Foxconn D270S Intel Atom D2700 Intel NM10 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo

Pros: Price and low power usage after scratching my head for a week I finally got win xp 32 installed in system properties the video has a yellow mark as well as the audio. Got a winxp video driver from Dell I will try. Both video and audio work though I'm using the Win 7 drivers. I needed to slipstream the Intel sata drivers as well as the SP3 on to my installation disk before it would work.

Cons: Pain in the b to load winxp did not want to spend the $$$ for a legal copy of Win 7.

Pros: Cheap and silent.

Cons: POST takes about 3 minutes (if it does post);Freezes on the BIOS screen; No video after the boot screen; Over all the worst motherboard i have ever bought in my entire lifetime.

Other Thoughts: I will never buy i product from Foxconn again. I am aware most motherboards are made by them. But them releasing a any product by them selves is terrible. I'm not even sure why it was released. This was on all accounts the WORST product I have ever purchased.

Pros: n/a

Cons: doa

Pros: Compact, with all the features one needs.

Cons: Never worked right since day one, have always had a problem posting correctly, i.e. you had to try several times, and I was just too busy to deal with the warranty. Recently it just stopped booting. I paid over eighty bucks, not including all my wasted time, more than 6 months ago for a door stop.

Other Thoughts: I just tried several links on te Foxconn site to request an RMA, and most links seem to be broken with server script errors. I ended up sending an RMA request with serial number, part number and all pertinent info to the N.American support e-mail address, we will see if they followup on it.

Pros: Cheap. USB3. PCI slot. Works with Linux (Fedora) 64Bit (with caveats, see below). Yes, contrary to what others say, the D2700 WILL run a 64Bit OS.

Cons: Linux only supports the video in FrameBuffer mode and at 1024x768 max. I'm using it as a server; so that's OK with me. My Atom (N570) based Netbook runs in accelerated mode, so I figured that this would would too. But, I guess that the chipset is different.

The CPU doesn't support SpeedStep technology. My Atom based netbook did, so, again, I assumed that this system would too, but nope. It's only a matter of a few watts anyhow. So, I'm not crying.

Other Thoughts: My system is idling at about 30Watts and 30 degrees C. When I get time, I'll put in a 80+ PSU to see if I can drop down the wattage some more. Still, it's better than the 110W P4 room heater that I had. I had tried getting Tomato on my 10W router to do more server tasks, but I found it too troublesome. This system will work alright and not kill my electricity bill.

Pros: Cheap price.

Cons: While installing Win Pro 32 bit, received BSOD. Replaced most of the other hardware and finally RMA'd board to Foxconn. Received the new board, installed latest chipset drivers from the website. I did notice the audio driver dissapear from the "unknown driver" list after this, but since there is a separate audio driver I tried installing it anyway and got the BSOD. After reboot and installing all the other drivers it seems to be running, for how long -> who knows. Now the ACPI device driver doesn't load. Put in a ticket to Foxconn about it. There should never be that many driver issues with a brand new install on a brand new board. Specially an Atom based board.

Other Thoughts: Do some searching on this board, I read some things about the BIOS programming that was much less than stellar. Linux forums were also saying there are compatibility issues with it. I had to go back to my trusty brand: <which I guess I cannot state here (starts with a G) :) >.

Pros: One of the highest performing Atom chips yet. HDMI and USB 3.0 make it a fantastic Windows 7 32-bit media center or daily desktop. Makes a great low-power Linux network server solution as well.

Cons: Graphics drivers are Windows 7 32-bit only. This is ridiculous, considering the chip and the boards are all advertised as having 64-bit instructions. 64-bit is useless without running a 64-bit OS. Linux with no graphical interface (like on a server) can take full advantage of the 64-bit capabilities, but for most potential buyers, that's not likely to be their intended purpose. The platform is seriously limited by its lack of 64-bit support.

Other Thoughts: The person who uses this is happy with it. In the end, I suppose that's what is most important.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valuable customer,

Thank you for purchasing Foxconn products and taking the time to provide us with valuable feedback. Your business is appreciated.

Best regards,
Foxconn support team

Pros: Fast CPU performance for the money, fan-less, appears stable. Can't complain there.

Cons: Video issues. I'm using this board with FreeBSD and have to use 32-bit to get working video at all, even then console (plain text) video has lots of glitches - characters disappear, etc. Granted, FreeBSD isn't a typical use case but Windows 7 apparently doesn't have 64-bit video support either! Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit seems to work fine, though my PS/2 keyboard doesn't work in Ubuntu for some reason. The video issues seem to be general to this chip (the Atom D2700) and it's legacy as a PowerVR video design. Support isn't there yet. I don't know why the PS/2 keyboard doesn't work in Ubuntu. Realtek NIC (8111E) - make sure your intended application supports it well. PCI, not PCI Express.

Other Thoughts: This seems to be a well-designed board, and the video issues more related to the Atom D2700 than to anything Foxconn did wrong. Regardless, I'd suggest avoiding these newer Atoms until video support and 64-bit support has stabilized some. This board is happily running FreeBSD 8.3 32-bit now, and seems stable. It's cheap, you can't complain much. But the video support needs to get better. I mean, when plain console video doesn't work, the supposed lowest-common-denominator, that's a bad chip design. Again, Intel's issue - not Foxconn's.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valuable customer,

Thank you for purchasing Foxconn products and taking the time to provide us with valuable feedback.

Your business is appreciated.

Best regards,
Foxconn support team

Pros: Small, low power consumption, this board comes with dual monitor support, and usb 3.

Cons: The first con is the amount of compatibility problems I have had with this board. The video card: only Windows 7 is supported and only the 32-bit version, 3d accelerated linux is being developed worked on by the linux community. Ram issue: I tried using DD3 1066 ram from a 2008 macbook, it would not boot, but the ram worked in 2 other systems I had with zero problems and zero errors, I had to buy some different ram and hope for the best because Foxconn support never gave me an answer as to why the ram did not work. second major con to me is expiation, only one PCI slot, 2 built in sata ports.

Other Thoughts: Check online for support for your operating system before buying, things may have changed. According to the intel page the built on video card is considered an intel gma 3650 and is made by PowerVR and according to some forums gives very little support to no support to the open source community. Also it should be noted that Intel has already retired this processor according to notebookcheck.com. I advise looking at other low powered solutions for a low power HTPC or low power server.

Pros: Great product for the price point, latest netbook, htpc build and comes with a good video performance. Speed is good and has hyperthreading for such a small cpu and great speed for only 10watts.

Cons: No Intel support for 64bit, be very careful if you want to run this CPU on a 64bit computer, it's a no go. Intel isn't supporting 64bit drivers and has no plans in the immediate time frame. A fairly new CPU but it seems that it is quite slow in the GPU part of the system. Windows 7 Aero is very choppy, although video works in full screen smoothly but in a window its slow and choppy. 3D performance is very sub par, very disappointed.

Other Thoughts: Please do some research into this processor before purchase, it uses a POWERVR for GPU and it is quite dated and slow in 3D for Windows 7. This CPU is only good for web surfing and Windows 7 basic system builds at 32bit, no Aero enhancements on.