Aopen i915GMm-HFS

A good starting point for a quiet PC

When Aopen unveiled its first Pentium M motherboard, the i855GMEm-LFS, the product quickly gained approval from people wanting to build a quiet, power conscious PC.

But being based around a notebook chipset (Intel's i855) meant it lacked the performance and features of its desktop brethren. The latest member of the family, the i915GMm-HFS, is set to change all this by replacing the i855 with the much more capable i915GM/ICH6 desktop chipset combination.

Built using a Micro ATX design, the first thing you notice is how small the heatsink and fan are. If you are used to the huge coolers on normal desktop chips, you might worry whether the fan can keep anything cool but, not only does it work, it's practically silent.

The i915GMm-HFS is feature-packed, with support for DDR1 and 2 memory, x16 PCI-E and integrated graphics (with VGA and DVI/I outputs), dual Gigabit Lan and integrated 7.1 audio.

While the basic ICH6 Bridge doesn't support Raid, Aopen has added a Silicon Image controller that supports Raid 0 and 1 and the next-generation Sata II drives.

Performance-wise, the Sysmark04 score rose from 170 for the i855GMEm-LFS to 180 for the i915GMm-HFS, while the 3Dmark05 score rose from 2,195 to 3,252 for the newer board.

The i915GMm-HFS makes good use of the combination of mobile processor and desktop chipset, but it's not cheap.