The New Workhorse

A draft/cart/heavy/work-horse is by definition bred to do hard work.

Every few years, in the computing world, a design comes along that is exceptional in not only performance, but longevity. When that's combined with a particularly well-matched operating system of the same characteristics..... it's like, Patton and the tank, Nimitz and the aircraft carrier, Jordan and Pippen, Aikman and Smith and Irvin..... whatever analogy you want to use..... it like magic! 

In this case, it's Microsoft's Windows 7, and Intel's LGA 1155 generation processors. Why not the 1156, or 1150 you ask?

Unlike the 1156 that went before, and the 1150 that came after, this was a relatively long-lived socket. Much like the 775 that was home to the Core Duo/Core 2 Duo family of processors, it defined the DDR3 (vs. DDR2) generation of computers. It was not only powerful but long lasting as as well. Running Windows 7, the processors of that generation still make very viable machines to this day. They're versatile.... and they're cheap! My main workstation runs an i7-3770 on a Z77 chipset, and I've got i5s and i3 as well as Celerons of that generation scattered throughout the house. We recently finished the conversion of our laptop fleet to that generation of machines as well, sending the last of the Penryn C2Ds to retirement.

What brings on this post to extol the virtues of this "obsolete" socket? Price, of course! My bedroom HTPC started acting funny last week, so I've been looking at options versus simply reloading it. While in the midst of looking around to see what's out there, I ran across the above; a Gigabyte B75TN. It's a little bit of an odd duck and not something that most folks would probably be familiar with, even it they build their own machines. It's not "odd" due to the Mini-ITX form-factor. That's pretty mainstream these days. No, this board conforms to a "thin" Mini-ITX form-factor that Intel set forth some years ago. They are really designed to go inside of all-in-one machines. Since the MBs on those things ride "piggy-back" behind the monitor, they needed to be small AND thin, thus the squashed down I/O area and SO-DIMMs. Why this board? They're cheap right now. I am frugal you know! This one is on eBay for $29 (before shipping).  

Anything else about these board? They are designed from the ground up as "low powered". If you look carefully at the image, you'll see that it isn't set up to use a regular power supply. Instead they are spec'd to take "wide-range" DC input. I'm using an old 16v ThinkPad PSU on a similar board right now. So obviously, the perfect match for it would be one of the low-powered i3 or i5 processors from that generation. Besides the 65w "S" spec'd cpus, Intel also created the "T" spec'd processors that have TDPs of either 35 or 45 watts! That's low! If you throw a mSATA on there (boards of this spec have that), these things will make a heck of a small form factor, low-draw HTPC!

When you consider the other end of the spectrum is my workstation residing in the ginormous Cosmos II case, the versatility is undeniable!