Jetway NC94-510-LF Mini-ITX Atom Motherboard

Introduction:

In today’s economy everybody is trying to get by with the cheapest and most versatile components they can. Toward this drive for lower cost there has been a rise in the desire for small low power multi-function machines to serve as home servers and media centers. Jetway a Taiwanese company has recently paired one of Intel’s powerful and energy efficient Atom D510 chip with their Mini-ITX board in an attempt to provide a versatile machine which can be used as a media center or home server it could also pull off a very light gaming rig with its included PCI-e X16 slot. The question is will the NC94-510LF be the perfect marriage of functionality and efficiency or will it be a disappointment.

System Setup

• JetWay NC94-510-LF motherboard.
• Chenbro ES30086 Case
• 4GBram Corsair XMS2 ram
• 2x 250GB Seagate SATA drives
• Microsoft Windows Home Server ( a derivative of Server 2003 )

Features:

• Intel Atom D510/D410 and NM10 chipset.

• Onboard Intel Atom CPU, with low power consumption never denies high performance.

• Support CPU CLK 166 MHz

• Support DDRII DIMM 667/800 up to 8GB.

• Support PCI-Ex16 (by 4 lane) card.

• Onboard INTEL 82552V Megabit Ethernet LAN PHY Chip.

• Integrated ALC662 6-channel HD audio CODEC.

• Support USB2.0 data transport demands.

• Support RS232/422/485 and watchdog.

Specifications:

CPUNew Intel Pinetrail CPU’s	INTEL ® Processor Single-Core D410 CPU (45nm,1.66GHz,512MB L2 Cache) INTEL ® Processor Dual-Core D510 CPU (45nm,1.66GHz,1024MB L2 Cache)
Chipset	INTEL® Processor D510/D410 + NM10 Front Side Bus 667MHz
Memory	2 * 240-pin DIMM Sockets for un-buffered Dual Channel DDR2 800/667 SDRAM up to 4 GB
Expansion Slots(Only enough power to support 4 lanes though with an additional power connector you could have a full 16x pipeline.)	1 * PCI-E x16 slot (by 4)
Storage(Unfortunately only 2 SATA connectors this limits your storage capabilities.)	2 * Serial ATA2 3Gb/s connectors 1 * Floppy connector
Audio	Realtek ALC662 6-Channel HD Audio CODEC
Ethernet LAN(The box says Gigabit Lan, this is not accurate the actual controller is only 10/100)	INTEL 82552V 10M/100M LAN
USB(Fortunately the ample supply of USB ports compensates for the lack of SATA connectors.)	Embedded 8 * USB 2.0/1.1
Special Features	Features Intel ProcessorSupport DC FAN Support CPU Smart Fan
Rear Panel I/O	4 * USB 2.0/1.1 ports1 * PS/2 Mouse & 1 * Keyboard connector 1 * RJ-45 port 3 * Audio I/O ports ( Line-in, mic and line-out ) 1 * VGA port 1 * COM port 1 * Parallel port
Internal I/O	2 * USB 2.0/1.1 headers for4 USB 2.0 ports3 * NB / Chassis Fan connectors; 1 * 20-pin ATX Power connector 1 * LVDS header/1* CD IN/1*LPC 1 * AUDIO header 1* RS232/RS422/RS485 connectors 1 * GPIO header
BIOS	AMI 8MB SPI Flash ROM
Functional	ATM, Automation, Medical Equipment, Security, Networking, POS, General Application, Gaming Machine, Transportation
Packaging	Color Box Dimension：200(W) x 200(D) x 70(H)mm
Certificate	CE, FCC, RoHS
Temperature(Low running temp is because of the low power TDP of the Atom D510)	Operating within 0~50 centigrade Storage within -20-85 centigrade
Form Factor	Mini ITX Form Factor (17cmx17cm)

With all the key factors necessary for a great home server/media server the NC94-510LF seems to be a great solution. Jetway has incorporated support for 2 SATA drives, up to 8 USB Ports, on board audio, and the aforementioned PCI-e x16 slot which could be used for a variety of purposes.  We would have liked to see additional SATA ports but realistically this is a mini-ITX board and meant to be placed into a small chassis which usually do not have room for more than 2 hard drives.
Upsides to the NC94-510-LF are its low power consumption and consequently its low heat output, its small footprint, and its’ ability to be an out of the box ready to run solution without the need for additional cards and adapters.

