I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

[Evil Lurker]

If a motherboard manufacturer would do it, I would love to buy such a board, even if its for a platform several years old.

Yeah I know it sounds crazy, but think of it...

There are a plethora of cheap cheap cheap used laptop CPU's floating around out there, most of which will more than likely never find a home, cause lets face it... laptop CPUs are for the most part a one shot affair. When a laptop dies or is upgraded, the CPU might as well be orphaned even if it is still good.

Basically take one of those CPU's, couple it with a nice graphics card, and you would have a nice quiet energy efficient HTPC rig for peanuts... provided they could keep the cost of the board down.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

They do.
I have several like that.
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There is also a CPU called a Sossaman which is branded as a Xeon but it's really just a laptop C2D core that is enabled for dual CPU configurations.
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[ratdude747]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

If a motherboard manufacturer would do it, I would love to buy such a board, even if its for a platform several years old.

Yeah I know it sounds crazy, but think of it...

There are a plethora of cheap cheap cheap used laptop CPU's floating around out there, most of which will more than likely never find a home, cause lets face it... laptop CPUs are for the most part a one shot affair. When a laptop dies or is upgraded, the CPU might as well be orphaned even if it is still good.

Basically take one of those CPU's, couple it with a nice graphics card, and you would have a nice quiet energy efficient HTPC rig for peanuts... provided they could keep the cost of the board down.

they did... they are a bit rare.

what really was cool was the ASUS adapter that allowed one to use a pentium M cpu in s478 mobo... wish I had one of those...

[Uranium-235]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

right now there is only PGA 998, and its a newer socket, and the processors are more expensive.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

they did... they are a bit rare.

Still make them.
Not rare.
The more current the CPUs it takes the more it will cost, up to like $350.
The Pentium-M versions show up all the time and are sometimes cheap.
[Picked up two of those last month for ~$35.]
C2D versions run a little more but not too bad.
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There's a guy on ebay that's been trying to unload a bunch of Asus/HP OEM models for over a year and he's asking under $17.99 before shipping.
http://www.ebay.com/dsc/i.html?_nkw=...LH_TitleDesc=1
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[PCBONEZ]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

If you want full sized boards [vice mini-itx] then Jetway, Asus, MSI, AOpen, Itox and DFI make most of them.
Primarily AOpen and Itox.
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[PCBONEZ]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

right now there is only PGA 998, and its a newer socket, and the processors are more expensive.

No, socket 479 are quite common.
They can be either Pentium-M or C2D depending on the chipset.
The i945 chipset can do C2D in socket 479.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/370554731743
[Sorry, had to buy it before someone found it. Now I have 3.]
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/360358907667
[That ad has been on eBay for around 2 years - Since I lived at my last house. He started with more than 10. He only has one left. For a while there was a second seller listing them. I bought 3 NIB. This one and the one I just mentioned above have a discrete chrontel chip onboard with yipper out so hardware HDTV encoding with no DRM and no video card is needed. On the full ATX version the PCI-E 1x slot was a mistake. It works but it's in the wrong place so you'd have be creative to use it.]
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/360348678944
http://www.ebay.com/itm/320426181832
[Those show up fairly often. I don't like SIS.]
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/360409363322
http://www.ebay.com/itm/400083424038
[C2D - skt 479 but overpriced IMHO. Been there a long time too.]
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/170402656981
[C2D and been listed for at least 6 months. Is a mini-board though.]
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/250721210131
[That one is crap but it's been there for months.]
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/280566159797
[Have $$$ can go with a Tyan. Been listed forever.]
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/160656029449
[One of the industrial mobo brands. Almost always a few of those. I got one that takes C2D w/PCI-E x16 + PCI-E x1 + PCI for $9 because the seller didn't know the make/model or specs and that scared the competition off.]
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http://www.ebay.com/itm/140502692093
[Been there for around 2 years. I know because around 2 years ago I bought one from the same ad. Has dual gigabit lan. Makes a nice low power managed bridge.]
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See, not hard to find at all.
Most of those have been listed for months and a few for over a year.
Just have to know what to look for.
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[PCBONEZ]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

And an afterthought tip for Pentium-M boards/chips.
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Unless you can't get around it for some reason, don't go for the 400FSB only mobos.
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The P-M 2Ghz@/400FSB typically costs 3x or more than what the 2Ghz@/533FSB does.
If you're patient the 2Ghz@/533FSB P-M can be had for under $10.
. Which means you can spend more for a better board and hit the same overall build cost.
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[mockingbird]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

Laptop processors are designed to run at high speeds with less power... If desktop boards came out with laptop CPU sockets, it would cut into desktop CPU sales heavily...

Laptop Core2 chips run for $10-20... You can get T7xx CPUs for next to nothing, and even the 1066 P8xx CPUs run very cheap.

Who wouldn't prefer a laptop CPU with a much higher potential for overlock, or even much lower power consumption than a desktop CPU at normal speed?

I've never seen a Socket P or Socket G desktop motherboard.

[Evil Lurker]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

Laptop processors are designed to run at high speeds with less power... If desktop boards came out with laptop CPU sockets, it would cut into desktop CPU sales heavily...

Laptop Core2 chips run for $10-20... You can get T7xx CPUs for next to nothing, and even the 1066 P8xx CPUs run very cheap.

Who wouldn't prefer a laptop CPU with a much higher potential for overlock, or even much lower power consumption than a desktop CPU at normal speed?

I've never seen a Socket P or Socket G desktop motherboard.

Your right about T7xx series CPUs being ass cheap. Like a T7300 for $15 cheap. That is a 4 meg cache, 2.0ghz, 800mhz FSB CPU. And it runs at 35W. Tack on $30ish for one of those Calcite motherboards and another $20 for a few gigs of RAM and one would have the basis for a fairly decent HTPC box. Couple it with say a Radeon 5570 and it would be good to go for $100.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: I wish they made desktop motherboards using laptop sockets.

Your right about T7xx series CPUs being ass cheap. Like a T7300 for $15 cheap. That is a 4 meg cache, 2.0ghz, 800mhz FSB CPU. And it runs at 35W. Tack on $30ish for one of those motherboards and another $20 for a few gigs of RAM and one would have the basis for a fairly decent HTPC box. Couple it with say a Radeon 5570 and it would be good to go for $100.

The Calcite boards I linked to are 533/667 FSB.
I think the T7xx is for the wrong socket too but I don't have interchangeability for all of the laptop sockets straight yet.
Here's the specs.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...ctID=c00783647
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It says: "Maximum HP/Compaq approved memory is 2 GB". - Note: "approved".
The chipset can do 4GB as long as HP/Asus didn't lock it out in the BIOS or something.
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