AMD Zacate

Has anyone been able to test this setup out yet?
I've found a couple posts on various forums posing the question but no responses yet.
Very curious as I'd like swap out my mATX LGA 775/9400GT setup for a mini-ITX Zacate for the energy savings, space savings, more elegant design myself.

Currently considering:
E-350 (haven't decided on specific board yet)
8GB 1.25v RAM w/ RAM Disk setup for Temp files, channel listings, etc.
Ceton InfiniTV4 Quad MediaCard reader. Yes, aparently they are now selling them on Amazon with free shipping. :/
2-3TB HDD. I've got a few laying around right now or I could just run a 6GB/s SSD and map storage to a certain separate media server that I've been procrastinating about building.
Another option would be to pickup one of the Mini PCIe equipped boards and swap out whatevers there for a Mini PCIe SSD for the OS so I don't have to sacrifice speed, storage, or small footprint.

I figure it should make for a speedy little eco friendly HTPC.
no kidding... I waited for 4 months to get mine and paid 25$ shipping :mad:

I'm going to be switching over to a zacate board here in the next few days. I'll test it with my ceton
 
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Asrock e350m1/usb3
e350m1003-1.jpg
 
I haven't even been able to find a reputable slot-loading ODD for a reasonable price period.
I wouldn't mind something like that though, very attractive design. Would love to finally move to a Pico/PSU though, much more efficient and silent.
 
no kidding... I waited for 4 months to get mine and paid 25$ shipping :mad:

Your telling me. I waited about 4 months myself and I think it was around $33 shipping.

I'm going to be switching over to a zacate board here in the next few days. I'll test it with my ceton

Cool let us know how it goes, any tweaks you find help playback/glitch free operation would be great!
 
Do any Zacate boards besides the Asus E35M1-I DELUXE have internal USB3 headers? It'll be nice to use usb3 pendrives for booting instead of CompactFlash with a sata adapter.
 
Has anyone tried out the Giada MI-E350 mini-ITX MB? Looks like a pretty odd setup with 2 Mini PCIe slots, 2 SATA 3Gb/s ports, and no conventional PCIe ports but it might just be exactly what someone needs for the price.
 
Has anyone tried out the Giada MI-E350 mini-ITX MB? Looks like a pretty odd setup with 2 Mini PCIe slots, 2 SATA 3Gb/s ports, and no conventional PCIe ports but it might just be exactly what someone needs for the price.
not really sure why anyone would pick this over the other, better known alternatives. the configuration is really limited.

A pc don't make a HPTC better. The equipment attached to it does

what does that have to do with anything?
 
not really sure why anyone would pick this over the other, better known alternatives. the configuration is really limited.

Yeah, but it is probably a fair amount cheaper than most of the alternatives and could potentially fill a niche market. My bet would be industrial uses that require two Mini PCIe slots but don't have a need for any more than 4GB, 2 3Gb/s SATA ports, and no USB 3.0. Obviously it seems a bit limited but if that's all you need and it saves you a few bucks per board on a 1000 unit basis.

what does that have to do with anything?

I was wondering the same thing.
 
I see a lot of talk about the Zacate with regard to media performance and cost, but I would like to know how well it runs MediaBrowser. The Atom can do most of what you guys described, albeit load a little bit slower, but it performs badly where MediaBrowser browsing is concerned. How does the Zacate do? Better yet, can anyone make a home video and put it on YouTube so we can see how well a Zacate media center performs similar to this Zotac/Atom video?

I have similar concerns with XBMC. How smoothly does it navigate around?
 
So I'm looking at putting together a small HTPC for running Win7/XBMC off an SSD to stream 1080p material from my server.

I want it to be 100% smooth and fluid in both the menu(using aeonmq2 most likely) and while watching movies/fast forwarding. I absolutely detest stuttering in movies an menus.

Is a mitx zacate board, like the Asus E35M1-I enough, or should I go for a SB setup, like an i3 2100?
 
I am using the MSI mITX Zacate Board with 4GB DDR3, an Intel 320 40GB SSD.
OS is Win 7 x64 and Windows-XBMC, full HD is running flawlessly...

However, sometimes there is some "stutter" but I think this is 24p playback...

All in all, that setup has not disappointed me yet, the price is unbeatable and the power-consumption is just awesome ;)
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4499/...-e35m1i-deluxe-ecs-hdci-and-zotac-fusion350ae
Zacate roundup at Anand.

cliffs:
33% auto overclock on ECS (!)
no HTPC tests
power consumption #'s skewed by PSU overkill
that 33% OC seems like a killer feature.. i'd be seriously tempted if I hadn't already built a zacate system.

So I'm looking at putting together a small HTPC for running Win7/XBMC off an SSD to stream 1080p material from my server.

I want it to be 100% smooth and fluid in both the menu(using aeonmq2 most likely) and while watching movies/fast forwarding. I absolutely detest stuttering in movies an menus.

