Mini-ITX with 4 DIMM slots ?

H

harshw

Limp Gawd
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Apr 28, 2005
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I'm trying to decide between the Shuttle SZ77R5 and a Mini-ITX build based on the Fractal Design Node. One of the most appealing features of the SZ77R5 are the 4 DIMM slots - I can put 32GB of memory in a tiny case ! ( Yes what I am doing does require oodles of RAM :D )

Are there any Mini-ITX H77 or 7-series motherboards with more than 2 DIMM slots ? Many of the mATX motherboards have more than 2, but still searching for similar spec'ed mini-ITX variants ...
 
Someone should make one with 4x SO-DIMM, they are pretty much the same price now.
 
The Shuttle motherboard can accomdate 4 slots as it is a fair bit larger than an ITX board (it is close to double the size). Not enough room on an ITX board for more than two.
 
s0rce said:
Someone should make one with 4x SO-DIMM, they are pretty much the same price now.
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Shhh! Zotac might hear you! :p

Seriously though, mini-ITX hasn't reached the maturity level or market penetration of micro-ATX; performance is reaching parity between both platforms, but not the price. You'll probably be waiting a few years before that happens and you can get more than 2 memory slots. Frankly, it doesn't matter if a motherboard "looks" like it has enough room for slots. If it's cost prohibitive to run traces for something like that, it's going to be a low (manufacturing) priority.
 
Wow 32gb? I entered the thread with the idea of advining you to put 2x8, is more then enough for the 99% of the users.
 
Trmntr said:
Wow 32gb? I entered the thread with the idea of advining you to put 2x8, is more then enough for the 99% of the users.
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Correct, but I'm in the other 1% unfortunately, having to run a few virtual machines with SQL Server on them :) I was actually going to either: get a Shuttle and mod the drive bay to take 4 or 5 2.5" SSDs - or then just use a quality mATX motherboard in a good case. But the Fractal Design Node caught my eye. It's a very nice case and would love to use it.

After building super small HTPCs with mSATA system drives and onboard power, I've been trying to build small and silent PCs for my work as well. After all, there's no reason a workstation or server should be big. In fact 500GB SSDs are dropping in price and I plan to have non essential storage as remote or near line anyway. Which means I really don't need to put in 3.5" HDDs or 5.25" optical drives into the PCs ...
 
ajira99 said:
Shhh! Zotac might hear you! :p

Seriously though, mini-ITX hasn't reached the maturity level or market penetration of micro-ATX; performance is reaching parity between both platforms, but not the price. You'll probably be waiting a few years before that happens and you can get more than 2 memory slots. Frankly, it doesn't matter if a motherboard "looks" like it has enough room for slots. If it's cost prohibitive to run traces for something like that, it's going to be a low (manufacturing) priority.
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Things might change. A mini-ITX motherboard like the DQ77KB is of serious interest to folks wanting to build clusters. It would be easiser to power many such motherboards, the Q77 has a built-in VNC server, embedded into the BIOS ( and lets you control BIOS + other stuff remotely ) and offers decent computing power when paired with a 45W quad core CPU. Imagine 10 of these motherboards stacked together - won't occupy as much space and can be used to build a serious cluster or super-node. What's limiting them is the availability of good 1U coolers and that they have 2 DIMM slots. And of course the fact that they don't have 16x PCI-e or Thunderbolt ( so you have to interconnect using GigE, which sucks )

I know already of people using DH61AG based builds in similar configurations ...
 
harshw said:
Things might change. A mini-ITX motherboard like the DQ77KB is of serious interest to folks wanting to build clusters. It would be easiser to power many such motherboards, the Q77 has a built-in VNC server, embedded into the BIOS ( and lets you control BIOS + other stuff remotely ) and offers decent computing power when paired with a 45W quad core CPU. Imagine 10 of these motherboards stacked together - won't occupy as much space and can be used to build a serious cluster or super-node. What's limiting them is the availability of good 1U coolers and that they have 2 DIMM slots. And of course the fact that they don't have 16x PCI-e or Thunderbolt ( so you have to interconnect using GigE, which sucks )

I know already of people using DH61AG based builds in similar configurations ...
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There are far better things for clustering. It's an embedded board, not a server board. You can get far better density out of many other things. I don't see how PCIe x16 would help or Thunderbolt for that matter (which is just PCIe x4 plus DisplayPort...something the board already has), not to mention I'm not sure why you'd need anything above gigabit ethernet on a board like this.
 
harshw said:
Things might change. A mini-ITX motherboard like the DQ77KB is of serious interest to folks wanting to build clusters. It would be easiser to power many such motherboards, the Q77 has a built-in VNC server, embedded into the BIOS ( and lets you control BIOS + other stuff remotely ) and offers decent computing power when paired with a 45W quad core CPU. Imagine 10 of these motherboards stacked together - won't occupy as much space and can be used to build a serious cluster or super-node. What's limiting them is the availability of good 1U coolers and that they have 2 DIMM slots. And of course the fact that they don't have 16x PCI-e or Thunderbolt ( so you have to interconnect using GigE, which sucks )

I know already of people using DH61AG based builds in similar configurations ...
Click to expand...

Well, the thing is that you don't even have to step up to that level of hardware for a cluster. I've even used old VIA motherboards to build small clusters (similar to http://www.mini-itx.com). Regardless, you're still limited to two physical RAM slots in this form factor. The only ways I can think of to get around this are to use an OS or application that supports clustering or maybe an external ramdisk (PCIe, etc.). Cooling is always a concern, but I would invest in a closed loop water cooling setup before I thought about using 1U server coolers. I don't think I've ever heard a truly quiet 1U CPU cooler that had a decent MTBF.

Believe me, I understand the need (want?) of more memory for running VM's, but it's pretty easy to just build a couple of stable ESXi servers and use resource pooling (and still draw less power than most mATX setups).
 
Blue Fox said:
There are far better things for clustering. It's an embedded board, not a server board. You can get far better density out of many other things. I don't see how PCIe x16 would help or Thunderbolt for that matter (which is just PCIe x4 plus DisplayPort...something the board already has), not to mention I'm not sure why you'd need anything above gigabit ethernet on a board like this.
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It's *not* an embedded board - believe me, those have even tigher integration of components. But Intel also has their server version of the Mini-ITX - the S1200KP - with dual GigE and a 16x PCI-E socket. Having 16x PCIe or Thunderbolt helps greatly when you link up nodes with Infiniband or you want to have access to SAN storage. The GigE is a real bottleneck in these cases.

In any case ( pun intended ), I've decided to wait for a decent mATX motherboard and get a case like the Silverstone SG09. It's only slightly larger than the Shuttle R5 chassis, it has space for a bigger and better performing cooler and it has space for 4 2.5" SSDs. And fits mATX motherboards.
 
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