Interesting ITX Socket G2 (laptop sandy) Dual Intel NIC, vPro: $55 shipped

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cptbjorn

Member
Aug 16, 2013
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Thanks for the link, can you show me some pics of how you mounted the hsf ?


I'm not 100% happy with how its mounted since I had to remove the backplate and only use 2 screws. But its quiet and never trips the overtemp alarm anymore so I'm done messing with it.
 

T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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They have a near identical unit on Amazon w/Prime for $17.
I forget who makes it but just saw it last night.
 

TubaMT

Member
Jul 26, 2014
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I just picked one of these up from ebay. Thank you so much for the tip! How did you mount it to the motherboard? Is it similar to how @cptbjorn a few replies up set his up? The one he got from the Taobao forwarder seems pretty similar to the Evercool one you linked. Thank you!

I was also thinking about picking up a cheap Ivy Bridge mobile processor to test it out. Has anyone had success using Ivy Bridge with the these motherboards? Sockets (and I think chipsets) are compatible, it just depends on if the BIOS allows it I think. If I end up getting a Ivy Bridge mobile processor I'll let everyone know how it turns out :)
 

Jax_the_Gnome

Active Member
Aug 14, 2014
111
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Portland
I think I used tie wraps and looped it through the motherboard. I will take some pictures when I get home.
I would be very careful about what you put in the board. I do not believe they are the same electronically even with the same number of pins.
I just picked one of these up from ebay. Thank you so much for the tip! How did you mount it to the motherboard? Is it similar to how @cptbjorn a few replies up set his up? The one he got from the Taobao forwarder seems pretty similar to the Evercool one you linked. Thank you!

I was also thinking about picking up a cheap Ivy Bridge mobile processor to test it out. Has anyone had success using Ivy Bridge with the these motherboards? Sockets (and I think chipsets) are compatible, it just depends on if the BIOS allows it I think. If I end up getting a Ivy Bridge mobile processor I'll let everyone know how it turns out :)
 
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Aluminum

Active Member
Sep 7, 2012
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The bios on these are as old as dirt relatively speaking (circa sandy release date) which means no microcode for ivy, and no updates to be found. I wouldn't get your hopes up...

There are people out there who are really good at patching all sorts of things into already compiled firmware files (much harder than working from the original source) unfortunately most of them are russian etc and likely not interested/aware of this board.
 

TubaMT

Member
Jul 26, 2014
112
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I think I used tie wraps and looped it through the motherboard. I will take some pictures when I get home.
I would be very careful about what you put in the board. I do not believe they are the same electronically even with the same number of pins.
Thank you so much for the information! I also found this video that seems to explain what needs to be done pretty well :):


Aluminum said:
The bios on these are as old as dirt relatively speaking (circa sandy release date) which means no microcode for ivy, and no updates to be found. I wouldn't get your hopes up...

There are people out there who are really good at patching all sorts of things into already compiled firmware files (much harder than working from the original source) unfortunately most of them are russian etc and likely not interested/aware of this board.
Yeah that's why I haven't bought an ivy bridge proc yet. I'm totally in agreement with you on that. The microcode is most probably not updated for ivy bridge :/ So it wouldn't work :'( Plus, the only modded BIOS's I think I would actually trust would be from popular motherboards (HP Microserver, etc). Now if I could learn how to do it myself it might work...but who has time for that? lol
 
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TubaMT

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Jul 26, 2014
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So I found a few interesting things regarding the possibility to update to an Ivy Bridge processor. Though, for this motherboard, it would take a lot of work since the most up-to-date BIOS is super old and came out before Ivy Bridge.

Finally I make my QM67 chipset mainboard IVB compatible. | NotebookReview

Ivy Bridge Upgrade | NotebookReview

And I found this pdf of another QM67 mini-itx board that does support 2nd and 3rd generation processors: http://webdownload.avalue.com.tw/download/Datasheet/EMX-QM67.pdf

I'm happy with my current sandy bridge processor (and honestly it's as fast or faster than the Ivy Bridge mobile processors except for the onboard gpu) so I probably won't mess with this further, but maybe this will help someone out :)

Also, I saw a setting in the BIOS for "switchable graphics"...anybody know how to utilize this? I have a discrete graphics card but would also like to use the switchable graphics option if possible. Thanks!
 

Jax_the_Gnome

Active Member
Aug 14, 2014
111
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Portland
I think I used tie wraps and looped it through the motherboard. I will take some pictures when I get home.
I would be very careful about what you put in the board. I do not believe they are the same electronically even with the same number of pins.
So... One thing to remember, this thread talked about 2 different boards the 270 and the 272. Mine is a G1 not a G2.
Here is my install of the above Chipset tower fan.
I used M4 (I think) screws, nuts, washers, and some chain to setup the retention loops. Also used some insulating washers so I don't short out my board.
 

