IntegratedCPU by stefan @ 2013-02-05
The NM70-I2 motherboard from ECS comes equipped with either the Intel Celeron 847 1.1GHz dual-core or the Intel Celeron 807 1.5GHz single core CPU, has Intel HD Graphics for video output, supports installation of two DDR3 memory modules and also comes with 4 SATA ports, one of them supporting the 6Gbps standard.
At first I would like to thank ECS for offering me their NM70-I2 Mini-ITX Motherboard for testing and reviewing
"ECS, the Elitegroup Computer Systems, was established in 1987, and is approaching its 23rd year of business. More than two decades, ECS has overcome a great deal of obstacles facing new businesses and has experienced the joy of significant growth and development. Her main focus has expanded to not only motherboards, but also desktop and notebook computers, graphics cards and other mobile products. ECS is strongly committed to develop cutting-edge technology in order to generate innovative products under environmental friendly designs. ECS comprehensive system of quality control provides our clients with reassurance and fosters long term cooperation.
Green Touch, Good Life
ECS commits to protect the Earth by reducing the global environmental loading as the priority of her corporate sustainable strategy. Confronting more and more global environmental impacts; climate change, natural resources depletion and the crisis of ecological imbalance, ECS devotes the Green Solutions for the Earth sustainable development without compromising customer satisfaction. ECS expects bringing people with more Green Touch for a Good Life.
Starting from 2006, ECS has been implementing the “ECS Green Competitive Advantage and Quality Plan” and introduced Green Products through 4-stages of non-toxic management; including non-toxic suppliers, non-toxic material, non-toxic manufacturing & processing, and, non-toxic quality controls. Besides, ECS is recognized under the IECQQC080000 Certification in her two major manufacturing sites in China; Golden Elite Technology at Shenzhen and ESZ at Suzhou. That empowers ECS desire of providing end users with HSF (Hazardous Substance Free) products to ensure a quality green life.
As a top-down decision, ECS dedicates to offering clean and environmentally friendly computer products for consumers through product design, purchase, production, sale and services to the 3R environmental objectives – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. The ECS engineering teams are engaged to create products under a Green concept by size reduction, product longevity, easy disassembly, recycle potential, substance restriction and energy saving. For example, ECS green motherboards apply to the three environmental directives – the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) promoted by the European Union; RoHS (Restriction on Hazardous Substance Directive) and EuP (Eco design of Energy-using Products Directive).
Nowadays, ECS integrates Green concept in her daily operation. From the headquarters on Taiwan to worldwide branches, ECS practices energy saving, water recycling, Green data center, planting and so on to reduce greenhouse gas emission for mitigating the climate change. With continuous efforts to conduct business in a sustainable way, ECS recognizes that we are dependent on the Earth and strive to improve the quality of life for people everywhere!
Global Network
The headquarters of ECS is located in Taipei Neihu Technology Park. We have offices in major cities around the world. We are committed to product development and expanding the scale of our business. With our branches all over the Americas, Europe, and Asia, ECS localizes sales and retail in order to provide immediate and convenient service for our customers.
-Taipei, Taiwan
-Tokyo, Japan
-Seoul, Korea
-Wijchen, Netherlands
-Fremont, USA
-Moscow, Russia
-Sao Paulo, Brazil
Manufacturing Sites
ECS adopts a vertical integration structure of design, component manufacturing, and system assembly. At present, ECS has established two manufacturing locations; well-developed supply chain capabilities, and well-monitored production links; and the capacity to adapt to the needs of the ever-changing market.
-Golden Elite Technology (Shenzhen), China
-ESZ (Suzhou), China"
In this review we will look upon the NM70-I2 Mini-ITX board from ECS, which is meant to be installed in low power consumption machines, media centers, generally computers that do not need a lot of computing power. The CPU that comes pre-soldered can be either the Intel Celeron 847 or the 807. Our sample has arrived along with the Celeron 847, which is based on a Sandy Bridge core, is an Ultra Low Voltage dual core processor for entry-level machines. The CPU also integrates a graphics core named by Intel “HD Graphics” and is based upon the HD Graphics 2000. The CPU comes with a total of 17W TDP and has an integrated DDR3 memory controller, 2MB of L3 cache and also supports Intel SpeedStep Technology; the top side of the packaging contains some logos of the supported technologies:
On the back side of the box we will see the main product features explained in detail:
By lifting the top cover, we will discover the board enclosed in an anti-static bag, and the accessories are stored in a separate compartment:
The bundle is not very rich and here we can include two SATA cables, along with the I/O shield and an User’s Guide with the drivers/applications DVD:
Inside the guide we will find in multiple languages all the necessary instructions to get the installation going:
The small motherboard comes with a black PCB and the design is not very crowded:
Near the SuperIO we can find a LDC and onboard Serial Port headers:
The LAN interface on this board is provided by the Realtek RTL8111E Gigabit Ethernet controller:
Compared to the most other manufacturers that use another Realtek CODEC for sound, here we will find a VIA Vinyl VT1705 6-channel HD Audio CODEC:
The PWM of the board is controlled by the Richtek RT8167A dual single-phase synchronous Buck:
The parallel port header and the CMOS jumper can be found on the top side of the board:
Nearby we will also find a free system fan header:
