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FRONTPAGE BIOSTAR A68N-5000 Mini ITX SOC Review
- Thread starter Overclockers.com
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- Jun 7, 2011
Somehow i think passive cooled processors that are probably in need of a active cooled case are somewhat dishonest. Because there is probably to less airstream inside case and the passive heat sink could become to hot at high load (for example when decoding vids). The Kabini isnt known to be to heat tolerant, but i think 15 W should be doable at the cost of some performance (compared to 25 W Athlon 5350 APU which is usualy active cooled).
About the caps, the term:
So, most of the caps arnt made according to nowadays "solid state" PC standart. However, at least Biostar was using 105C rated caps which is usually a sign of good quality, but there is still some differences dependable on manufacturer. Whats that "XDC" anyway? Some funny marketing stuff? Oh well... However, its good to know that they are durable, i could personally kick all the bad caps into the deepest hole and hopefully they may never meet me anymore.
RAM:
The A4-5000 according to http://www.notebookcheck.com/AMD-A-Series-A4-5000-Notebook-Prozessor.92866.0.html is not having a double channel, its simply 2 memory slots able to expand the capacity, but without dual channel (in that term comparable to all low power Kabini). The CPU isnt having the required horsepower to make high memory speed truly useful but there is no need for "high horsepower", priority is maxed efficiency and highest economic value in any term. In this case the low power "partial SoC*" is surely outstanding. Its simply 2 DIMM slots for expansion of memory, but there wont be any change in performance in term 2 slots used. A single DIMM could be cheaper and it may be sufficient at the size of 4 GB.
PCI-Express x16 slot:
This is a new feature not available on the "old" AM1 boards (without partial SoC), however, i am not sure it would truly be useful for the intended use. As a gamer machine the CPU is clearly to less beefy (it would bottleneck the GPU), no matter the clock (and a passive CPU wont allow for OC anyway). So the PCIE slot could provide some GPU power for different uses but less likely for gamer use. In almost any term the integrated GPU (a 128 ALU GCN) is fully sufficient and dedicated GPU simply a feature that wont make to much sense. Ultimately i think the Biostar board may give some fun new specs but innovations may come in handy at other spots that are already available by the "old" AM1 boards.
Alternate systems:
The general performance for the intended use is surely sufficient and i dont think any knowledgeable PC user would consider the newest "partial SoC*" setups "slow" or "insufficient". However, for a price of around 100-110 $ (dependable on MB) a Athlon 5350 dedicated CPU setup paired with a custom board would already be possible and it got around 30% higher speed in overall but also around 30% higher cost. It can be paired with a case that got half the size of a shoebox but actively cooled. Overall the hardware quality of a dedicated setup is a bit higher too. The question truly is, can the A4-5000 "partial SoC" setup maintain a fully passive cooled condition, including passive case with half the size of a shoebox? I dont know but there is surely many possible options for a cheap, efficient and compact "basic PC". The true advantage of the Biostar A65N-5000 is the "passive cooling", price/performance ratio wont be better than a active cooled "non SoC*" solution.
*SoC = System on a Chip. In usual the term SoC was commonly used in order to describe chips that got almost a entire system on a single die. However, the RAM modules and other chips (located on the MB) are still not on the same die, so in my mind i would say a "merged" AMD fusion processor (known as APU) is at least barely a real SoC, but a non merged "Fusion" APU-processor, not embedded into the MB, isnt a real SoC, although its still named "SoC" in many terms. In my mind such a chip is simply a "APU", the term of "CPU and GPU on the same die". I find the descriptions (many vendors such as Newegg are using it) rather confusing but personally i call something "partial SoC" in term the APU or any other combined chip is directly embedded into the MB. Its not truly a APU anymore because APUs are known to be dedicated chips "on a die", not "on a MB", but anyway, the situation is somewhat complicated so i use own terms in order to get myself some understanding.
Surely a very good offer for a active cooled solution (~30% more performance) is that one, case already included so it offers more value than the Biostar SoC: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1808680 (value offer... in my mind the case is to big but it surely is cheap and it doesnt take much more to make that system ready to run).
Although in general im against MSI boards, the currently top of the line for AM1 seems to be http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132098 i use it msyself and so far im very satisfied. It even got a Mosfet cooler (it may look like overkill at such low TDP but Overclockers know the deal "it is never cool enough") and of course full solid cap, simply so much love inside that board at a surprisingly low price tag.
About the caps, the term:
...isnt really true, most of the caps are standart electrolytic 105C and not low ESR solid state, i was only able to spot 3 solid state, a minority.
So, most of the caps arnt made according to nowadays "solid state" PC standart. However, at least Biostar was using 105C rated caps which is usually a sign of good quality, but there is still some differences dependable on manufacturer. Whats that "XDC" anyway? Some funny marketing stuff? Oh well... However, its good to know that they are durable, i could personally kick all the bad caps into the deepest hole and hopefully they may never meet me anymore.
RAM:
The A4-5000 according to http://www.notebookcheck.com/AMD-A-Series-A4-5000-Notebook-Prozessor.92866.0.html is not having a double channel, its simply 2 memory slots able to expand the capacity, but without dual channel (in that term comparable to all low power Kabini). The CPU isnt having the required horsepower to make high memory speed truly useful but there is no need for "high horsepower", priority is maxed efficiency and highest economic value in any term. In this case the low power "partial SoC*" is surely outstanding. Its simply 2 DIMM slots for expansion of memory, but there wont be any change in performance in term 2 slots used. A single DIMM could be cheaper and it may be sufficient at the size of 4 GB.
