Pros: - Very low power usage - Smooth 1080p HD playback - Plays Netflix HD (high CPU usage but it plays!) - HDMI - 4 x SATA - CPU fan is replaceable - Intel 2000 HD GPU (as reported by HWInfo)

Cons: - Noisy CPU fan - Some applications slow to install or load - Windows install takes a long time (unzip speeds seem slow)

Overall Review: I bought this recently to test as a HTPC board for use in the Iwill S197-H80 mini-itx HTPC case. This is a very tight 197mmx197mmx80mm case with little room or ventilation that needs a low power board. The problem is neither the Atom nor Zacate support Netflix HD streaming. I had high hope for this board with a Celeron mobile CPU and Intel 2000 HD GPU (the same as in the i3-2100 but underclocked). So far it's been brilliant in testing. 1080p MKVs play smoothly with hardly any CPU usage. Netflix HD video will play though with high CPU usage which ramps up the fan but at least they play! The board has HDMI which is required for HTPC. Generally it runs cool, around 50C when watching videos and maxed out around 70C with Prime95 large FFTs. Power draw numbers were very good as measured with a Kill-a-Watt (using a picoPSU 90, 60W AC adapter under Win7 Ultimate x64): Desktop: 15W 1080p MKV (using WMP): 17.7W Prime95 large FFTs torture test: 26.2W The downside is first the noisy CPU fan. It's a small 40x10 high-speed fan that can get loud when doing CPU intensive tasks. Most tasks are CPU intensive except watching video so it's ramping up and down a lot. Unzipping archives for install and Windows extraction for install seemed very slow. Some apps take a little while longer than with a desktop CPU to load. Overall, for the price, the form-factor, the power usage and everything else this is a fantastic HTPC board. I am definitely going to use these in HTPC barebones builds in the aforementioned case and I am ecstatic about it. This is a leap-of-faith having always avoided Biostar due to reputation so hopefully these hold up. If they do I hope to be buying a lot of them for these very small form factor HTPC builds.

Pros: Great little board and system. I leave it on 24/7, and don't have any issues. This is our primary media center system, and it works great. I use Media Center (with Media Browser) and don't have one complaint. I added an AverMedia HDTV Tuner (ATSC) dual tuner card, and I don't have any hiccups watching 1080p live TV. My setup has 8GBs memory and no after market video card. I also stream 1080p MKV files and VOB files over my network, and have no issues. Great little system at a great price, and I highly recommend this as a cost effective HTPC.

Cons: No USB 3.0

Pros: Does what I need it to.

Cons: Random reboots

Overall Review: I used this to build an Unraid box. After I upgraded to Unraid 5.0-rc16c, I started getting random reboots at least once a day. Seeing reports from people who had similar reboot problems and who traced the problem to the lowest sleep state, I disabled both rc6 settings in the BIOS. It's been over a week now and I haven't had a reboot.

Pros: This is a budget solution so don't expect a speed demon, but this outperforms the Pentium 4 Dell Optiplex GX270 it replaces. Motherboard is very compact.: CPU itself is physically near the size of an old 486 chip! Motherboard is a microboard....about half the size of a standard motherboard. Has PCI-E slot for video upgrade. Supports 64-bit

Cons: CPU is soldered directly to board so no CPU upgrade possible. Having at least one PCI expansion slot would have been nice. Only 4 USB 2.0 ports. No USB 3.0 The selling point was that it came with RAM for me.

Overall Review: I bought this with a free 8 GB of Ram for $89. Not bad for a mo-bo, CPU, and memory! This CPU\Board without free RAM, should be more like $65 IMHO. I would recommend mating this to a SSD, to help make up for the lack of CPU power,. Windows Experience Index Processor=3.9 Memory=7.1 Graphics=4.3 Gaming Graphics=5.5 Primary Hard Disk=5.9 (using mechanical HDD)

Pros: Mobile Sandy Bridge architecture chip on a board for under $100. low power consumption. chip TDP is rated at 17W. With just 2 sticks of memory and an SSD, I'm seeing power usage of about 22 watts (measured with a kill-a-watt) at idle (I used an inefficient PSU) PCIE x16 slot if you need to add in a board. Quiet, cool.

Cons: No options on CPU (celeron 847 only). Biostar does not appear to offer any other CPUs as options. lack of mini pcie slot, but considering the price range and availability of a pcie x16 slot, it's just a minor wish list item.

Overall Review: Something like this has been sorely missing for a while. AMD has their E-series of chips and boards in this market segment, but Intel only had their crippled Atom D2xxx (lack of 64-bit graphics drivers?) Both offerings were a bit underpowered for anything more than a nas box. The Sandy bridge celerons are significantly more powerful than either Atom or E-series and allow much more flexibility. I'm currently using this for a mini file/media/backup server in a 4-bay NAS chassis (CFI A7879) with 4 GB of ram a small SSD for os and 3 1 TB HD for storage. I am very pleased with the performance, noise level and power. Would love to see this mobo with more CPU options up to the celeron 887 at 1.5 ghz.

Pros: Decent specs for the price, for most people it will work fine

Cons: The C6 state appears flawed. Windows and older Linux kernels don't use that state so most people won't have a problem. The ubuntu and linux mint flavors do use later Linux Kernels however which does make use of the C6 state and they will experience random reboots unless they apply the workaround below to disable it.

Overall Review: There is a simple workaround to disable the c6 kernel state in these systems: edit /etc/default/grub find the line that starts like the one below and make it finish like it also: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.i915_enable_rc6=0"

Pros: Fast enough for what I need, act as a router.

Cons: I bought this to act as a hybrid internet gateway, and traffic manager. I use Linux mint on a 64 GB SSD and am happy. Low cost, LOW power consumption, and good performance. If you want to watch movies I suggest a quad core, if just surf, this is the cheapest you can get.

Overall Review: Not per se a media center pc... but dummy terminal and basic internet client, and other base functions are easily handled. Get quality memory.

Pros: Build a NAS. No problem to set it up and runs as expected.

Cons: none so far.