Review

Gigabyte GA-J1800M-D2P-IN Review

All the recent we were reviewing all high-end and Haswell-E boards totally forgetting the more casual computer market, so it's time for some low cost Small Form Factor (SFF) motherboard review. Both AMD and Intel recently released new families of low cost, low TDP desktop CPUs. AMD launched the AM1 platform with Sempron and Athlon “Kabini" processors, while Intel released the “Bay Trail-D" Celeron and Pentium CPUs, recognizable by the use of the letter “J" on the model naming.

The Bay Trail platform uses Intel's Atom based Silvermont architecture covers four SoC areas:
- Smartphones, in the form of Merrifield and Moorefield
- Tablets, Notebooks and Embedded in the form of Bay Trail
- Microservers and Storage in the form of Avoton
- Network and Communications in the form of Rangeley

And comes in four forms:
- Bay Trail-D, for Desktop Systems at 6W to 20W
- Bay Trail-I, for Embedded and Automotive at 5W to 10W
- Bay Trail-M, for Mobile and Netbooks at 4W to 7.5W
- Bay Trail-T, for Tablets and Hybrids at 2W

Today we are reviewing GIGABYTE GA-J1800M-D2P-IN, a fully integrated motherboard featuring the Intel® Celeron™ J1800 dual-core processor. Being entirely fanless, it is perfect for always-on, mission critical systems and also, noise-sensitive digital entertainment systems.

Now let's see what this Intel Celeron J1800 based board have for us.

Package

Looking at the front of the box, we see gigabyte logo with Ultra durable graphics and motherboard model no. At the rear of the box, we find that Gigabyte goes into great detail on the specifications and features of the motherboard.

Inside the box

Looks

Board is a solid build in a black PCB

Specifications

Features

  • Built-in Intel® Celeronâ„¢ J1800 (2.41 GHz) Dual-Core processor
  • GIGABYTE Ultra Durableâ„¢ Technology
  • Legacy IDE interface storage support
  • Dual channel DDR3/-L UDIMM slot support
  • All Solid Capacitors with Humidity Protection New Glass Fabric PCB design
  • LAN with high ESD Protection
  • D-SUB ports on rear panel with High Quality Audio Capacitors
  • GIGABYTE On/Off Chargeâ„¢ for USB devices
  • PCIe and PCI interface for wide-range expansion card selections

Layout

Detailed layout of board.

1. Intel® Celeron™ J1800 Soc

2. ATX Power connector (24-pin EATXPWR)

3. 2 x DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory

4. ATX CPU Power Connector(4-pin ATX12V)

5. Back Panel Connectors 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port, 1 x D-Sub port, 1 x parallel port, 1 x USB 3.0/2.0 port, 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports, 1 x RJ-45 port, 3 x audio jacks (Line In, Line Out, Mic In)

6. 14.System fan header and Soc fan header

7. USB 2.0/1.1 headers

8. 2 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors

9. IDE connector

10. Front panel header and Clear CMOS jumper

11. 2 x serial port headers

12. Front panel audio header and S/PDIF Out header

13. PCI Express x1 slot and PCI slot.

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Removing Heat-sinks

Component Layout

Let's now see what all components Gigabyte have planned for this board.

1. Intel® Celeron™ J1800. PCB soldered processor with BGA socket Soc.

2. ISL 95836 is dual 3+5 PWM Controller IC provides a complete solution for IMVP-7/VR12â„¢compliant microprocessor and graphic processor core power supplies.

3. RJK03B74F4 is Renesas Silicon N Channel Power MOSFET with 30A of drain current and RJK03934D3 Renesas Silicon N Channel Power MOSFET with 40A of drain current.

4. Gigabyte uses MXIC MX 2SU6435F a capacity of 64 Mb for storing BIOS

5. DRAM Power section consists of Controller IC RT81200 and RT9199 regulator circuit, and two MOSFETS

6. GL850S is Genesys Logic's USB2.0 Hub chip.

7. IT8620E is SuperIO chip for LPT port, COM Ports, PS2 port , monitors fans, voltages and other key metrics for normal operation.

8. Two Serial port controlled by two TI 232GG chip

9. Realtek 8111G GbE LAN chip

10. Realtek ALC887 codec, with HD Audio and S/PDIF Out supported , along with high quality Nippon Chemicon ARE series audio capacitors.

RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) suite is used for testing Gigabyte High Definition audio against Asus Xonar DX Sound card. You can see clearly the difference between Noise level, dynamic rang and Total harmonic distortion percentage produced.

RMAA Asus Xonar DX

RMAA Gigabyte

11. ITE IT8213F is a IDE Controller chip with Preliminary Specification of V0.2

12. ITE IT8892E is PCIe to PCI Bridge chip.

Testing

Test system configuration - 8GB Kingston HyperX Fury 1600Mhz RAM, Samsung 830 SSD 256GB, Antec VP500PC PSU

BIOS

Bundled Softwares

Benchmarks

Power Consumption

Wattage reading as per displayed by APC Pro 1000VA (Model no. BR1000G-IN) UPS. Monitor is not connected to this UPS during Power consumption readings.

Pros

  • Low Power Consumption
  • Good for general office works
  • PCI and Com ports, useful when used as industrial pc board.
  • 3 years Warranty

Cons

  • IDE Port, Seriously does anyone need an IDE port now days.

Conclusion

After testing this GA-J1800M-D2P-IN motherboard, I found it giving a nice performance when used for general documentation work or internet surfing, with just 21Watts of electricity consumption. Whereas for same purpose my i7 based desktop consumed about 55Watts with about same performance. Straight 50% less electricity consumption cool.

In addition for general office PCs or helpdesk machines or billing counter PCs, a solution based on the Celeron J1800 is low cost and more energy efficient. GIGABYTE GA-J1800M-D2P-IN costs about Rs.4000/- which includes board and a CPU, half the price of any decent dual core board-cpu bundle, half the electricity consumption and very-very less heat immersion.

If you're running a helpdesk center or a data entry portal with 50 or more desktops, just calculate yourself how much money you will be saving with a Celeron J1800 solution.

Manufacturers Info

Site Link

Thanks.

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