The ECS KAM1-I AM1 mini-ITX motherboard and the AMD Athlon 5150 AM1 processor cost me $50 US in 2015.
I paid $25 US for the motherboard and $25 US for the processor.
A nice little combo for a Linux box to back up my FreeNAS file server.
I got the ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/AC AM4 motherboard for $100 US.
The last cheap B450 AM4 mini-ITX motherboard available in today's market.
In this video, I'll explain the old AM1 motherboard and the new AM4 motherboard.
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What made the AM1 motherboard unique was the serial ports.
Two built-in serial ports in the I/O panel and two serial port headers on the motherboard.
Four serial ports on a motherboard were quite unique.
The motherboard only cost $25 US.
If I was to get a replacement motherboard with serial ports, it would be the GigaiPC mITX-4105A.
Two built-in serial ports in the I/O panel and four serial port headers on the motherboard.
A total of six serial ports.
That motherboard with an Intel Celeron quad-core processor cost $199 US.
What's the big deal about serial ports?
A motherboard with built-in serial ports running Linux can be a serial console server.
If you have a rack of switches and routers, the console ports on those devices can plug into the console server.
You can remote into the console server and open a terminal window for any device.
One of these days I'll put the AM1 motherboard into a rack-mounted server case.
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As for the rest of the AM1 hardware, here are the specs.
Athlon 5150 quad-core processor at 1.6Ghz.
G.Skill 8Gb 1,600MHz DDR3 RAM kit.
Arctic M1 AM1 passive air cooler.
Seagate Barracuda 8TB hard drive.
Adata SP550 120GB 2.5" SSD.
The Rosewill RD 450Z 450-watt non-modular power supply.
A Cougar QBX mini-ITX case.
The AM1 processor was the budget option for the AM2+ and AM3 processors.
The budget processors were for lightweight applications like web browsing or command line Linux.
The Athlon 5150 was the low-end version that cost $25 US.
Before the AM1 motherboard goes into my junk box, I will test it with the Rosewill PB-240 AIO liquid cooler.
I'm going to answer that age old question whether the AM1 processor with a 25-watt TDP ever needed an AIO.
Make sure you subscribe and turn on the notification bell to see that future video.
For backing up my FreeNAS file server, the AM1 motherboard and processor was an affordable combo.
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I wanted to replace the AM1 motherboard with an AM4 motherboard.
For a month, I couldn't find any cheap B450 AM4 mini-ITX motherboards for $100 US.
Expensive B550 AM4 mini-ITX motherboards for $200 US to $300 US were still available.
The B550 chipset won't run the older processors I have.
The Athlon 200GE, the Athlon 3000G, and the Ryzen 7 2700.
The Asrock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/AC AM4 motherboard for $100 US became available two weeks ago.
I pulled the trigger since this could be the last cheap B450 AM4 mini-ITX motherboard for a while.
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I spec’d out the AM4 motherboard like the AM1 motherboard as a drop-in replacement.
Athlon 200GE (2-core/4-thread) processor at 3.2GHz.
G.Skill Ripjaws V 8GB 2666MHz DDR4 RAM kit.
Arctic Alpine AM4 passive cooler.
Team Group 128GB SATA-3 M.2 SSD.
Except for the motherboard, processor and memory, the rest of the case stayed the same.
Wiring the AM4 motherboard required four changes from the AM1 motherboard.
Plugging in the 8-pin CPU power cable.
Moving the power connector for the 120mm fans from the top connector to the bottom connector.
Removing the USB2 to USB3 adapter to plug in the USB3 cable from the case.
Removing the serial port bracket since there are no serial port headers.
The only configuration I had to change in Linux was changing the IP address from dynamic to static.
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That's it for today's show.
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