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

[slowjin]

Re: New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX

Sleep works immediately the first time, but the second time it took about 20 seconds before going to sleep, but wake was immediate with USB and wifi up and running right away

@slowjin, my system sleeps and wakes with no visible delay, regardless if it's a first time, or fifth. Try pulling off USB peripherials and see if and which one causing issue.

After further testing, sleep works fantabulously! I was testing on my clone partition and for some weird reason there are more freezes and sleep issues. After updating my main partition, I have manual sleep, timed sleep and schedule sleep all working with wake from sleep working seamlessly.

@slowjin, LVDS is a tricky one. You'll need to flash custom BIOS to get it enabled. Beware not to burn your panel - make sure you set correct voltage

It was just a wild thought. If I really wanted touch screen, it looks as though there are USB solutions to a touch screen, but cost prohibitive and impractical. Writing this one off.

@neilhart, @slowjin
SpeedStepper sounds tempting. What puts me off is that it's very dependant on OSX rev., i.e. different versions for 10.7.1 / 10.7.2 / 10.7.3. I can see it may cool CPU down a bit but it's a high maintenance for me personally to keep it up with OSX updates...

USB3 is still unusable. Works with LaCie driver, but connected devices fall off after wake

I rolled back from sleepstepper. Sleep did not work with it alone, and with sleepenabler sleep was not 100% functioning. Only when I placed the NullCPUmgmt did sleep start to work well but then that negated speedstepper functionality.

As for USB3, mine works fine with MB4.2.1 USB3 selection. I tried my mouse and keyboard with success. Currently I have a Dell AIO 968 printer connected and works well. I can even see the printer from my other hack and am currently sharing this printer.

 

[beastyfellow]

Re: New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX

As for USB3, mine works fine with MB4.2.1 USB3 selection. I tried my mouse and keyboard with success. Currently I have a Dell AIO 968 printer connected and works well. I can even see the printer from my other hack and am currently sharing this printer.

@snowjin, thanks. I'll give it a go. Fingers crossed it will solve USB3 fall out after wake.

 

[en2ec]

Re: New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX

I'm planning a hack mini HTPC build and was thinking of using this board with an i3-2105. I like that it has a built-in power supply. Factoring in the savings of not having to buy a picopsu makes this board very inexpensive. And I also want low power consumption, and I assume this board will be good in that area.

I'm a little nervous about a non-Gigabyte board for a hackintosh, but from this thread it seems like most things work. Any sense for how difficult OSX updates will be?

The big question I have (I may have missed it in the thread) -- does HDMI audio work? Also, has anyone tested the eSATA port? Do you know if it has port multiplier capability?

I'm planning to put it in a Wesena ITX7 case and eventually, when HD prices go back down, adding an external storage bay. I suppose if USB 3.0 works then I can just get a USB 3.0 bay, but I'd prefer to have it be eSATA so that I can use software RAID rather than rely on the enclosure's proprietary hardware RAID. It isn't a big deal if the board's eSATA doesn't work because I found a mini PCIe eSATA card with port multiplying that is confirmed to work in Macs.

 

[neilhart]

Re: New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX

I'm planning a hack mini HTPC build and was thinking of using this board with an i3-2105. I like that it has a built-in power supply. Factoring in the savings of not having to buy a picopsu makes this board very inexpensive. And I also want low power consumption, and I assume this board will be good in that area.

I'm a little nervous about a non-Gigabyte board for a hackintosh, but from this thread it seems like most things work. Any sense for how difficult OSX updates will be?

The big question I have (I may have missed it in the thread) -- does HDMI audio work? Also, has anyone tested the eSATA port? Do you know if it has port multiplier capability?

I'm planning to put it in a Wesena ITX7 case and eventually, when HD prices go back down, adding an external storage bay. I suppose if USB 3.0 works then I can just get a USB 3.0 bay, but I'd prefer to have it be eSATA so that I can use software RAID rather than rely on the enclosure's proprietary hardware RAID. It isn't a big deal if the board's eSATA doesn't work because I found a mini PCIe eSATA card with port multiplying that is confirmed to work in Macs.

CPU choice. Why not use the i3 2125?

This board is "best of class" in the low profile mini-ITX arena with OS X in mind. The reason is that it is the only one that has both DVI and HDMI ports (that I could find). As you can see from this thread, there are several people that are helping to resolve the initial issues that I found. Currently I am very happy with this board.

There is the issue of video artifacts, but that is an OS X issue found on HD 3000 installs and I am thinking that it will be resolved in some future OS X update. I have never noticed the problem on HDMI. The artifact problem is not CPU speed related in that I have the same problem on a i7 2600K system.

