IntegratedCPU by stefan @ 2013-04-29
The first BIOSTAR board we are reviewing features an integrated Celeron 847 processor and has proven as being a very solid board and very similar with the ECS board we have previously tested. The BIOSTAR offering also comes with a very competitive price.
At first we would like to thank BIOSTAR for offering their NM70I-847 motherboard with Onboard CPU for testing and reviewing.
“In 1980, the IT industry was growing at a phenomenal rate. With wide experience in buying and selling electronic parts as well as researching on future demands for mainboards and add-on cards , the founder of BIOSTAR GROUP, established BIOSTAR MICROTECH INTERNATIONAL CORP in 1986.
In the early years, BIOSTAR concentrated on the manufacture of mainboards built for XT form factor. To maintain steady business growth, BIOSTAR managed to keep a large portion of its capital and manpower invested on the design and development of new products, which at the same time has enabled it to stay competitive in the rapid evolution of the computer industry.
BIOSTAR has enriched its competence in the design and manufacture of products such as add-on cards, multi-media and system products to develop the market and meet the demands of customers for more integrated solutions. In order to expand its capacity to meet customer demand globally, BIOSTAR was the first to establish a manufacturing facility in China in 1990. In 1998, its sales revenues exceeded US$130 million and it ranked 227th among the top 1000 enterprises in Taiwan. Furthermore, BIOSTAR obtained an ISO 9001 certification in 1999 and became a publicly listed company in the same year. BIOSTAR’s future has limitless possibilities.”
SmartSpeedLAN
SmartSpeedLAN is a free software application which monitors and manages your PC’s network behavior. With user-friendly GUI, it allows you to select and prioritize different types of network traffic, including gaming, media streaming, communications or web surfing.You can also set any specific applications, choosing to prioritize or block accordingly. SmartSpeedLAN can feature automatic management options that use adaptive networking intelligence to ensure that you are getting the best online experience possible.
Charger Booster
Charger booster is the best and efficient charger solution for apple devices such as iPad, iPhone. Basically, Charger booster Technology is able to boost the charging time to be more efficiency and faster once any apple goods connecting to our Motherboard. With charger booster technology, you are able to charge your apple devices up to 42 % faster.
BIO-Remote 2
BIO-Remote2 Technology is featuring users a better Home Theater environment. Users who own either Android mobile or Apple goods are able to access and control your PC remotely; At this moment, you’re smart device became a intelligent and functional remote controller; more than that, BIO-Remote2 also includes both function of mouse pad and power point presentation mode.
BIO-Flasher
Update BIOS effortlessly from a USB flash disk before entering the OS.
BIO-Flasher is a convenient BIOS update tool. Just launch this tool and put the BIOS on USB pen driver before entering the OS. You can update your BIOS with only a few clicks without preparing an additional floppy disk or other complicated flash utility.
BIOScreen Utility
Personalize your desktop with customizable boot logo. BIOScreen is the new feature that lets you personalize and create your own style with unique, custom-made boot logo.
X.D.C (eXtreme Durable Capacitors)
Biostar adopts low ESR and high ripple conductive solid state caps that provide sufficient, stable power supply to the CPU. The life span can also be more than 6.25 x of ordinary liquid caps.
Dual Channel DDR3
It supports 2 or 4 DIMM Slots DDR3 memory that features data transfer rates of DDR3 2000(O.C.)/1800(O.C.)/1600/1333. The processor support 2 memory channels and setting the memory multiplier, allows selection of the channel speed. These clearly uplift the band width and boost the overall system performance.
Integrated HDMI with HDCP
Onboard HDMI connector allows full video & audio support via standard DVI output. It has industry-leading high definition video quality.
