ASRock Q1900M, yay or nay?

[DigitalHermit]

So, I managed to stumble upon a Q1900M in one of the shops that I went to...

 

After reading up on it, I found out that it sports a Celeron J1900... And, it being a cheap intel quad core (sub 100USD!!) platform, I was considering it for an HTPC/Light Gaming rig...

 

It needs to do the ff:

• 1080p video playback
• PS2 Emulation
• PSP Emulation
• General usage

A bonus would be AAA gaming at at least 720p high... (after dropping in an R7 250 or 650Ti (should fortune favor me))

 

Another question would be RAM compatibility... I'll be swapping out the 2x4GB sticks in Mutsuki for a single HyperX Fury 8GB 1600MHz sometime next year... I read that it takes DDR3LP... Would my Kingston ValueRAM sticks be compatible with it?

 

 

Also, how long would it last me? and can I swap out the cooler for a different one?

 

Thanks in advance.

-Hermit

[Grrizz]

I have Gigabytes ITX version of that board for my current build project, it has quick-sync so 1080p video playback is no problem and for general use its great, I haven't tried emulators on it but I would hazard a guess that they wouldn't run well because they tend to require a fair bit of processing power and generally don't support multiple cores but steam in home streaming works a charm (that's why I got it), running a AAA game on it with a GPU would pretty much be a no go at a guess but with streaming you can run them at full detail 1080p if your host PC can handle it

The board supports both DDR3 and DDR3L (low voltage) so your memory should be fine.

I would test some of that other stuff for you but at the current point in my build its all in bits (and some are sitting in a jug of oil) so unfortunately I cant help more than guestimate.

The CPUs are 10W peak so the passive cooler is more than enough, CPUs last a long time and if you were really concerned or saw high temps just make sure you have good air flow in your case and it will cool it right off.

[QueenDemetria]

PS2 and probably PSP emulation will be pretty bad on it. The little Celeron wont be able to keep up since emulating is pretty demanding. Every thing else should run fine though.

[DigitalHermit]

I have Gigabytes ITX version of that board for my current build project, it has quick-sync so 1080p video playback is no problem and for general use its great, I haven't tried emulators on it but I would hazard a guess that they wouldn't run well because they tend to require a fair bit of processing power and generally don't support multiple cores but steam in home streaming works a charm (that's why I got it), running a AAA game on it with a GPU would pretty much be a no go at a guess but with streaming you can run them at full detail 1080p if your host PC can handle it

The board supports both DDR3 and DDR3L (low voltage) so your memory should be fine.

I would test some of that other stuff for you but at the current point in my build its all in bits (and some are sitting in a jug of oil) so unfortunately I cant help more than guestimate.

The CPUs are 10W peak so the passive cooler is more then enough, CPUs last a long time and if you were really concerned or saw high temps just make sure you have good air flow in your case and it will cool it right off.

 

Thanks for the response... As for in-home streaming, I'm not sure if my 100M wired network and my main rig (Mutsuki, specs in sig) can handle it...

 

If it can do the 1080p playback, then I might just grab this, a HyperX 8GB (for Mutsuki), and a 2TB HDD (for Mutsuki) and I'm golden...

 

The other thing that I'm concerned about is how long it would last me... Software is not getting any lighter... (and I've still got a P4 HT on me which struggles to even load Yahoo! on an outdated version of Opera)...

 

It would be running both Win7 Home Premium and Linux Mint + XBMC in dual boot...

 

 

PS2 and probably PSP emulation will be pretty bad on it. The little Celeron wont be able to keep up since emulating is pretty demanding. Every thing else should run fine though.

So emulation is a no go then... Would adding an R7 240 do it any good?

[QueenDemetria]

So emulation is a no go then... Would adding an R7 240 do it any good?

No, you would still be CPU limited. My I7 3630qm struggles at times to emulate PS2 and it seems like single core performance is the culprit.

[Grrizz]

Thanks for the response... As for in-home streaming, I'm not sure if my 100M wired network and my main rig (Mutsuki, specs in sig) can handle it...

 

If it can do the 1080p playback, then I might just grab this, a HyperX 8GB (for Mutsuki), and a 2TB HDD (for Mutsuki) and I'm golden...