Is a mitx zacate board, like the Asus E35M1-I enough, or should I go for a SB setup, like an i3 2100?
i have no issue with menus, but i will admit that occasionally on very high bitrate scenes it can hitch a tiny bit. uncommon but if you're going to flip out and punch a wall or something if that happens, you might want to play it safe :D
 
Any ideas if there will be a E-450 ITX motherboard? All I see are laptops or nettops.
 
Asrock e350m1/usb3
e350m1003-1.jpg

I just put together a build with this board and am seeing some alarming temperatures. It's getting up into the 75C range, and that's with its obnoxiously loud little chipset fan on the CPU set to full on. CoreTemp shows it went over 80C once during 1080p playback.

That seems awfully high for a CPU. Not sure if APUs can run hotter. Anyone?
 
I replaced my TIM with Ceramique. The bios usually shows an idle temp of between 36 and 45. I don't think coretemp reports the correct temp. Mine reads 60 something in windows after idling for 30 minutes and hits 75c while using media center, but when I had the Asus software on there it was much lower.
 
no kidding... I waited for 4 months to get mine and paid 25$ shipping :mad:

I'm going to be switching over to a zacate board here in the next few days. I'll test it with my ceton

Any updates? I would really like to know if the Zacate is enough for a Ceton setup, especially when Ceton's website recommends a 2.7ghz dual core.
 
"I have a Pro, and I found out about the ethernet issues the hard way. Which is too bad since I was going to use a Silicondust HD Homerun Prime. I cancelled my Prime tuner order today because I was too paranoid about good ethernet connectivity to the Prime tuner. I installed a Ceton card instead, which so far has worked decently. The Ceton has only "missed" about 3 or 4 recordings so far. I've seen it record 3 shows and have live tv, but 7MC did get a little less responsive during that time. This is a clean install so far, no Shark007 or any addons, yet.

I also have an Antec Veris LCD, and it works fine ... no bootup issues."

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1313541&page=19
 
"I have a Pro, and I found out about the ethernet issues the hard way. Which is too bad since I was going to use a Silicondust HD Homerun Prime. I cancelled my Prime tuner order today because I was too paranoid about good ethernet connectivity to the Prime tuner. I installed a Ceton card instead, which so far has worked decently. The Ceton has only "missed" about 3 or 4 recordings so far. I've seen it record 3 shows and have live tv, but 7MC did get a little less responsive during that time. This is a clean install so far, no Shark007 or any addons, yet.

I also have an Antec Veris LCD, and it works fine ... no bootup issues."

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1313541&page=19
That tells me all I need to know. If it can record 3 shows and live TV, but MC slows down, that means it is on the edge in terms of performance. Nothing annoys me more than media center slowdowns.

My guess is that the current Zacates should run everything flawlessly running only 2 tuners at once. A step up to 1.8ghz or 2.0ghz should be enough to run 4 tuners at once and still keep 7MC responsive.

Thanks for the info.
 
I agree about the annoying slowdowns. I ran a wire for my bedroom HTPC because of the slow load times for the thumbnails when they would refresh.
 
Guys, is there a way to overclock the APU even if the BIOS does not support it?
 
So for a little revivel, where are our GA-E350N-USB3 overclockers?
What are peoples experiences with the Gb board and its overclocking features vs the Asus?
On the seriously off chance that anyone actually owns a GA-E350N-USB3 (or E35M1-I DELUXE) AND a Ceton, does a stable overclock remidy some of the near-tapped-out issues with the quad cable streams?
 
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I'm having issues, at least in my configuration.
Zacate has very little overhead if things aren't perfect: DXVA support not perfect in the latest cats? High cpu usage and stuttering watching video (winTV in WMC, TMT5 although MPC-HC is usually spared). WMC updates, windows backup, or Security Essentials decide to run in the background? Same thing.

I recently replaced my 8 year old 720p TV when it died, and the 1080p replacement is likely part of the problem. Perhaps one of my codecs is at fault (using Shark007 w/ recommended settings).

I'm trying to hold out til Trinity drops in March.
 
Anyone still using the ASRock E350M1? I have the USB3 version and I just had a power outage and my HTPC is happy to stay asleep. I could not figure out how I can set the UEFI to power up on power resume. Am I missing something?
 
It's there in the bios....wake on power failure or something, but it's not in power management IIRC. Fish around.
 
I must admit I have missed that. :D

However, the setting is already "Power On". Yet, it didn't recover after a power outage. :confused:
 
I have my Asus E-350 Deluxe in the kitchen now & I built a Gigabyte E-350 USB3 for the bedroom. They both run a lot better with Windows 8 on them. It made a big difference. Much snappier now.
 
Test it I suppose. Mine works. It's FS btw, with 4gb ram and a picopsu if anyone is interested.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1732951

I did. When the PC is not in sleep mode, if I power cycle, it boots up again. If the PC is in S3 (Windows 7 x64), it stays dead.

BTW, since you have a similar board as mine. Can you please check if your LED blinks when in S3 standby? Mine does and I have no way to turn it off.
 
BTW, since you have a similar board as mine. Can you please check if your LED blinks when in S3 standby? Mine does and I have no way to turn it off.

It's boxed right now, but I recall a setting for that. 'nighttime' or 'sleeptime' or the like. It's over towards the right in the menu.
 
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