# Intel Atom 330 & NVIDIA ION

## LuzbeL

Hello, I'm about to buy a mini-pc with a motherboard with Intel Atom 330 Zotac, and as stressed in the specifications on the Intel site, supports Intel 64. He wanted to know that I get Gentoo to be worth it to that architecture. And another thing. ION know if NVIDIA and Intel Atom 330 does well in Gentoo? That is, if it is properly supported.

Regards,

Luzbel.

----------

## Jimini

I have two servers with Atoms (Atom 230 & Atom D 410) running Gentoo here, and they work without any problems (as any other system I have used Gentoo on).

Best regards,

Jimini

----------

## LuzbeL

Thanks for your response:) One thing, look, I want to buy this motherboard mini itx, but as I have understood, the cpu reaches 74 º C in full, and I want to put an active heatsink with fan. You know a way to put some fan on the cpu? (The one with a fan is the GPU)

Regards.

----------

## Jimini

I doubt that the CPU becomes really that hot. I've checked the "heat" of the coolers a few months ago and they were only lukewarm. The Atom 330 has a TDP of only 8 Watts - so 74°C should be really hard to reach. Perhaps you mean 74° Fahrenheit? That would be about 23° Celsius.

I guess, the people from Intel had their reasons, why they put only a passive cooler on the Atom-boards ;)

Best regards,

Jimini

----------

## LuzbeL

Look, Jimmini:

http://www.maximonet.com/images/articulos/737/Temp_Full_CPU.jpg

----------

## Jimini

Hm, I'll check one of my Atoms later (I have no sensor-stuff installed, I do not even know, if the board supports that), so I have to take a look in the BIOS.

Best regards,

Jimini

----------

## matze_na

The Atom 330 is a 64bit CPU, so you can use a 64bit Linux if you want to. I would do so out of principle ("because I can"), but if you are looking for pointers whether to use 64 or 32 bit, there are enough threads on this forum already.

Regarding the temperature, I have an Atom N270 running which was at about 70-80 °C under full load without any active cooling. With a 120mm fan exchanging the air above the board at a slow 800 RPM it doesn't get any warmer than 50 °C. I know the 330 uses more power and might get warmer, I don't know if its CPU heatsink is any good, but I would try optimizing air circulation before installing a dedicated CPU fan.

And last but not least, you don't have to worry at all about the CPU being supported in Gentoo.

Graphics cards in general is something to look into before buying, but with Nvidia you should be safe (my personal experience and opinion). Anyway there should be a few dozen threads here regarding the ION chip, so you should be able to find out for yourself if there are any known issues  :Wink: 

----------

## Jimini

I've checked the temperature of my Atom 330 and have to say, that I was wrong - the cpu is currently at 62° Celsius. I am not worried about that temperature, but of course - if you have a very small case, you should think about an additional active fan, sucking the warm air out.

Best regards,

Jimini

----------

## Erdie

Could you tell me which compile time for a full gentoo installation I have to expect on a Atom 330 / ION platform? I just got a Zotac Mag Mini and I am really interested in this ..  :Wink: 

----------

## cruzki123

 *Erdie wrote:*   

> Could you tell me which compile time for a full gentoo installation I have to expect on a Atom 330 / ION platform? I just got a Zotac Mag Mini and I am really interested in this .. 

 

In a nettop with n270: KDE take a day, gcc 3 hours, kernel about 30 min.

I usually spend two days for a full emerge -e world. I suppose that the 330 spend around half this time (its a dual core, you know  :Razz:  )

----------

## Erdie

TYVM, doesnt sound that bad ..  :Smile: 

----------

## doctork

FWIW, my atom d510 system takes a bit over 4 hours to emerge kdebase-meta and a bit over an hour to merge gcc.

--

doc

----------

## Jaglover

Can it play HD video? If yes, is it on limit?

Just wondering, I need something for MythTV frontend.

----------

## Gusar

 *Jaglover wrote:*   

> Can it play HD video? If yes, is it on limit?
> 
> Just wondering, I need something for MythTV frontend.

 

It's VDPAU capable, yes. VDPAU Feature Set B1 to be exact, which means full hardware decode of mpeg2, VC-1 and h264.

----------

## Erdie

I just started an installation yesterday. While compiling the kernel, i noticed that it take very much longer time that on my C2D notebook (or course). 

After about 2 or 3 hours i went to bed and the next morning it was still compiliing. This was strange and i assumed that there was wrong .. and something WAS wrong. Reason: Because of some trouble i rebooted and chrooted during the installation. UnfortunatlyI forgot the adust the system clock again to to right time. The result was wrong timestamps on the kernel build tree which causes an endless loop lol   :Rolling Eyes: 

-Erdie

----------