 

The other thing that I'm concerned about is how long it would last me... Software is not getting any lighter... (and I've still got a P4 HT on me which struggles to even load Yahoo! on an outdated version of Opera)...

 

It would be running both Win7 Home Premium and Linux Mint + XBMC in dual boot...

 

 

So emulation is a no go then... Would adding an R7 240 do it any good?

For streaming I've been running on gigabit Ethernet but I think if you've got a decent 100Mb connection it should be fine, there are some options to adjust quality and limit bandwidth too so you should be OK, I would say you could stream on your rig but I don't really have a good gauge for that as my main PC is Intel + Nvidia both of which have hardware encoding support in Steam, last I looked AMD wasn't supported yet but was on the horizon however this is going back several months so it might be supported now, someone with an AMD rig would be better to advise you on that.

I wouldn't worry at all about that CPU and general use for years to come, W8 is slightly better optimised than W7 and W10 sounds like its going to be better optimised than W8 so in 3-4 years when W11 comes out if they do fork off and make it shoot Unicorns that fart rainbows at you that requires a lot more power you can always stick to W7/8/10 for many more years after that. The CPU may not be powerful enough for emulation but its still a beasty little thing and more and more stuff is becoming optimised for multi-threading which will only help its longevity. Bare in mind P4s came out ~15 years ago and stopped being a thing like 8 years ago.

I don't think you will be able to do much about the emulation as it is usually CPU dependant, the GPU just adds on a few effects but most of the actual emulation is handled by the CPU.

[DigitalHermit]

For streaming I've been running on gigabit Ethernet but I think if you got a decent 100Mb connection it should be fine, there are some options to adjust quality and limit bandwidth too so you should be OK, I would say you could stream on your rig but I don't really have a good gauge for that as my main PC is Intel + Nvidia both of which have hardware encoding support in Steam, last I looked AMD wasn't supported yet but was on the horizon however this is going back several months so it might be supported now, someone with an AMD rig would be better to advise you on that.

I wouldn't worry at all about that CPU and general use for years to come, W8 is slightly better optimised than W7 and W10 sounds like its going to be better optimised than W8 so in 3-4 years when W11 comes out if they do fork off and make it shoot Unicorns that fart rainbows at you that requires a lot more power you can always stick to W7/8/10 for many more years after that. The CPU may not be powerful enough for emulation but its still a beasty little thing and more and more stuff is becoming optimised for multi-threading which will only help its longevity. Bare in mind P4s came out ~15 years ago and stopped being a thing like 8 years ago.

I don't think you will be able to do much about the emulation as it is usually CPU dependant, the GPU just adds on a few affects but most of the actual emulation is handled by the CPU.

 

No, you would still be CPU limited. My I7 3630qm struggles at times to emulate PS2 and it seems like single core performance is the culprit.

 

I see... Thanks for the help...

 

Not being able to handle the console emulation decently is a dealbreaker for me, so I won't be going with this one for my own rig (might do a donation/gift rig with this or something similar when I graduate college)...

[Grrizz]

I see... Thanks for the help...

 

Not being able to handle the console emulation decently is a dealbreaker for me, so I won't be going with this one for my own rig (might do a donation/gift rig with this or something similar when I graduate college)...

One thing I haven't tried but am hoping will work for my rig is adding the emulator as a non-steam game and streaming it (which I hear you can do with some games) because I would really like to be able to run some Mario Kart etc. on my streaming PC when its done There are also other software's like ORB (I think) that might be able to do it too, none of which I have tried yet though.

[DigitalHermit]

One thing I haven't tried but am hoping will work for my rig is adding the emulator as a non-steam game and streaming it (which I hear you can do with some games) because I would really like to be able to run some Mario Kart etc. on my streaming PC when its done There are also other software's like ORB (I think) that might be able to do it too, none of which I have tried yet though.

 

Think you can tag me if you ever make a post on that? The most 'streaming' I've done is through VNC (if that even counts)... and we all know how terrible that can be...

[Grrizz]

Think you can tag me if you ever make a post on that? The most 'streaming' I've done is through VNC (if that even counts)... and we all know how terrible that can be...

Yea np, you can follow my build log too I'll be posting it all in there when I get to the point of having it up and running