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Lets get real, Giada?

B

bare

Guest
Greetings,
I recently spent quite a bit of money on an Abee MITX computer case with the goal of building a home MITX media/gaming rig. I've put in my research and spent time browsing all the usual sources of information to find that Z68 is rather lacking in the MITX department. In another thread a user brought up the Motherboard company Giada, their site can be found here. I'm looking for people who have any sort of experience with their products. In particular I'm looking at this. The majority of information I can find on the web pertaining to their products usually devolves into something along the lines of "lol China". I was surprised to see a Lotes socket which is nice as I'm not a huge Foxconn fan (I know some won't care about this). I like the general layout of the board and thought the spacing between the CPU socket and PCIE was a nice change of pace.

TLDR: Garbage or not? Thoughts?
 
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Giada is bargain basement, typically in features and in amenities (i.e. understandable instructions / correctly listed specifications). That being said, they seem to be getting better, as the last two boards I've bought from them (H55 and H67) worked as described.

I'll probably pick one of these up at some point to give it a test drive, especially since I'm a big fan of the mPCIe/mSATA SSD option.
 
Machupo said:
Giada is bargain basement, typically in features and in amenities (i.e. understandable instructions / correctly listed specifications). That being said, they seem to be getting better, as the last two boards I've bought from them (H55 and H67) worked as described.

I'll probably pick one of these up at some point to give it a test drive, especially since I'm a big fan of the mPCIe/mSATA SSD option.
Click to expand...

They cant do Z68 itx any worse than either solution on the market now. :rolleyes: Im looking at you zotac.
 
Interesting design with the non-reference socket location and the separate mSATA + mPCIe.. Newegg carries some Giada products. Wonder if this one will show up?
 
Exocet956 said:
They cant do Z68 itx any worse than either solution on the market now. :rolleyes: Im looking at you zotac.
Click to expand...

That's how I felt.

Zap said:
Interesting design with the non-reference socket location and the separate mSATA + mPCIe.. Newegg carries some Giada products. Wonder if this one will show up?
Click to expand...

The only place I could find it in stock was a small OEM computer store in CA for around 150.00 each.

I like the design as well but the more I look at it I'm starting to wonder if the position of the CPU socket will cause problems with CPU coolers with wide and tall dimensions like the NH-U12P.
 
Which case did you buy? I dont have any experience with Giada but I would like to know hiw many more options are there for the cpu cooler due to the placement of the socket.
 
i'm wondering about whats in the bios. maybe someone will be a guinea pig and test it out :p
 
I have a Giada M350 board I've used quite a bit, and it's not bad at all. No issues with reliability, or quality.
 
cyberkost said:
bare, where / how did you get the Abee case?
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I know someone in Japan and they bought and shipped it to me. It was quite expensive but to be honest well worth it.

I've owned five Lian Li cases and never found them to be all the rage everyone says they are. I found the workmanship to be decent at best. I cannot tell you the number of times I've stripped their crappy hardware and before anyone says it no I'm not an idiot and I use the right tools - it's just soft cheap crap.

Been through a bunch of other brands as well and after all this time I've come to the conclusion that the majority of the cases companies out there produce utter garbage. I really think boutique casing and brands like Abee and Windy are where it's at. I understand that it's out of the price range of some but the quality is superb and you get what you pay for.
 
$135 at e-itx

If I wouldn't have just jumped on the 2x8gb ddr3 shell shocker the other day, this would be my impulse buy for the week, lol ;) (have to keep it to one a week or the economic oversight committee goes into cold war mode)
 
Machupo said:
$135 at e-itx

If I wouldn't have just jumped on the 2x8gb ddr3 shell shocker the other day, this would be my impulse buy for the week, lol ;) (have to keep it to one a week or the economic oversight committee goes into cold war mode)
Click to expand...

Why did you cal it an e-itx?
I like the expandability with 2 mini-PCI-e cards (looks like there's going to be a version with wi-fi card and antennas in the future) .. but an extra SATA port and a USB3.0 header is what I'd miss on this board.

As a side question: can anyone comment on Giada's initial quality vs. that of Zotac (not so good, imo)
 
that's the name of the store -- E-itx ;)

I'm glad to see a z68 w/ mpcie (let alone a full and a half), that way I can run my SSD and an intel 6300n :D Too bad it doesn't support 16GiB of memory... should be just a bios update, though, I think.
 
Machupo said:
I'll probably pick one of these up at some point to give it a test drive, especially since I'm a big fan of the mPCIe/mSATA SSD option.
Click to expand...

I apologize for my ignorance, I did a small search and it seems you can put TV Tuners in mPCIe slots that's neat - what other uses are there for mPCIe and mSATA, any real benefits?

I'm curious as I believe this will work in my case and I'm thinking of picking one up to try it out.
 
bare said:
I apologize for my ignorance, I did a small search and it seems you can put TV Tuners in mPCIe slots that's neat - what other uses are there for mPCIe and mSATA, any real benefits?

I'm curious as I believe this will work in my case and I'm thinking of picking one up to try it out.
Click to expand...

I'm primarily looking at an OS-drive SSD (80-120GB) in the full-size slot (need to find the biggest one around, 'cause the 50GB one I have now is tiny!) and a dual-n wifi card in the half-size slot :)

You can also put raid cards, TV tuners, USB3 cards... pretty much anything that will run on a PCIe 1x lane will run in that slot.
 
