew,
Daci

[Marie.O]

Regens need to happen when changes to the system happen. During setup, and media import (each time a new genre is detected, a regen is needed), this is quite often. I usually forego most of the regens, and only do one when I need it. Once everything is setup, and media is imported, regens happen less frequently, and are, imho, no reason for buying a faster processor.

[daci92]

Ok ,i made up my mind ,i will have some more space with clearing some stuff from the rack and i will put the case diagonal in the rack.
In this case i can put case with 360mm length and have space for cables.I'm looking for some Barebone pc at this moment ,and this one is the only one that have Nvidia graphic card integrated.Tell me what do u think about the barebone is it good enough for hybrid?
I'm planing to use 3-4GB of RAM and Athlon II x2 255 65W and like an Additional NIC - Asus Gigabit PCI Card NX1101.For HDD my decision is on 320GB WesternDigital 7200rpm 16MB Cache SATA-II Caviar Blue WD3200AAKS or maybe some faster (i dont need space for storage for movies and audio because i will use NAS with 8TB drives that i have here).

Does this will be good ?

Thanks again,
Daci.

[Marie.O]

If I were in your shoes, I'd get myself a nice supported Dianemo system.

[daci92]

If I were in your shoes, I'd get myself a nice supported Dianemo system.

posde like i said before Dianemo is expensive system for me ,plus the price to get shipping here will cost me the price i will buy the barebone,plus the duty taxes i should pay, so Dianemo system will cost me as much as the hybrid and 3 md's together

[totallymaxed]

From my experience with LMCE it needs too much regens so the option with atom is limited to couple of MD's and few Orbiters.My project is in early stage and it has 2 MDs and 2 Orbiters , but the plan is to have more than 6 Orbiters (in-wall mounts or android based tablets on the wall's) and 3-4 MD's, then i need something more powerful like Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. I would go with Athlon II x2,x4 or maybe Phenom II or an Intel solution based on Core 2 or i3,i5 but i cant find solution for the case and board , and i dont have time to make it by my self.
The Dianemo solution is good ,but the first problem is that it is expensive for me.
The problem with Atom platform and atom based systems are not upgradeable especially from expansions slot's ,like the Asrock i mentioned and i hate that...

Thanks for ur answer Andrew,
Daci

Well you need to look at your likely usage pattern for the system once installed. If you have a lot of MD/MM equipped rooms but most of the time only 1 of them will be in use or playing media then this is good indicator for the 'shape' of your system. My home system averages out at 2 rooms in use most of the time... with very rare periods where all 4 MD/MM's are in use. My system at home running on an N270 Atom based motherboard has 2x Android Touch Orbiters (800x480), 4x iPod Touch 4G Touch Orbiters & 2x iPad1 Touch Orbiters and 4x MD/MM's (1080p). Full regens under Dianemo 10.10 take just a little over 20 mins...they used to takeover 60 minutes using the same Core/NC hardware under Dianemo 7.10. As Posde says Regens can mostly be avoided until convenient to you and once a system is basically configured are fairly infrequent.

From an initial investment, energy usage & size perspective the Atom based hardware wins massively. My home Core/NC now uses 17w under full load and about 10-11w when idling compared to 90-160w for my previous Core/NC and the physical size is about the volume of two paperback books. So there are significant reasons to consider this class of hardware for your installation if your usage fits the bill.

All the best


Andrew

[purps]

Andrew, do you find the lack of PCI slots limiting in any way? Or is everything in your home USB/networked?

Does your core board already have 2 NICs on it as well, or is that what you use the spare PCI slot for?

Personally, I think the only thing that would stop me from using an atom board as a core is the fact that I use zoneminder, which seems to need a lot of grunt.

Cheers,
Matt.

[totallymaxed]

Andrew, do you find the lack of PCI slots limiting in any way? Or is everything in your home USB/networked?

Does your core board already have 2 NICs on it as well, or is that what you use the spare PCI slot for?

Personally, I think the only thing that would stop me from using an atom board as a core is the fact that I use zoneminder, which seems to need a lot of grunt.

Cheers,
Matt.

Hi Matt,

Well my previous Core had slots and I used those for adding a 2nd Nic and a DVB-T card. My Atom Core uses a USB NIC for the WAN side and the on-board NIC for the LAN and I now use an HDHomeRun to provide my DVB-T tuners. So no I don't miss the slots at all to be frank. As a company we have been moving as much as possible to IP based interfaces for all manner of control or other functionality - ie IP based rs232, IR, Contact Closure, KNX and will choose IP controllable Amplifiers and other components wherever possible. So the upshot of this is really the need for slots is not a big issue anymore for the most part.

We have a prototype twin0headed Atom based product that is a 1u high 19" rack size chassis that can take 2x Atom mini-ITX motherboards (side by side). One configuration of this product might be to use one Atom motherboard as the Core/NC and the other as either an MD/MM or a Kmotion IP camera server (In Dianemo we use Kmotion for IP security camera control and and we can run that functionality outside of the Core). This 'pizza' box sized product is not shipping yet but its one application for these low energy Atom boards which is pretty exciting as it will allow our installers to build very dense rack based systems using multiple twin-headed 1u units - 4x 1u units would give 6x MD/MM's + 1x Core/NC + 1 kmotion server in no more vertical rack space than a high-end Surround Amp!

Anyway...I slightly digress lol!

All the best


Andrew

[purps]

That's very cool.

[trentend]

I (am intenting to) use a Tyan S3115GM2N board as a core (it has dual NIC, atom processor, but only Intel 945GC graphics), and standard asus ion boards (single NIC, but nVidia ion graphics) as MD's.  I've built four boards (one core and three md's), two three drive bays (six hard drives), four power supplies, and cooling, into a custom built case (using polycarbonate) roughly twice the size of centre speaker.

If I hadn't blown the core power supply (got a short in the kettle lead trying to be a smart arse and cut it down to route it tidily inside the case) and have to rebuild it, it would probably be up and working by now.......

[totallymaxed]

I (am intenting to) use a Tyan S3115GM2N board as a core (it has dual NIC, atom processor, but only Intel 945GC graphics), and standard asus ion boards (single NIC, but nVidia ion graphics) as MD's.  I've built four boards (one core and three md's), two three drive bays (six hard drives), four power supplies, and cooling, into a custom built case (using polycarbonate) roughly twice the size of centre speaker.

If I hadn't blown the core power supply (got a short in the kettle lead trying to be a smart arse and cut it down to route it tidily inside the case) and have to rebuild it, it would probably be up and working by now.......

Yeah we use an ASUS Server grade Atom board with twin NICS and Intel graphics for our Dianemo NerveCentre pro installer products. We have not used that Tyan board but its a very similiar spec to the ASUS we do use. Nice idea using the spare drive bays for the MD motherboards.

All the best

Andrew