Trying to find some info/personal input

[mrmylanman]

I bought a Xeon L3426 that just arrived yesterday (looks like Intel is discontinuing them, because it was a little hard to find in the normal channels, and I saw there's a new 40W version based on 32nm now), and I am looking forward to see what I can do with a 45W quad core in a PC-Q08. My plan is to use the Seasonic passive 400W PSU in addition to an HD5770 and it should draw a pretty small amount of power for a very potent rig.

However, I am torn between the Gigabyte H55N-USB3 and the Zotac H55-ITX-C-E.

I know that Zotac got a lot of flak lately (from looking at the other thread) however, since this CPU is a 45W CPU I want to make sure (if I can) that's what it is actually drawing. I saw in the SPCR article on the Zotac that the Vcore was a little high, and I wasn't sure if that was a BIOS limitation or just something up with that particular board (I don't remember if that was a final retail board or what).

Does the Gigabyte allow you to use pretty low voltages?

If the Gigabyte allows a lot more voltage tweaking I guess it might be game over for the Zotac although I would really like the feature set the Zotac has, lol.

Thanks for the input folks.

 

[tvih]

From all I've read the Gigabyte has very nice over/underclocking and voltage options, undervolting included.

 

[mrmylanman]

Thanks. Can't wait to get this build finished. Probably be another couple weeks but I might just get it started open-air and reusing some parts from my current rig just to get it running, hah. That way I can get away spending very little money and be able to part out my current rig (which I've been trying to sell for a while, everyone wants it parted out not the whole thing).

Anyhow, thanks for the input, the 6 SATA ports and WiFi would be nice, but having it run as cool and quiet as possible would be nicer...