Really want to see this happen, I'd love to see more development in the mPCIe segment. the mSATA SSD market has more or less taken off this year, although personally I think the mPCIe while almost identical minus the odd pin out, ultimitely provides more flexability in that is supports far more than just tiny price premiumed SSDs. Not that I have a problem mind you, if anything, I want to see more mPCIe/mSATA SSDs hit the market. Currently there are only 3 or 4 mPCIe (RunCore, Renice, SuperTalent & Intel I think) drives on the market I think, and their hard to find. I have a list and specs somewhere. I would also like to see widespreed adoption of the SATA 3.0 standard in mSATA formfactor that RunCore had in mind when they designed their Sandforce powered T50 6Gb/s mSATA SSD. Those speeds with a 120GB (really 100ishGB) model in a small formfactor box or laptop, maybe with Intel's RST loaded and a 1TB 2.5 HDD? You'd need an i7 to even take advantage of the full speed potential.
But thats just my ramblings of an ultimit elegant design I guess.

Thoughts?
 
AMv8(1day) said:
Really want to see this happen, I'd love to see more development in the mPCIe segment. the mSATA SSD market has more or less taken off this year, although personally I think the mPCIe while almost identical minus the odd pin out, ultimitely provides more flexability in that is supports far more than just tiny price premiumed SSDs. Not that I have a problem mind you, if anything, I want to see more mPCIe/mSATA SSDs hit the market. Currently there are only 3 or 4 mPCIe (RunCore, Renice, SuperTalent & Intel I think) drives on the market I think, and their hard to find. I have a list and specs somewhere. I would also like to see widespreed adoption of the SATA 3.0 standard in mSATA formfactor that RunCore had in mind when they designed their Sandforce powered T50 6Gb/s mSATA SSD. Those speeds with a 120GB (really 100ishGB) model in a small formfactor box or laptop, maybe with Intel's RST loaded and a 1TB 2.5 HDD? You'd need an i7 to even take advantage of the full speed potential.
But thats just my ramblings of an ultimit elegant design I guess.
Thoughts?
Click to expand...

AMv8(1day), can you fix the link please ... want to read up on that RunCore mSATA.
 
hrmmm... guess it's a blocked link at [H]... well, just add "the ssd review" in front of the .com (or google runcore t50)
 
only places I have see to purchase the MI-Z68 are on www.e-itx.com and ebay (more expensive). E-ITX had them $15 cheaper for BF... I totally should've bought one then. Now, I'll probably wait until after the 1st of the month.
 
Hey Machupo, I just came across an article saying this "Control of PINs is based on the SATA-Standard (mSATA). Therefore, pure Mini-PCI-e slots won't recognize mSATA cards. But it works vice versa. E.g., the Ericson F5521gw UMTS module (Mini-PCIe) and an mSata drive can be connected to the same slot." Have you come across anything to support this?
If this is true it opens up some more flexibility with the mSATA standard. Personally I'd rather see it the other way around as I'm far more interested in using SFF SSDs in mPCIe slots on m-ITX boards than RAID cards and wifi NICs in ultrabooks, netbooks, and the like. But I'll take what I can get. :-P
 
I haven't seen that, but the Zotac Z68 mitx board has a bios option that allows you to select mSATA or mPCIe (probably just a simple trace reassigner) mode for the slot, so it can't be that hard ;)
 
Machupo said:
I haven't seen that, but the Zotac Z68 mitx board has a bios option that allows you to select mSATA or mPCIe (probably just a simple trace reassigner) mode for the slot, so it can't be that hard ;)
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Which one, the regular or the Supreme? The regular model has one port that's marked as dual capable but the Supreme has two separate ports, one marked as an mSATA and one marked as a mini-PCIe.

The article was a review of the OCZ Nocti mSATA SSD at NotebookCheck.net
 
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the regular -- never even looked at the -b-e once I saw the vid that was on there ;)
 
Yeah, I initially thought about picking it up just for the extra mSATA/mPCIe port and just pawning the 430 off on some budget build for a family member or something. But decided to pass due to the lack of SATA ports vs their H67 option. Doesn't quite fit my needs for any build I have in mind at the moment.
 
I was going to wait for this to go on sale, but e-itx told me they only had 2 left in stock. So, seeing as how they're the only supplier I can find, I jumped on 1 of the two :p

Should be here next week.

Already looks like it's going to need either a waterblock or heatsinks since all of the VRMs are on the back of the mobo!
 
Machupo said:
I was going to wait for this to go on sale, but e-itx told me they only had 2 left in stock. So, seeing as how they're the only supplier I can find, I jumped on 1 of the two :p

Should be here next week.

Already looks like it's going to need either a waterblock or heatsinks since all of the VRMs are on the back of the mobo!
Click to expand...

Any news, I'm really curious!
 
bare said:
Any news, I'm really curious!
Click to expand...

Estimated delivery: 30DEC. Date slipped a bit to the right, apparently, so now I'm not going to be home when this thing shows up... grrrr!
 
Minor update: motherboard received. Don't really have a lot of time to work on it right now, but hopefully next week!

In other news, taking a quick look at the manual, Giada needs to hire better translators / more QA folks. There was a little card stuffed in the manual with a number of "corrections" to the printed book, lol. Only thing that looks different is a "T.W.L." menu in the BIOS (whatever that means... any mandarin speakers are welcome to enlighten me :D) which has the CPU/chipset/memory tweaking things.

As always, more to follow :)

[edit] I'm going to imagine that the mystery menu is short for "Tweak with Luck" :p [/edit]
 
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That a really good description and I love the TWL name for the bios settings

TWEAk with LUCK!!, I believe at present it applies to all current mini itx z68 boards, they all have issues


I look forward to hearing more on this board and wether the TWL is any better than zotac or asrock
 
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