Let’s take a look at what you can expect when the NC94-510-LF arrives at your doorstep.

Packaging:

While the packaging is nice I would like to point out a flaw that I have found regarding one of the last pictures more precisely the one regarding the system specs on the bottom left. Jetway has tagged this motherboard as having Gigabit LAN and yet the card that is on the board is the INTEL 82552V 10M/100M Ethernet. Unfortunately during testing I could not get drivers to work for utilizing the network card in either Windows 7 or in Windows Home Server all I would receive is an error message says “device doesn’t exist”. We did report this issue to Jetway and they are working on an answer for us. When we get it we will be sure to update this review and our readers with their response.
That being said the box for the Jetway NC94-510-LF clearly states that this board is intended for a home server, media center, home theater PC, and gaming machine. Just looking at the spec’s I would agree that this would be a great motherboard to base any one of these applications on, except possibly being used as a gaming PC as this requires quite a  powerful processor which while capable the D510 is clearly not strong enough running at only 1.66Ghz.

A Closer Look:

The motherboard itself is really nothing to look at a very basic color scheme of green and yellow. Mounted on the bottom of the PCB board is a single PCI-E 16x slot though the board will only be able to provide the power for 4 rails instead of the full 16. Next to the PCI-E  are two SATA II slots unfortunately for a home server application only having two SATA ports severely limits the server application as most servers should have a raid array in order to maintain data integrity. Fortunately the lack of multiple SATA ports is somewhat mitigated by the abundant number of USB ports allowing for backup on external drives, my only wish would be to have e-SATA ports for a faster transfer rate to external storage.

The mother board fit inside the case nicely and securing the 4 screws was a breeze. On first start up it is good to note that the built in fan on the board is very quiet putting out a light hum that once secured in the case is not noticeable. Plugging this unit into a Killawatt shows us that the board plus the two drives only draws 38-40 watts of power even under load this is less than most home lights and certainly less than most other computers with traditional desktop processors.

Bios and overclocking

The bios itself is pretty basic, very similar to an OEM bios screen with the exception that its not locked down. The bios lets you adjust the few features of the atom chip such as Hyper threading and Execute-Disable Bit capability both of which are nice features to have the ability to change but frankly you will probably never change them from the default values. Other than the few chip features and the standard power settings available on all boards the bios shows us that the Atom D510 chip runs at a cool 86^o F and the board itself runs at just a few degrees higher which is probably a result of the low clearance on the Micro ATX case causing heat to stay pretty centralized around the board, the VCore voltage is visible at 1.160V but is unchangeable.

The primary bios selection screen though most of the info is redundant	Advanced bios options which are pretty standard chipset options.
The only available overclocking	PC health here you can see but you can’t touch the CPU voltage and temps.

Overclocking on this board comes in the form of being able to change timings on the ram. The inability to overclock the Atom processor will inevitably make some enthusiasts cringe, still it was a nice gesture to allow the manipulation of ram timings, and adjusting of the speed of DRAM from 667Mhz to 800Mhz. Enthusiasts would be better served with full ATX and CPU boards targeted towards higher performance which the D510 is clearly not. For its intended use the D510 meets and exceeds the needs of consumers looking for computing without gaming and overclocking.

Conclusion:

Overall my impression of this board has left somewhat of a bitter taste in my mouth. The board itself is good for its intended use which was a home server or media center with little flexibility thought I would like to note that the media center aspect of this board is mitigated by the requirement of an additional graphics card because the board is lacking Nvidia ION support. My frustration with the lack of network support will hopefully be fixed in a future driver release from Jetway though as of the time of the this writing this board would not allow the installation of the network driver in the several OS’s. I tried even grabbing the driver directly from Intel with no success. With the exception of the LAN the machine handled normal computing tasks well maybe not as good as a traditional desktop processor but I rarely had to wait for a task to be complete when opening applications or normal operation of the PC, obviously lack of LAN cripples any sort of media server or network tasks but for testing purposes I installed a USB wireless N card so I could see the impact of serving up Hulu content to the TV the processor handled this content with very little stress. This test leads me to conclude that if the network driver issue gets fixed you will have a great media center/server and one that stays cool and runs on sub 50w of power.