The NM70I mini-ITX motherboard from Biostar comes equipped with the Celeron 847 CPU and is shipped inside a small-sized cardboard box, with the logos of the supported technologies on the top side of the enclosure:
On the back side of the box we will find detailed information regarding the BIOS Online Update and BIOS Flasher features, along with an explanation of the logos we have previously mentioned:
A sticker with a summary of technical specifications can be found on the side:
After lifting the top of the packaging, we will find the documentation (Quick Installation Guide) in the middle:
Besides that, we will also receive an I/O shield, two SATA cables and a DVD with drivers and applications:
On the bottom layer of the box we will find the board, fully wrapped inside an anti-static bag:
The NM70 is actively cooled on the CPU with a 40nm fan and the chipset is also covered by a thin aluminum heatsink; for additional expansion we also have available one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (x8 electrical):
Near the CPU VRM we will find an Intersil ISL6363 multiphase PWM regulator:
The LAN interface is provided on this board by the Realtek RTL8111F Gigabit Ethernet controller:
Nearby we will also find the Realtek ALC662 High Definition Audio CODEC, along with a red F_AUDIO header:
In the vicinity of the PCI-Express slot we can find the Winbond BIOS chip, along one of the system fan headers:
To the right we have two additional red USB 2.0 headers, 3 SATA2 ports (red), a single SATA3 black port, the Front Panel header, one Printer Port header and also a COM port header:
Near the 24-pin ATX power connector, we also have the CPU fan header:
The Super_IO chip is an ITE IT8728F and near it we also have the CMOS Reset jumper:
The board is also equipped with two DDR3 memory slots:
The rear panel connectors are the following (from left to right):
- PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors
- HDMI port
- VGA port
- 4x USB 2.0 ports
- LAN port
- Audio Jacks
The small 40mm fan cools a tiny black heatsink and features no additional logos in the middle:
On the back side of the board we will find some additional serial numbers:
The NM70I-847 board from Biostar does not feature an UEFI interface, but with a simple Aptio Setup Utility; in the Main tab we will get to see some more details regarding the BIOS version and date, the total quantity of installed RAM and we can adjust the system date and time:
The Advanced menu is split into multiple sections like PCI Subsystem, ACPI Settings and so on:
From the PCI Subsystem Settings menu, we can select the PCI ROM Priority, adjust the PCI Latency Timer and also other register settings:
The ACPI Settings menu allows us to adjust most power management settings:
From the CPU Configuration menu we can check the currently installed CPU specifications and enable/disable some instructions:
The SATA configuration menu will allow us to disable the SATA controller, choose the operating mode or enable/disable S.M.A.R.T.. Here we will also see a list of connected devices to the SATA ports:
The USB Configuration menu will allow us to adjust some of the USB bus configuration settings:
Intel RST can be also enabled from the next menu:
The CPU fan speed can be also adjusted from the Smart Fan Control option:
The Super IO Configuration menu allows us to adjust settings regarding the Serial and Parallel ports:
The PC Health Status section will show us the current temperatures for the CPU and chipset, along with the CPU and system fan speeds, but also the CPU, DRAM and PSU voltages:
The Chipset main menu is also split into three different sections:
The PCH-IO Configuration menu lets us further select options regarding the USB bus and audio:
The Onboard PCI-E Devices menu has options to disable the LAN interface:
The SA Configuration menu has 3 more available options regarding Graphics, NB PCIe and Memory configuration:
From the Graphics Configuration menu, we can adjust different settings regarding the onboard video:
The NB PCIe Configuration menu will allow us to alter even more advanced settings:
Some more memory settings can be found inside the Memory Information tab:
The Boot menu will allow us to select the priority of the boot devices along with some miscellaneous options:
The Security tab lets us set an administrator/user password for the BIOS:
Some more CPU-related options can be adjusted from the Performance menu:
The RAM timings can be configured separately, along with the operating voltage. From the BIOSTAR Memory Insight menu, we will be able to see the memory pre-programmed timings:
Finally, we have the Save & Exit menu, from where we can discard or save the settings that we have just modified:
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
IMC
NM70 PCH
The integrated graphics solution is simply named Intel HD Graphics that is based on the HD Graphics 2000:
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. During the time of testing, the ambient temperature was 20.1 degrees Celsius:
System Full Load measurement was recorded while running the AIDA64 System Stability Test and checking on Stress CPU, Stress FPU, Stress Cache, Stress System Memory, Stress GPUs.
In IDLE, we have recorded a value of 18.06W, while in Full Load about 49.56W.
On the installation DVD we will also get SmartSpeedLan, which is an application for optimizing our Internet connection. In the Mode tab we can choose some of the pre-defined profiles:
The Application tab will show the active processes and from here we can choose their priorities or block them completely:
The Advanced tab will let us specify our Internet connection parameters:
The System info tab will also give us relevant information on the hardware components and network traffic:
The last tab, About, will give us more info regarding the program version:
A small Temperature Monitor application is also available on the DVD:
As with the ECS NM70-I2 board we have tested before it, the BIOSTAR NM70I-847 also features an integrated Celeron 847, 4 SATA ports (3x SATA2 and 1x SATA3), 4 USB 2.0 ports on the IO and the possibility of using 4 additional by using the onboard headers and also for video output we have one HDMI and one VGA port. USB 3.0 is nowhere to be seen since the manufacturer hasn’t included a separate controller for it. The audio solution is different though, since ECS opted for a VIA solution and BIOSTAR has integrated a Realtek CODEC, which is more popular.
The included 40mm fan does a great job cooling the CPU during high load, while the chipset heatsink can get hot at times; this small issue is solved right away if we place the board in a case which is actively cooled.
The BIOSTAR board trades punches with the ECS variant and in the end they are about the same; we also get a PCI-Express x16 slot (x8 electrical) for using an extra video card, TV tuner, sound card or others.
The product is priced really competitive, so we can find the board at online stores for about 62 Euros.
We would like to thank again to BIOSTAR for making this review possible!