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Aug 19, 2015
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I just scored one of these AIMB-272's coupled with an i7-2710qe and 16GB of ram. I know I'm a bit late to the party but I was hoping some of you could verify that you indeed have the v1.11 bios that is listed on Advantech's site. Further to that end, anyone who does happen to have 1.11, would you be so kind as to post a few screenshots of the bios options? My board appears to have never been used and it came with an oddball AMI firmware (v 4.6.4) which is dated a couple months before the official one listed on their page. I wonder if the official bios has anything mine is lacking or vice-versa. I noticed one of you guys said that you had some fan speed settings in the bios which appear to be absent on mine. For what it's worth, it seems my board is unbranded, possibly meant to be sold to oems as ESXi shows "to be filled in by O.E.M" under the manufacturer and model fields. My board came in an Advantech box with accessories and some paperwork.

This seems to be a pretty competent little board and I am considering moving my virtualized router setup over to it and adding some form of virtualized fileserver to it... Leaning strongly towards Unraid for this duty as I really don't want to be tied to a particular drive model/capacity and speed is not my top priority. I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions, though I realize that this probably isn't the correct section for that discussion.

Like many of you, I want to replace the HSF with something better and quieter. I see several of you are using the Evercool tower-style northbridge cooler and I'm considering giving that a shot if I'm unable to find a better solution.

Do any of you with the AIMB-272 happen to own a Silverstone DS380B and can verify if the standoffs are long enough (and the backplate cavity is raised enough) to accomodate the interfaces on the bottom of the board? I know that Silverstone's Sugo cases are marketed as having "elevated standoffs" at ~10mm
According to one Amazon user the standoffs on the DS380B are ~8mm tall which I'm not sure would be enough (haven't measured)

In order to stick to the topic of Great Deals, I stumbled on a generic (industrial looking) PGA-988 cooler that I found for only $5 including shipping. I ordered one of these as I can't imagine it being any worse than the horrid cooler that is currently sitting on my chip.
PGA988 cooler

Also, here is a 32GB SLC cFast card that may be of value to owners of this board. I know it's a small capacity and my search showed it isn't too fast (iirc around 150MB/Sec read and write) At $30 asking price it seemed to be a fairly decent deal but I shot out a lowball offer and was countered @ $20.
32GB SLC cFast flash card

Thank you all for sharing deals here, I've been a long time lurker and, thanks to you guys, I've scored some pretty awesome deals. I hope that someone here benefits from my find.
 
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TubaMT

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Jul 26, 2014
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I just scored one of these AIMB-272's coupled with an i7-2710qe and 16GB of ram. I know I'm a bit late to the party but I was hoping some of you could verify that you indeed have the v1.11 bios that is listed on Advantech's site. Further to that end, anyone who does happen to have 1.11, would you be so kind as to post a few screenshots of the bios options? My board appears to have never been used and it came with an oddball AMI firmware (v 4.6.4) which is dated a couple months before the official one listed on their page. I wonder if the official bios has anything mine is lacking or vice-versa. I noticed one of you guys said that you had some fan speed settings in the bios which appear to be absent on mine. For what it's worth, it seems my board is unbranded, possibly meant to be sold to oems as ESXi shows "to be filled in by O.E.M" under the manufacturer and model fields. My board came in an Advantech box with accessories and some paperwork.

This seems to be a pretty competent little board and I am considering moving my virtualized router setup over to it and adding some form of virtualized fileserver to it... Leaning strongly towards Unraid for this duty as I really don't want to be tied to a particular drive model/capacity and speed is not my top priority. I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions, though I realize that this probably isn't the correct section for that discussion.

Like many of you, I want to replace the HSF with something better and quieter. I see several of you are using the Evercool tower-style northbridge cooler and I'm considering giving that a shot if I'm unable to find a better solution.

Do any of you with the AIMB-272 happen to own a Silverstone DS380B and can verify if the standoffs are long enough (and the backplate cavity is raised enough) to accomodate the interfaces on the bottom of the board? I know that Silverstone's Sugo cases are marketed as having "elevated standoffs" at ~10mm
According to one Amazon user the standoffs on the DS380B are ~8mm tall which I'm not sure would be enough (haven't measured)

In order to stick to the topic of Great Deals, I stumbled on a generic (industrial looking) PGA-988 cooler that I found for only $5 including shipping. I ordered one of these as I can't imagine it being any worse than the horrid cooler that is currently sitting on my chip.
PGA988 cooler

Also, here is a 32GB SLC cFast card that may be of value to owners of this board. I know it's a small capacity and my search showed it isn't too fast (iirc around 150MB/Sec read and write) At $30 asking price it seemed to be a fairly decent deal but I shot out a lowball offer and was countered @ $20.
32GB SLC cFast flash card

Thank you all for sharing deals here, I've been a long time lurker and, thanks to you guys, I've scored some pretty awesome deals. I hope that someone here benefits from my find.
Thanks for an awesome first post and all the great info!

I wish I could help more but I'm out of town right now. I'll try to answer some of your questions though ass I was wondering similar things as you a while ago.

I have been planing to put my board into a silverstone gd09 case and was concerned like you about the underside. Unfortunately I never got around to putting it in a case but the underside of the mobo is not that deep. CFAST cards are only either 5mm or 3.3mm deep depending on which type they are so the connector itself isn't much thicker than that. The mPCIe slot is much thinner than 5mm so I would say 8mm of space behind the board should be fine. If I was in town I'd be able to tell you straight up if it fit in my case and I'd measure it for you. But anyways, I don't think anyone here has had any problems with fitting these boards in standard consumer cases.