Sound over HDMI - I have not spent any time on this and it is not implemented on my system. In the past I have decided that audio over HDMI was not something that I wanted and was an inconvenience as that implementation. I could not easily switch between internal audio and HDMI audio.

And eSATA is functional on this board with Lion 10.7.2. Of interest my eSATA drive is mounted as an "internal" drive. My eSATA drive is 2TB, with two NTFS partitions. I can read from these partitions at 98.9MB sec (copy to the desktop).

neil

 

[en2ec]

Re: New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX

Neil: Thanks for the response.

I am feeling comfortable about this board with OSX. Lack of HDMI audio isn't necessarily a dealbreaker for me, but it would be nice to have one fewer cable to deal with (and since the rest of my system can handle HDMI audio, why not?). I suppose I'm not losing anything by going S/PDIF since Apple doesn't support HD audio anyway. The S/PDIF (and 10 channel analog) are only available as headers. Does this mean I'd have to devise my own external ports via Radioshack since my chosen case doesn't have them?

Great to know that eSATA works -- good idea to route it internally. That gives you, in essence, 4 SATA drives internally if you want (including an mSATA in the mini PCIe slot).

I'm planning to get the 2105 for 2 reasons. The first is that it consumes a little less electricity than the 2125. Since mine will be a 24/7 HTPC, this is is a small but tangible benefit. It costs $15 less. Not a big deal, but it all adds up. The performance gain is quite modest anyway (~4.5%) and given that it will be an HTPC, I doubt that it will make any practical difference. The 2105 should be able to handle anything I throw at it, even on-the-fly transcoding in PLEX. But if you think I've miscalculated, then I'll happily reconsider -- after all, the price difference is small, and if the 2125 ends up making the difference between an app working well or not, then I'd feel pretty stupid with the 2105. That is, until Ivy Bridge comes out in a few months, at which point I'm going to feel stupid either way, but I don't have the luxury to wait.

 

[neilhart]

Re: New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX

I have started work on my G4 Cube Hack and thought that I would start sharing. The OS X functionality has been completed on the bench (see the above).

I set my G4 Cube project goal as follows:

Use the Intel DH61AG low profile mini-ITX motherboard.
8 GB SO-DIMM memory
Intel i3 2125 CPU
Low profile CPU cooler - Gelid Slim Silence i-Plus
WiFi 802.11n - seen as AirPort
Bluetooth not using one of rear panel (bottom panel in this case) USB port.
USB 2 and USB 3 functional
eSATA functional
No optical drive
Provision for two 2.5 inch SATA HDD/SSD drive(s)
Good cooling / air flow up through the chassis when in the design orientation
Conventional controls - power on switch and reset switch with LEDs for power and HDD activity
Top accessible USB 2 ports.
Minimal cabling (neat and tidy)
Dual monitor (in this case, DVI and HDMI).
MB stereo jack audio out the bottom
Audio Headphone Jack on the top optional
The G4 Cube core latch to be functional
The G4 Cube proximity switch function is optional

Photos to follow

neil

 

[minihack]

Looking forward to seeing this Neil.

I truely think the Intel board is the best board available for this implementation and can't wait to see the results.

All best.

 

[en2ec]

Re: New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX

And eSATA is functional on this board with Lion 10.7.2. Of interest my eSATA drive is mounted as an "internal" drive. My eSATA drive is 2TB, with two NTFS partitions. I can read from these partitions at 98.9MB sec (copy to the desktop).

neil

I'm now thinking of doing what you've done and using the board's esata to connect an internal drive. How are you powering that drive?

 

[neilhart]

Re: New Player - Low Profile Intel DH61AG mini-ITX

And eSATA is functional on this board with Lion 10.7.2. Of interest my eSATA drive is mounted as an "internal" drive. My eSATA drive is 2TB, with two NTFS partitions. I can read from these partitions at 98.9MB sec (copy to the desktop).

neil

I'm now thinking of doing what you've done and using the board's esata to connect an internal drive. How are you powering that drive?

In my eSATA test I used an external drive that had its own power brick. And by mounted "internal", I meant that the system mounts this drive as an internal drive (silver icon on the Desktop).

neil

 

[neilhart]

I am making some progress however slow. I have had my DH61AG G4 Cube fully assembled and running my version of acceptance testing. It failed my extended stress test where I run all threads (4 in this case) at 100% load in the terminal app running "yes > /dev/null" while iTunes is playing music and VLC is playing a video to the HDMI port. I shut down the test when the system was reaching 88C with the appearance that it would just keep getting hotter.

I have been tweaking the BIOS PWM settings for the CPU and System fan. And I am in the process of adding a 92mm PWM system fan. Also pulled the GELID CPU cooler and re-applied the thermal compound on the CPU.

The photo is of my work table dis-array.

neil