The bottom side of the board comes with the NM70 PCH, along with four SATA ports (3xSATA2 and a single SATA3) and the PCI-Express slot; between the memory slots and the PCI-Express slot we will also get two Front Panel USB 2.0 headers, the SPDIF out and Case open headers:
Near the UEFI chip we will also find the Front Panel header:
The ATX 24-pin power connector is situated near the two grey memory slots:
Between the CPU and the memory slots we will find the CMOS battery, along with a small buzzer:
The CPU is covered with a small heatsink, which is also cooled by a small fan, which is silent at all times:
On the I/O, we will find A PS/2 mouse and keyboard port, one VGA port, HDMI, a COM port, 4 USB 2.0 ports, the LAN port and the audio jacks:
The board BIOS is not coming with an UEFI interface, but with a more standard Aptio Setup Utility. As we will see, there aren’t a lot of options that we can set which will modify the system performances. In the Main tab, we will be able to set the system language, and also adjust date/time:
The Advanced menu comes with multiple sub-sections like LAN Configuration, PC Health Status and so on:
The LAN Configuration menu will let us enable or disable the LAN interface:
The Smart Fan Function from the PC Health Status menu will allow to fine-tune the fan speed depending on the temperature and here we will also see some more details regarding the system temperatures and fan speeds:
The Power Management Setup menu shows the well-known “Resume by” options, EUP Function and we can also specify the Power LED type:
The ACPI Settings menu has only one option available:
The CPU Configuration menu will show us more details regarding the CPU and here we will be also able to adjust the CPU power states, Intel VT and more. The CPU does not come with Turbo capabilities but it gets shown anyway in the list:
The SATA Configuration menu has the currently attached storage devices listed, and here we’ll be also able to set the SATA mode:
The next menu allows us to enable or disable the USB interface:
The SuperIO menu comes with the possibility of setting the options regarding the Serial and Parallel interfaces:
The Chipset menu also comes with different sub-sections like System Agent Configuration, PCH Configuration or ME Configuration:
The System Agent configuration menu gives us options regarding the IGPU memory allocation, but also regarding the Multi-Monitor function:
The PCH Configuration section allow us to enable or disable the audio interface or set the Case Open warning:
The ME Configuration menu only shows us its current version:
Inside the “Tweak” menu we can’t really modify a lot of options, having available only the Auto Detect DIMM-PCI Clk and Spread Spectrum options available:
From the Boot menu we can set the priority of the boot devices:
The Security menu allows to set the Administrator password:
Finally, we have the Exit menu, where we can choose to save, discard or load the factory defaults:
In order to start testing the board, we equipped it with one GeIL Black Dragon 4GB DDR2133 (@1333) memory module, but also a Hitachi Travelstar 5K250 250GB HDD. We installed the latest Windows 7 x64 from scratch and got the tests going. Here is some information that we could obtain on the internal hardware, thanks to the specialized programs:
CPU-Z CPU Information Tab
CPU-Z CPU Caches Tab
CPU-Z Mainboard Tab
CPU-Z Memory Tab
GPU-Z Graphics Card Info Tab
AIDA64 gives us even some more details regarding the computer components:
CPU Information
Motherboard Information
(not fully recognized at the moment of testing)
IMC
NM70 PCH
The integrated graphics solution is simply named Intel HD Graphics that is based on the HD Graphics 2000:
On the installation DVD we will also find eBLU for updating the BIOS to the latest version, eDLU which helps us find the latest drivers on the ECS website or eSF for playing with the fan profiles. Besides the long list of trial software, we will also find there a pre-activated TruStudio Pro software version which, unfortunately is not compatible with the VIA CODEC present on the board.
To test the computer thermals, we have first left the computer in IDLE for about 30 minutes and then we fired up 3DMark2003 in loop mode, for an additional 30 minutes. The minimum and maximum temperatures of all internal components were recorded by the latest HWINFO utility:
To see how much performance boost we get when a mainstream GPU solution is attached, we have installed a Radeon HD 7750 video card in the provided PCI-Express slot, which sports the stock frequencies. Here are the results:
3DMark 2003
3DMark 2005
3DMark 2006
PCMark 2005
PCMark Vantage
PCMark 7
Counterstrike
We at Madshrimps really enjoy testing systems like these which have an integrated CPU and come with very low power consumption. The NM70-I2 model only requires one or two RAM modules along with a HDD or SSD to function (of course, we did not include the power supply in this enumeration). The board comes with two video outputs (analog and HDMI) and is equipped with 4 USB 2.0 ports on the I/O; speaking of the USB ports, we would have liked to have at least two extra USB 3.0 available or a combination between two 2.0 and two 3.0.
During high load periods, the CPU can get a little hot, but it is cooled with ease to acceptable levels by the small fan, which is very silent.
The CPU processing power is quite impressive for such a low clock and it succeeded to beat all other similar platforms in the performed tests; in consequence, it feels snappier than the regular Atom or the first generation Brazos platforms. The Integrated Graphics performance is not that great though, but usually platforms like these are not generally used for gaming; if we want to also game on this platform, we can enhance its 3D performances by installing a mainstream graphics card in the provided PCI-Express slot. As we could see from the performed benchmarks, the 3D aspect has been increased quite a bit.
These being said, we cannot hesitate to recommend the platform, which can be left on 24/7 with server functions, watching Full HD videos or occasional web browsing or chat.
The NM70-I2 is available for about 75 Euros online.
I would like to thank again to ECS for making this review possible!