I'm not sure about the BIOS but it should update fine but your version may actually be newer since it's a higher version number.

Thanks for the CFAST card ebay listing! I think I'll grab one as well! I'm pretty sure the cfast cards use the sata interface so you may lose a sata port using one but I've never tested it so can't confirm.

Btw, where did you score the mobo+cpu combo deal from?

Edit: Some info on cfast cards: http://www.hsc-us.com/pdf/Evolution_of_cf_whitepaper.pdf
 
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jahsoul

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Dec 13, 2013
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If we got the same thing, he probably purchased it from ebay seller chamendifer, which happened to be a heck of a deal. I got my mobo/cpu/ram combo brand new in the box for $160 shipped. I haven't had a chance to check it out but after looking at the posting, I had a gut feeling that it was the i7 combo and it seems like I was right.
 
Aug 19, 2015
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CFAST cards are only either 5mm or 3.3mm deep depending on which type they are so the connector itself isn't much thicker than that. The mPCIe slot is much thinner than 5mm so I would say 8mm of space behind the board should be fine. If I was in town I'd be able to tell you straight up if it fit in my case and I'd measure it for you. But anyways, I don't think anyone here has had any problems with fitting these boards in standard consumer cases.
Many thanks for the info! A few users in this thread have expressed concern about specific cases (mainly 1U boxes.) I tried my board in a couple tiny cases - a M350 and a Realan... It bottomed out on both of these boxes but I was able to secure it somewhat in the Realan. Not optimal for sure but neither of these will be it's final resting place anyhow. I figured that I'd ask about the Silverstone before I shell out substantial cash for it.
I'm not sure about the BIOS but it should update fine but your version may actually be newer since it's a higher version number.
I've learned from past experiences that older BIOSes can oftentimes be preferred. As such, I am in no hurry to update mine but I am quite curious to learn the differences between the two. I have a feeling that it shouldn't be too difficult to dump mine for safekeeping or to share. If someone is able to post up some screens of the pages present on v1.11 I will try and do the same for v4.6.4 so we can compare.
Thanks for the CFAST card ebay listing! I think I'll grab one as well! I'm pretty sure the cfast cards use the sata interface so you may lose a sata port using one but I've never tested it so can't confirm.

Btw, where did you score the mobo+cpu combo deal from?

Edit: Some info on cfast cards: http://www.hsc-us.com/pdf/Evolution_of_cf_whitepaper.pdf
My pleasure. I'm glad that I'm able to give back a deal to this community! This card looks to be a CFAST 1.0 card and from what I gather this would seem to indicate it runs off a SATA2 interface. Seeing as our board was released before CFAST 2.0 came to be, this card may be a decent addition. I plan to try and use mine for the Hypervisor, and if possible, for a (small) datastore to house a few of the tiny VMs that won't need to be touched frequently. I'm still pretty new to ESXi so I'm unsure if I can use the free space in that manner.

Jahsoul is correct, I grabbed mine from chamendifer for an absolute steal... I'm actually embarrased to say how much I got the combo for but I will say that it was significantly less than the (bargain) asking price of $160! This seller had listed two AIMB-272s that I was watching: One with few accessories and no box for a Buy it now for $125 w/ a best offer option and someone scooped it up for less than the asking price. After seeing that I shot out a lowball offer on the remaining board (w/ box and accesories) along with a comment on how I was sad I'd missed the previous listing and got countered with an amazing price for the combo. As Jahsoul said though, the auction didn't specify which processor was included. I was expecting to get a Celeron or even an i5, so scoring the quad was just icing ontop of the cake.
 
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I am quite glad you didn't! When you decide to tinker with your board, please let us know if you have the same oddball BIOS. I must admit, I was a bit torn on whether to wait for the 15W TDP mobile Skylake offerings coming soon but this deal was too good to pass up.
 

gogusrl

New Member
Jan 25, 2014
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Did these come with an i/o shield ? I can't find my shield but now I realize I'm not sure they came with one.
 

TubaMT

Member
Jul 26, 2014
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Did these come with an i/o shield ? I can't find my shield but now I realize I'm not sure they came with one.
I actually bought my I/O shields from ebay over a year ago, but a quick search now don't show any for sale. I bought it from ebay user "lamborg2008" from his/her store: lamborg2008 on eBay

Maybe that seller has more in stock but they are not listed.

Edit: I didn't look hard enough. That seller is selling these ones that should fit the AIMB-272 just fine :) Advantech I O Motherboard Shield IOA 02140 T0 Dual LAN Panel M B Plate New | eBay
 

gogusrl

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Jan 25, 2014
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finally got mine online almost a year later.

pics be here : Homelab - Album on Imgur

Does anyone know how to monitor temperatures through esxi or Intel ME ? I've seen some references about a monitoring API in the motherboard manual as well but I couldn't figure out exactly what that meant.