PCI-Express x16 slot:
This is a new feature not available on the "old" AM1 boards (without partial SoC), however, i am not sure it would truly be useful for the intended use. As a gamer machine the CPU is clearly to less beefy (it would bottleneck the GPU), no matter the clock (and a passive CPU wont allow for OC anyway). So the PCIE slot could provide some GPU power for different uses but less likely for gamer use. In almost any term the integrated GPU (a 128 ALU GCN) is fully sufficient and dedicated GPU simply a feature that wont make to much sense. Ultimately i think the Biostar board may give some fun new specs but innovations may come in handy at other spots that are already available by the "old" AM1 boards.
Alternate systems:
The general performance for the intended use is surely sufficient and i dont think any knowledgeable PC user would consider the newest "partial SoC*" setups "slow" or "insufficient". However, for a price of around 100-110 $ (dependable on MB) a Athlon 5350 dedicated CPU setup paired with a custom board would already be possible and it got around 30% higher speed in overall but also around 30% higher cost. It can be paired with a case that got half the size of a shoebox but actively cooled. Overall the hardware quality of a dedicated setup is a bit higher too. The question truly is, can the A4-5000 "partial SoC" setup maintain a fully passive cooled condition, including passive case with half the size of a shoebox? I dont know but there is surely many possible options for a cheap, efficient and compact "basic PC". The true advantage of the Biostar A65N-5000 is the "passive cooling", price/performance ratio wont be better than a active cooled "non SoC*" solution.
*SoC = System on a Chip. In usual the term SoC was commonly used in order to describe chips that got almost a entire system on a single die. However, the RAM modules and other chips (located on the MB) are still not on the same die, so in my mind i would say a "merged" AMD fusion processor (known as APU) is at least barely a real SoC, but a non merged "Fusion" APU-processor, not embedded into the MB, isnt a real SoC, although its still named "SoC" in many terms. In my mind such a chip is simply a "APU", the term of "CPU and GPU on the same die". I find the descriptions (many vendors such as Newegg are using it) rather confusing but personally i call something "partial SoC" in term the APU or any other combined chip is directly embedded into the MB. Its not truly a APU anymore because APUs are known to be dedicated chips "on a die", not "on a MB", but anyway, the situation is somewhat complicated so i use own terms in order to get myself some understanding.
Surely a very good offer for a active cooled solution (~30% more performance) is that one, case already included so it offers more value than the Biostar SoC: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1808680 (value offer... in my mind the case is to big but it surely is cheap and it doesnt take much more to make that system ready to run).
Although in general im against MSI boards, the currently top of the line for AM1 seems to be http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132098 i use it msyself and so far im very satisfied. It even got a Mosfet cooler (it may look like overkill at such low TDP but Overclockers know the deal "it is never cool enough") and of course full solid cap, simply so much love inside that board at a surprisingly low price tag.
Last edited:
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Thanks for the report. Systems like this are interesting for HTPCs and home servers. The latter is my use case. I recently had to replace the motherboard in mine and settled on an ASRock Q1900-ITX with a J1900 Celeron. Since the system I put it in is headless the video H/W was not important. Nor was CPU horsepower (though more is always better. 
) The previous system was an Atom and performed admirably. For my uses I appreciated the two extra SATA ports. I use this for a NAS and have two large drives mirrored. The extra port allowed me to use an old laptop drive for a boot device and be able to use the entire other drives for storage. As a bonus, I can put an eSata cable on the fourth port and connect to external drives (of which I have one. )
A couple more thoughts come to mind as I consider this. Both boards have PS/2 ports, and not just one but two. I still have PS/2 keyboards but they are decades old! I have reluctantly set my IBM Model M aside because it would not work with a USB based KVM. (Less surprisingly I did not see any dual monitor KVMs that support both USB and PS/2 connections.)
Something else that would be useful to know about this would be the power draw. I have a kill-a-Watt so I know that mine idles at about 27W. Of course this depends on the PSU and drives and perhaps whether or not there is a monitor connected. Even more interesting is that the Dell box provided by my client with I7-4770 and some kind of ATI 290 video card also idles at 27W!
) The previous system was an Atom and performed admirably. For my uses I appreciated the two extra SATA ports. I use this for a NAS and have two large drives mirrored. The extra port allowed me to use an old laptop drive for a boot device and be able to use the entire other drives for storage. As a bonus, I can put an eSata cable on the fourth port and connect to external drives (of which I have one. )A couple more thoughts come to mind as I consider this. Both boards have PS/2 ports, and not just one but two. I still have PS/2 keyboards but they are decades old! I have reluctantly set my IBM Model M aside because it would not work with a USB based KVM. (Less surprisingly I did not see any dual monitor KVMs that support both USB and PS/2 connections.)
Something else that would be useful to know about this would be the power draw. I have a kill-a-Watt so I know that mine idles at about 27W. Of course this depends on the PSU and drives and perhaps whether or not there is a monitor connected. Even more interesting is that the Dell box provided by my client with I7-4770 and some kind of ATI 290 video card also idles at 27W!
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