New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX - G4 Cube

[tommy_mac]

The major attraction of this motherboard is the on-board PSU. The input is 19VDC. The common as nails (at least in my world) Dell 19.5VDC laptop power adapter fits the specification and even has the correct connector to mate to the MB.

This means that you don't need a standard PSU or even better you don't need the space for a conventional PSU. You do need to understand your power budget.

Neil (or anyone) can you tell me: does this PSU require a load before it will "turn on" or does it also produce 19.5VDC when disconnected i.e. read with a voltmeter? I bought one of these for my build, but I'm not getting the expected 19.5 volts tho I do have the LED lit. Don't wanna try it on my DH61AG if it's dead...

 

[neilhart]

Neil (or anyone) can you tell me: does this PSU require a load before it will "turn on" or does it also produce 19.5VDC when disconnected i.e. read with a voltmeter? I bought one of these for my build, but I'm not getting the expected 19.5 volts tho I do have the LED lit. Don't wanna try it on my DH61AG if it's dead...

Just checked 2 of my Dell power bricks with my digital volt meter; un-loaded, just plugged into the mains, the meter shows 19.4 VDC on the first one checked and 19.3 VDC on the second. And these have 2 different model numbers FA90PE1-00 and LA90PM111 and both say 90W.

I would use a Dell laptop to test your power brick if you are unsure... ha ha small joke.

Good luck,
neil

 

[tommy_mac]

Thanks Neil very much. I have never seen a power brick that needed a "turn-on" signal but had to ask anyway.

This one's going back. A 150W unit, I've ordered another one this time 120W. When I look at Intel's power budget I don't see how a 90W would work for me, though if yours are working OK in this application, well, I never argue with success!

 

[neilhart]

Thanks Neil very much. I have never seen a power brick that needed a "turn-on" signal but had to ask anyway.

This one's going back. A 150W unit, I've ordered another one this time 120W. When I look at Intel's power budget I don't see how a 90W would work for me, though if yours are working OK in this application, well, I never argue with success!

I booted my Cube with the "Kill a Watt" meter on the power brick AC line. I see about 63 watts in the idle mode and 68 watts when the CPU is running under fill load. Again this is just loading the CPU and the hard drives are setting idle. I opened a session with my Linux SAMBA file server and set up a 100+ GB file transfer to see the impact on the PSU during this 100% CPU load period. And with TimeMachine also running the input went to 94 watts. I am running mains at 115 VAC so this is under an amp of current used on the PSU input side.

I do not have the instruments to measure the DC current being used, but this thing runs well on the 90W Dell power brick. After running for a while the power brick is very warm... I see 130F on the power brick case using a KINTREX IRT0421 infrared thermometer; warm but not too hot to handle.

neil

 

[tommy_mac]

...this thing runs well on the 90W Dell power brick. After running for a while the power brick is very warm...

Apparently Intel's "power budget" numbers are ultra conservative then. That's good. And maybe my 120W and 150W will run cooler than yours.

I got my 120W adapter today to replace the "defective" 150W and plugged it in and carefully applied my DVM leads to it--nothing!?!? Could I have two bad power bricks from two different companies (tho maybe the same crappy mfr in China )??? Now I'm frazzled, so I say "to hell with it, if it's dead it can't hurt my DH61AG" so I plug-in the new 120W to the bare-nekked board and its green LED lights! Then I check the onboard power connector (1 is GND) with my DVM and I see that I indeed have 19+VDC there. Try the "bad" brick, same thing. They both are fine. Again I place my black lead on the outer barrel, and very carefully insert the tip of my red probe to the pin inside. Nothing. What the...?

I shouldn't admit this I suppose, but I was a commercial electronic controls (field) tech for many years, have forgotten more about this stuff than most people (present company excepted of course) and just dunno what to make of this (glad I'm retired now!) but both bricks are fine. I just can't read the 19V off'n the center pin for some reason.

Time for a drink!

Tom

 

[neilhart]

Tommymac - I know, I know. Some times you just have to laugh it off. I was a hot shot tech, then even taught basic electronics and trouble shooting technique - the 60's became the 70's and in blink we are here and now 2012. Not that long ago I had a defective test probe lead (intermittent open) and it drive me up the wall until it dawned on me my gear was bad not the system that I was working on.

neil

 

[maclover]

Got it to work last night with Core i3 3225 (Lion 10.7.5, DH61AG with latest BIOS update applied):

So, now I could have a good runnning little guy (with sleep) if I have a properly patched DSDT.
DSDT extracted and automatically applied fixes allready in play but this helped not much.

Would one be so kind to give me the fully patched dsdt? I do not need sound via HDMI.
View attachment extracted-dsdt.dsl.zip

 

[neilhart]

Got it to work last night with Core i3 3225 (Lion 10.7.5, DH61AG with latest BIOS update applied):

So, now I could have a good runnning little guy (with sleep) if I have a properly patched DSDT.
DSDT extracted and automatically applied fixes allready in play but this helped not much.

Would one be so kind to give me the fully patched dsdt? I do not need sound via HDMI.
View attachment 32326

Okay go to post # 37 for a DSDT file download. However I might caution that DSDT will not work on ML. If you stay with Lion, try it.

neil

 

[maclover]

Hi Neil,
this file from user beastyfellow may give me much more help then our conversation via
pm

Anyway; otherwise I'm fine with 10.7.5.
After replacing the first board with the exchanged I will try it again.
As of now I'm able again to load the old forum files. Will store them localy to be sure.

 

[driveparty]

No the http://ark.intel.com/products/52211 indicates that it supports HD Graphics 2000. OS X does not support HD 2000.

neil

OS X natively maybe doesn't, but here ( http://www.osx86.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=1482&page=3 ) is an experimental workaround with modified Intel HD Graphics 3000/2000 kexts for Snow Leopard / Lion /Mountain Lion (10.6 / 10.7 / 10.8). I've installed and successfully ran ML 10.8 with the G645T (AKA Intel Pentium Dual Core with Sandy Bridge arch /HD 2000 GPU) on mSATA OCZ Nocti 30Gb SSD on this DH61AG mobo yesterday (thank you so much for the DVI DIGITAL accent because i've been tortured myself for a couple of hours, experimenting with kexts / flags combination to bring it alive! I've used DVI-to-VGA + VGA cable + second VGA-to-DVI adapters )) Haven't had even an idea it NEEDS to be plugged DVI *DIGITALLY*).

However, as the support is experimental, i've had resolution and flickering issues with those HD 2000 fixed kexts, and therefore it is only suitable for server appliances, which is my current objective with this board.
But i prefer to realize it on FreeBSD / PFSense / FreeNAS systems, and was just playing with the OS X installation to see if is this possible at all for such a conf.

By the way, there is the 1155 3rd generation Core i3-3225 CPU with the HD Graphics 4000 GPU builtin with the 55W max TDP ( http://ark.intel.com/products/65692/Intel-Core-i3-3225-Processor-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz ) and the Core i5-3475s / HD 4000 / 65W TDP (http://ark.intel.com/products/65515/Intel-Core-i5-3475S-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_60-GHz).
HD 4000 is known to work fine on ML with no/minimal hacks, and there is also some fixed kexts to run it on Lion 10.7.

(i've attached mentioned HD Graphics 3000/2000 fixed kexts by Mano for those, trying to )