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Because ARM processors are much less expensive and power-consuming, I want to use them in a PC with PC-type RAM and hard-drive.

Is there a motherboard the allows to use ARM processors with PC-based RAM and hard-drive?

Peter Mortensen
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jellyfish man
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  • There's no 'system' standard for arm as there is for x86 PCs - essentially every single arm system you would buy on the market has its OS built specifically for it. There's supposed to be a standard Arm Server Platform as of 2014 but I have not seen it yet. – Journeyman Geek Aug 29 '16 at 00:23

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It's actually totally possible. AMD was supposed to release dev boards based on their new Opteron A1100 octocore ARM APU, but as you can see, there have been severe difficulties with actually getting anyone to ship the darn things.

Another tantalizing possibility is the MP30-AR0 Server Board by Gigabyte. Again, finding anyone willing to ship this stupid thing is the hard part, but it does exist.

Considering Windows 10 works on ARM, Android works on ARM, ChromeOS works on ARM, Linux works on ARM, and some form of Mac's OS works on ARM... I'll leave you to guess why these boards aren't easily available to lowly consumers in an era when CPU power is increasingly irrelevant for most users.

Adam Wykes
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  • is there a motherboard that supports nvidia tegra x1? what about a board allowing several chips on it? – jellyfish man Aug 29 '16 at 00:14
  • You know about the famous tegra k1 dev board right? It has no standard RAM slots but I do believe it has a sata port. And no, you can't have two socket boards yet. AMD skybridge intended to do that but I do not know project status for that now – Adam Wykes Aug 29 '16 at 00:21
  • I'm pretty sure skybridge got killed off, and they focused completely on a puire x86 zen. I wonder if via have anything like this – Journeyman Geek Aug 29 '16 at 00:35
  • @JourneymanGeek Via should as it would instantly make them competitive, but to hear Keller tell it skybridge was "difficult" and that's coming from the mastermind of K8, A7, and Zen. – Adam Wykes Aug 29 '16 at 00:39
  • And not worth it. That said, most x86 processors spend a relatively small amount of transistors on x86 instructions, and in theory you could swap that out for arm, keeping the other blocks the same. In practice neither of the smaller x86 makers via or amd have succeeded, despite trying. – Journeyman Geek Aug 29 '16 at 01:06
  • What I have HEARD - and I'm not going to go out and find the source on this, but just to feed the rumor-mill - is that Socket AM4 will have ARM parts which work on it. That would mean no concurrent x86 AFAIK, but it would kinda be in line with what we're discussing. – Adam Wykes Aug 29 '16 at 01:09
  • The market price of MP30-AR0 was close to $1000 a piece - still wondering why it has not become more popular? – Alex P. Sep 10 '16 at 22:23
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There is no reason you could not have a standard IBM-PC format motherboard using an ARM CPU. Simply obeying the form factor (which nowadays includes not only mounting holes, but a set of backside connectors for video, USB, Net, etc.) as well as being PCI compliant would do it. Clearly the drivers and the software would be custom, but a Linux distro could do that easily, and Windows will soon run on ARM as well.

Scott Franco
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