I've bought one more mini-itx motherboard recently. It is supposed to change my VIA VT-310DP. VT-310DP is used for data server right now, however, it has some compatibility problems and it needs an active cooling even than I reduced cpu clock to 533 MHz. Why is that you ask? I found that changing multiplier in the VIA VT-310DP had changed cpu clock only for a one processor. The other one still worked at 1 GHz (the same problem as with powersaver utility). Because of this, it probably still ran hot enough and small heatsink couldn't dissipate the heat. My titan cooler is not to loud but it has annoying noise. It is difficult to find small and silent fan... So, one of the reasons I took Jetway that it was fanless. The other reason is more performance as it has much more modern CPU. And finally this Jetway motherboard has so called JWDB Header. You can insert additional Jetway daughterboards into it as I plan to buy four SATA daughterboard in the future. This motherboard is Jetway JNF76-N1G-LF P.
Package
Motherboard comes in a small box with curved(?), glossy surface. Besides motherboard, you can find one black SATA cable, one IDE/PATA cable, serial/COM cable, back panel shield, CD with drivers and manual (which is not necessary but nice addition as it comes in handy when you need to find something fast). Motherboard is packaged into anti-static bag with foam on the back. Nothing extraordinary, except extra serial cable maybe.
Hardware
Jetway JNF76-N1G-LF P motherboard is based on VIA Nano U2300 1GHz 533FSB CPU. VIA VX800 serves as northbridge and southbridge at the same time (VIA calls it media system processor). They are covered with separate fanless heatsinks. It has only one DDR2 slot so you can put up to 2GB DDR2 400/533/667 memory. There are PS/2 mouse&keyboard ports, 1xCOM, 1xVGA, 2xUSB and 1xRJ45 1Gbit LAN (based on Realtek RTL8111C) connectors on a back panel. Also there are three audio ports (line-in, line-out, mic. VIA 1708B 6-channel audio codec). Rear I/O ports set is poor however that is quite usual on IPC boards which aren't intended to mass market like ION platform. You can add up to four additional USB connectors through USB headers on the motherboard. You can also find one PCI expansion slot. Storage drives can be attached into two SATA II ports and one IDE. There are FP audio, COM ports, HDMI/SPDIF, DVP, LVDS headers too. It can be attached two system fans and one cpu fan. Finally, there is an integrated speaker on the motherboard so you don't need to attach it from a case. Motherboard is powered by standard 20-pin ATX connector.
Jetway motherboard uses green PCB and feels quite qualitatively made. Differently from VIA VB8001 all capacitors are solid state ones. PCI, SATA, DIMM, IDE connectors are yellow. Heatsinks aren't higher than back panels height. CPU heatsink has a metal platform at the back and is fixed with some star shaped screws. So it would be painful to change it in my opinion. VX800 heatsink uses clips only so it can be changed more easily.
BIOS
It is used the Phoenix/Award BIOS as in other VIA CPU based motherboards I have seen. Motherboard came with A02 version (2009 02 03 datecode). A05 is the newest currently but I haven't updated it yet. As I have VIA VB8001 I will compare them a little bit (specifically issues I talked about in the last post). What I can tell you right now that it is more feature rich, however, there are some differences from what you'll find in the manual too.
Firstly, VB8001 didn't had thermal monitor 2 (Ratio&VID transition) option to select. This is not the case with JNF76. It is even selected by default. However, there is described Thermal monitor 3 option (dynamic Ratio&VID transition) and you can't select it in this motherboard too. I don't know the difference between them and I still need to confirm that powersaver works as it should. Jetway doesn't show current thermal monitor bus ratio and bus vid.
What is more, pc health status shows much more information than in VB8001. It shows CPU and System temperatures what you can't find in the VB8001. There is also a possibility to set a shutdown temperature or thermal-throttling. And one more interesting feature is to show PC health status at boot. It means you can see temperatures and voltages values at boot in the POST screen. This is nice feature, isn't it? Though maybe it is not useful very often. There are various voltage values (some of them exists in VB8001), all fans speeds (shows in VB8001 too) and smart fan configuration (not present in VB8001).
One more difference is an option to enable S.M.A.R.T function for HDDs in BIOS. I still need to test SATA behavior as I didn't try to attach any HDDs or CD-ROM.
In "miscellaneous control" (which serves the same purpose as frequency/voltage control in VB8001) you can change external cpu clock or FSB (default 133 MHz) and various RAM/CPU voltages.
Update (2009-11-24)
As with VB8001 BIOS doesn't show SATA devices in Standard CMOS features. What is more, you can't see IDE devices too if SATA - RAID mode is enabled. IDE devices appears in RAID utility screen. Boot from CD-ROM option doesn't not work when RAID mode is enabled too (even it's a IDE CD-ROM and it appears as a separate devicewith the same problems as in VB8001 (still need to figure out but it has similar problems)).
