Arima shows server mobo prowess

ARIMA IS ANOTHER one of those companies that services the OEM/ODM market, produces great products, and never gets its name in the headlines.

The firm had two good lines of products on display at Computex, and you will probably never see either with its logo on it.

First up, motherboards, and Arima makes a lot of them for the server segment, especially the HPC market. The key differentiator that sets the outfir apart is Infiniband on board. If you get an AMD or Intel mobo with this, you probably bought an Arima product. The firm had a lot of 940- and 1207-pin AMD boards at the show, along with a ton of 771 Intel parts.

You can see the Melanox chip on the left and the two IB connectors in the center of the Arima SW300 above. It is a dual 940 pin Opteron with about every feature you can ask for. There was no 1207 counterpart with IB, but that is only a matter of time, we surmise.

On the Intel side, things were a bit more polished, the BF550 is a dual Woodcrest board with the same overkill amount of bells and whistles. Both boards have a So-DIMM looking slot on the bottom for a plug in management card, so you don't have to give up any features by going with Arima customers vs the 'big guys'.

Taking a sharp left turn, Arima is also going into the LCD TV market, again targeting the OEM/ODM crowd. The panels were solid, had nice image quality, and were decently featured. They went up to a 40" 1080i screen, and a 42" 1080p.

As you can see from the pictures, the Arima monitors have a nice, clean look, with a little lip on the bottom to add a bit of flash. Since they will be made to customer specs, chances are good that they will look entirely different when you get a chance to buy one.

I left Arima with a good impression. On the mobo side, it has everything you need, and Infiniband on top, if you want to go there. The LCDs were a surprise, but it seemed that everyone at Computex was getting into making them. If you are buying a server and someone mentions that it is an Arima-based part, you should have no worries. µ