Packaging, A Closer Look & Layout Analysis
The box follows the usual design for some of the lower market motherboard products from ASRock; plain and simple with the key features printed along the middle.
Accessories are very simple, installation manual, driver CD, I/O shield and 2x SATA 6 cables.
Our first look at the board shows us the general layout, resembling the N3150-ITX in layout and feature set.
Looking at the I/O, there is 1x PS/2, 2x USB 2.0, 1x DVI, 1x DisplayPort, 1x HDMi, 4x USB 3.0, 1x Gigabit LAN, 1x SPDIF and 5x audio jacks.
Along the bottom of the board, we see the usual headers that we would come to expect from a mid-range ITX option. USB 2.0 headers, fan header, 4x SATA 6 ports and a PCIe x1 slot.
Looking at the opposite side of the board to the I/O, you have the 24-pin ATX power connection, USB 3.0 header and the first the SODIMM slots.
Lastly the top of the board; here you can see the second and last SODIMM slot and the half-size PCIe slot for use with WiFi or Bluetooth cards.
It would be interesting to see the power consumption tests on units like this using something realistic like a pico psu unit. The unit you’re using here is complete overkill and I’m a little dubious about the efficiency at these demands. It’s only pulling about 3.3% of peak output. The efficiency isn’t measured at anything below 20% I think for this classification.
I can understand wanting to standardize the test rig as much as possible but question how much sense that really makes with such disparity in the platforms themselves. Nobody in the real world is going to use a $200 800+ watt PSU for an n3700 board. The attraction is in the low power and for many in the silence. I suppose if you have it in a closet as a NAS you might use some larger power supply you had on hand. But for htpc duty almost everyone is going to go for a pico psu unit.
It would be interesting to see the power consumption tests on units like this using something realistic like a pico psu unit. The unit you’re using here is complete overkill and I’m a little dubious about the efficiency at these demands. It’s only pulling about 3.3% of peak output. The efficiency isn’t measured at anything below 20% I think for this classification.
I can understand wanting to standardize the test rig as much as possible but question how much sense that really makes with such disparity in the platforms themselves. Nobody in the real world is going to use a $200 800+ watt PSU for an n3700 board. The attraction is in the low power and for many in the silence. I suppose if you have it in a closet as a NAS you might use some larger power supply you had on hand. But for htpc duty almost everyone is going to go for a pico psu unit.
It would be interesting to see the power consumption tests on units like this using something realistic like a pico psu unit. The unit you’re using here is complete overkill and I’m a little dubious about the efficiency at these demands. It’s only pulling about 3.3% of peak output. The efficiency isn’t measured at anything below 20% I think for this classification.
I can understand wanting to standardize the test rig as much as possible but question how much sense that really makes with such disparity in the platforms themselves. Nobody in the real world is going to use a $200 800+ watt PSU for an n3700 board. The attraction is in the low power and for many in the silence. I suppose if you have it in a closet as a NAS you might use some larger power supply you had on hand. But for htpc duty almost everyone is going to go for a pico psu unit.