Summary
All in all I am quite pleased with Jetway motherboard. It is well made, BIOS looks decent and everything appears promising. However, there are some unclear things in the future. CPU temperature reached 41-44°C and system temperature reached 35-37°C in BIOS on idle. Heatsinks became quite hot. So I still need to test if passive cooling is enough for the system. The other problem appeared when I had tried to boot NetBSD. Operating system hanged after USB controller was detected. It worries me as I planned to use current configuration without modifications. What is more, I need to check how PATA/SATA and RAID works. I hope to test PowerSaver and some performance capabilities. Finally, I use DDR2 533MHz as it was cheap to get at buying moment (the new RAM modules became quite pricey). So it can be that with DDR2 667 MHz system can work better.
Package
Motherboard comes in a small box with curved(?), glossy surface. Besides motherboard, you can find one black SATA cable, one IDE/PATA cable, serial/COM cable, back panel shield, CD with drivers and manual (which is not necessary but nice addition as it comes in handy when you need to find something fast). Motherboard is packaged into anti-static bag with foam on the back. Nothing extraordinary, except extra serial cable maybe.
Jetway JNF76-N1G-LF P motherboard is based on VIA Nano U2300 1GHz 533FSB CPU. VIA VX800 serves as northbridge and southbridge at the same time (VIA calls it media system processor). They are covered with separate fanless heatsinks. It has only one DDR2 slot so you can put up to 2GB DDR2 400/533/667 memory. There are PS/2 mouse&keyboard ports, 1xCOM, 1xVGA, 2xUSB and 1xRJ45 1Gbit LAN (based on Realtek RTL8111C) connectors on a back panel. Also there are three audio ports (line-in, line-out, mic. VIA 1708B 6-channel audio codec). Rear I/O ports set is poor however that is quite usual on IPC boards which aren't intended to mass market like ION platform. You can add up to four additional USB connectors through USB headers on the motherboard. You can also find one PCI expansion slot. Storage drives can be attached into two SATA II ports and one IDE. There are FP audio, COM ports, HDMI/SPDIF, DVP, LVDS headers too. It can be attached two system fans and one cpu fan. Finally, there is an integrated speaker on the motherboard so you don't need to attach it from a case. Motherboard is powered by standard 20-pin ATX connector.
BIOS
It is used the Phoenix/Award BIOS as in other VIA CPU based motherboards I have seen. Motherboard came with A02 version (2009 02 03 datecode). A05 is the newest currently but I haven't updated it yet. As I have VIA VB8001 I will compare them a little bit (specifically issues I talked about in the last post). What I can tell you right now that it is more feature rich, however, there are some differences from what you'll find in the manual too.
Firstly, VB8001 didn't had thermal monitor 2 (Ratio&VID transition) option to select. This is not the case with JNF76. It is even selected by default. However, there is described Thermal monitor 3 option (dynamic Ratio&VID transition) and you can't select it in this motherboard too. I don't know the difference between them and I still need to confirm that powersaver works as it should. Jetway doesn't show current thermal monitor bus ratio and bus vid.
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What is more, pc health status shows much more information than in VB8001. It shows CPU and System temperatures what you can't find in the VB8001. There is also a possibility to set a shutdown temperature or thermal-throttling. And one more interesting feature is to show PC health status at boot. It means you can see temperatures and voltages values at boot in the POST screen. This is nice feature, isn't it? Though maybe it is not useful very often. There are various voltage values (some of them exists in VB8001), all fans speeds (shows in VB8001 too) and smart fan configuration (not present in VB8001).
One more difference is an option to enable S.M.A.R.T function for HDDs in BIOS. I still need to test SATA behavior as I didn't try to attach any HDDs or CD-ROM.
In "miscellaneous control" (which serves the same purpose as frequency/voltage control in VB8001) you can change external cpu clock or FSB (default 133 MHz) and various RAM/CPU voltages.
Update (2009-11-24)
As with VB8001 BIOS doesn't show SATA devices in Standard CMOS features. What is more, you can't see IDE devices too if SATA - RAID mode is enabled. IDE devices appears in RAID utility screen. Boot from CD-ROM option doesn't not work when RAID mode is enabled too (even it's a IDE CD-ROM and it appears as a separate device
Summary
All in all I am quite pleased with Jetway motherboard. It is well made, BIOS looks decent and everything appears promising. However, there are some unclear things in the future. CPU temperature reached 41-44°C and system temperature reached 35-37°C in BIOS on idle. Heatsinks became quite hot. So I still need to test if passive cooling is enough for the system. The other problem appeared when I had tried to boot NetBSD. Operating system hanged after USB controller was detected. It worries me as I planned to use current configuration without modifications. What is more, I need to check how PATA/SATA and RAID works. I hope to test PowerSaver and some performance capabilities. Finally, I use DDR2 533MHz as it was cheap to get at buying moment (the new RAM modules became quite pricey). So it can be that with DDR2 667 MHz system can work better.
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