Some Issues
During the testing of our initial review sample we ran into a couple of problems with the motherboard and test setup. During the first run of Windows 7 installation the system simple shutoff and refused to turn back on. Employing basic problem solving and following best practices to safe guard against static shock hazard the motherboard still refused to boot sitting alone on a anti-stat mat with only the power source, monitor, and PS2 keyboard attached. In talks with Jetway we discovered that our standard 24PIN ATX power supply may have been too powerful for the board or provided an unstable supply to the tiny board and sent it to an early grave. Jetway sent us a new motherboard along with an AC power adapter brick and power daughter board. For a home theater or TV PC setup the use of an external power supply similar in shape, size, and operation as a laptop power adapter means less heat generating components inside the computer case and less fan noise. The power daughter board also helps with cable management and would enable the use of a much smaller case to house the motherboard, hard drive, etc making an even neater computer for TV setup. Kudos for Jetway for helping us get back on track and providing the additional parts to make this a true TV multimedia PC setup.
 |
 |
Another issue that we heard immediately was the tiny on board cooling fan. Equivalent in size to the fan used to cool the south-bridge on an older much hotter P4 chipset, the little bugger was very loud even during idling in the bios for 30 minutes. Possibly a slighting larger or deeper fan design would alleviate this problem. You would definitely need to change out the fan if you wanted a stealth HTPC otherwise those almost silent yet tense plot twists in movies where the lead roles whisper into each others ears will be filled with the sound of 1990’s chipset fan. One route might be to pair this board with a large passive heatsink integrated into a mini-ITX specific case which in turn uses a larger 80-120mm fan to cool the entire enclosure… I digress, lets move on to the test setup!
The Test Setup
The Jetway NC85-E350-LF will be paired with the following hardware to comprise a decent and budget friendly HTPC setup.
- 640 GB 7200rpm Western Digital Carviar Blue w/16 MB cache
- Samsung Super-WriteMaster SH-S223 DVD-R/W
- 4 GB Crucial Technology 204-pin SODIMM PC3-8500 DDR3-1066 CL7 Memory CT51264BC1067
- A Medium sized mATX cube case
Now that we have cleared that hurdle lets move on to the benchmarks and see what performance the AMD Fusion based Jetway NC85-E350-LF has to offer.
