On the road to a new PC - All hail Minimax!

It looks like my plans to get a new PC to replace my circa 2001 top of the line "Minime" system are finally taking shape. I've pretty much decided to not get an off the shelf Dell system even though I was very pleased with my previous two Dell purchases. That decision is mostly because I've been thinking too much about system power consumption, fretting that I wouldn't be able to get the latest lower power G-0 stepping Q6600 processor, worrying about how efficient the PSU would be, and from there well it all spiraled out of my control to the point where I didn't want Dell to make all those decisions. Now I've decided tocustom build my new machine which I'll call "Minimax" in honour of its design goal to consume less power and deliver more performance.

So today I spotted a Toms Hardware review of Intel G33 chipset motherboards which really educated me on some issues relevant to my new PC search. This chip set includes a pretty powerful integrated graphics processor, the GMA 3100 which in and of itself is more than plenty for my home theater/HDTV requirements. It also supports all front side bus speeds, processors and memory configurations I could care about, and will care about in the near future (it is 45nm Penryn compatible) and because it has integrated graphics there are a good number of MicroATX format boards. MicroATX works for me because I'd like something small than the standard "mini-tower" size, but I'm not really interested in a cube or HTPC format case - to my mind they compromise too much on the airflow side and tend to run everything hotter than it needs to be.

Another thing the Tom's review told me was power consumption of a complete system (sans monitor) based around each of the three boards they reviewed. I was pretty impressed to find all boards came in under 90W at idle (and one at only 76W thanks to a less capable power regulator) which compared to the 138W of Minime is impressive. In fact even fully loaded after 90 minutes none of these systems came close to the 174W that Minime uses - the most power hungry came to 150W - barely more than Minime at idle! Now granted the system was using only a 1.8Ghz E2160 dual core processor (not Core2) which has an idle power of around 8W, but even adding another 16W for a Q6600 G-0 stepping chip that's still pretty good. And if I want I can choose one of the higher spec dual cores (up to around 2.4Ghz per core) without bumping up the idle power at all.

Now a good deal of the power saving in that total system is undoubtedly due to the integrated graphics and I've now decided that is a good thing. I really don't play games that often and gaming boards get better and cheaper all the time - if I ever feel like getting into gaming then I can easily add a graphics card later on. A motherboard with onboard graphics also saves me money because my current graphics card is AGP based and hence useless in a modern PCI Express system (I can probably still sell it for $50 on eBay).

So of the boards that Tom's Hardware reviewed I was most attracted to the Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H which has an outstanding set of ports - basically everything I really wanted and some. I'm wondering why on earth people are still building motherboard with only an analog video connector? Whatever the rationale I was really pleased the Gigabyte board had DVI-D not to mention analog VGA and HDMI. In addition it has the S/PDIF optical out that I need because my tuner lacks coax S/PDIF or discret 5.1 inputs, and the mobo also has eSATA for adding "good as internal speed" external drives - great for high capacity backup, and last but not least it has gigabit ethernet (although that is standard with the G33 chipset).

Unfortunately for me the article also talked about the forthcoming Intel G35 chipset that supersedes the G33 by using the new Intel GX3500 graphics adapter. This adds full HDVD/BluRay support, hardware 3:2 pulldown correction, WM9 decoding support (good for movies), DX10 compatibility and better 3D performance - although I've since read that the DX10 compatibility will be a while coming because it is dependent on software drivers that may not be ready until 2008. Oh well, I've no real need for Dx10 now, but having that extra performance may further delay the day when I'm tempted to get that extra power hungry graphics card for occasional gaming sessions (ummmm, Unreal Tournament 3....)

So I'm really thinking that I should wait for the G35 to appear and find an appropriate board based on it. The thing is those boards are out there in the pipeline - I've already discovered there is going to be a GA-G35M-DS2R board from Gigabyte - there's an Italian video on YouTube that shows one at Computex 2007 (in Taiwan) and a photo or two of the board out there as well. I haven't managed to locate specs but if its a straight G35 upgrade of the Gigabyte GA-G33M-S2H then its probably exactly what I want, the only question then is when? If its Q3 as promised I'll be happy, but then again Q3 is almost over and there is no sign of it on sale yet.

I've also found a set of photos of new motherboards that indicate what the competition is up to with G35 chipset boards. So by the time I ready to buy I may have to also consider some of the following G35 boards:

• Albatron PXG35
• Asus G35
• Biostar G35D2-M7
• ECS G35T-M
• FoxconnG35M-S
• Jetway G35DAG-PB
• MSI G35

The only major manufacturer I can think of that's missing in that list is Abit. I'm just hoping the selection of ports available on those systems will make my choice pretty much a no-brainer. From the photos available it seems that few if any of them include DVI-D or even HDMI - I just don't get that...

Now while I wait for G35-Mobo-mas to arrive (Christmas for G35 motherboards) I just have to figure which quiet micro-ATX case and energy efficient power supply to get, and then choose between a Core2 Duo or Core2 Quad processor. Oh decisions, decisions. Fortunately on the processor side the longer I can wait the cheaper it will be!