In the Sandy Bridge generation, Intel has brought to market numerous CPUs that cover a wide range of thermal and performance envelopes. The T-variant parts having TDP values as little as 35W are an intriguing choice for small form factor (SFF) enclosures because their cooling and peak power consumption requirements are much less. What happens when we compare the T-variant […]
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Not that long ago it was a significant challenge to build a small and quiet home theater PC (HTPC). Mini-ITX was an option, but case selection was limited and more importantly the form factor was held back by the lack of decent integrated video performance and the power/heat dissipation requirements of the processor (CPU) and graphics (GPU). With both of […]
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Having previously examined both the 95 and 35 watt extremes in the Sandy Bridge CPU lineup, we now turn our focus to the 65 watt 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2400S and Media Series DH67GD micro-ATX motherboard with built in IEEE 1394a (FireWire) support. With the basic capability questions already answered, let’s find out if by providing four physical cores with lower […]
Read moreWhen Intel gambled by packaging its graphics processing unit (GPU) with the central processing unit (CPU) in last year’s Clarkdale the home theater PC (HTPC) niche benefited immensely from the power saving, performance gain and features like HD audio bit streaming provided by the new platform. The bet obviously paid off, because this year’s Sandy Bridge melds the GPU and […]
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Intel DH55TC & Core i5-661 (Clarkdale) Review The family of processors code-named "Clarkdale" has sparked a great deal of interest since its existence and some basic performance information spread out across the web in late September. Teasing home theater PC (HTPC) enthusiasts with incredibly low power usage and built in HD codec bit streaming all packaged together with enough […]
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