In our multiple Atom board review, we cover the original Intel D945GCLF motherboard, Gigabyte's GA-GC230D, Jetway's JNC91, a board from MSI due to be released in the next few weeks, and Intel's Dual Core Atom 330 powered D945GCLF2 - released today (or thereabouts).

Five Atom Mini-ITX Boards Reviewed

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Aaron Shephards built himself a DVD burning robot to automate his backups. "Florian" picks up a DVD from a stack and places them in the DVD burner to be written. It then flips them over to be labelled, and even discards any bad disks into a naughty pile. All using self-built circuit boards, a few servos and servo controllers, plenty of LEDs, his own software written in Perl and components from local surplus shops. There's an EPIA M10000 motherboard in there too. Somewhere.

Aaron Shephards' "Florian"

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Tim Schellekens has built an inexpensive Monitor PC from Mini-ITX components and a 15in LCD Monitor found on eBay, loosely inspired by his brother in law's iMac.

This one's currently running Ubuntu.

Tim Schellekens' "i-EPIA"

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MSI look like they will be one of the first out of the blocks to release a Montevina-based Mini-ITX motherboard, after an early MS-9818 arrived at the Mini-ITX.com underground lair yesterday. The board is so new, we don't have a processor that will actually run on it.

Montevina is of course the codename for Intel's latest mobile platform, better known as Centrino 2. Mobile platforms have traditionally been a starting point for low power consumption Mini-ITX motherboard designs with socket CPUs.

Intel has introduced a range of 45nm dual core mobile processors together with the Centrino 2 platform, all of which are supported by the MS-9818. For instance the P8400 runs at 2.26GHz with a TDP of just 25W, whilst the 2.8GHz T9600 has a TDP of 35W. For the speed freaks there is the 3.06GHz X9100 Core 2 Extreme processor or even the soon to be launched Quad Core 2 Extreme QX9300 running at 2.53GHz, which we think will have a TDP of about 44W.

MS-9818 Specifications

• Supported processors: 45nm Socket P Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo/Celeron processors
• FSB: 1066/800/667 MHz
• Chipset: Intel GM45 North Bridge;Intel ICH9M-E South Bridge (with integrated TPM)
• Memory: 2x DDR2 800/667MHz SO-DIMM (up to 4GB max RAM)
• Graphics: Intel GMA X4500 Graphics with DirectX 10 support
• Display Outputs: VGA, DVI-D, HDMI, LVDS
  
• Audio: Realtek ALC888 5.1 Channel HD Audio; 6W Class-D Amplifier
• LAN: 2x Gigabit LAN ports (82567LM & 82574L)
• Storage:4x SATA II with RAID 0/1/5/10; 1x 44pin IDE
• Peripheral Connectivity: 4x USB 2.0 ports + 4x additional USB 2.0 headers; 1x RS-232/RS-422/RS-485 + 5x additional COM headers
  
• Expansion: 1x PCI; 1x Mini PCIe; 1x PCIe x1; 1x Compact Flash (underneath board)
• Size: 17cm x 17cm

MSI Motherboards at the Mini-ITX Store

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Intel Atom powered Mini-ITX boards from Intel, Foxconn, Gigabyte, J&W, MSI and Jetway are making appearances on stands at Computex 2008 in Taipei this week.

Intel's D945GCLF 'Little Falls' board started the ball rolling and is already available to purchase.

Despite baby-rearing duties keeping our intrepid reporters away from trade shows this year, we've put together a gallery of Atom boards from various sources. We'll add more as and when they are spotted. Many thanks to Hexus, Tweaktown and Bit-Tech.

Gigabyte	J&W	Foxconn
Foxconn	Foxconn	Jetway
Jetway	MSI

Most of the Atom boards so far have 2x SATA II ports due to the ICH7M chipset, though boards with the ICH7 chipset will be capable of supporting 4x SATA II ports. It's unclear at this stage which of the boards will be fanless as manufacturers often display boards without fans or even heatsinks attached.

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VIA Technologies today announced a new minimum specification for Mini-ITX motherboards.

Mini-ITX 2.0 keeps the 17 x 17cm form factor we know and love, but updates several key areas.

• Processor: High-performance, power efficient x86 processor, such as the VIA Nano processor
• Memory: Support for minimum 2GB DDR2 SDRAM
• Graphics: DirectX 9.0 integrated (IGP); DirectX 10 through an add-in card
• Display: 1 VGA port for LCD display; 1 HDMI port on add-in card
• HD Audio: 3 Audio jacks for up to 6-channel surround sound
• Broadband Connectivity: 1 Gigabit LAN port
• Storage: 2 Serial ATA II slots + 1 IDE (PATA) slot
• Peripheral Connectivity: Minimum 4 USB2.0 ports
• Expansion: 1 PCI Express 16-lane slot
• Size: 17cm x 17cm
• O/S Support: Microsoft® Windows Vista®; Microsoft Windows Vista Premium (through an add-in graphics card); Microsoft Windows® XP, and major Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Suse Linux and gOS

The first Mini-ITX boards hit the streets in early 2002 and since then many manufacturers have produced boards using their own interpretation of the specifications.

None of the Mini-ITX 2.0 features are particularly ground breaking in 2008 but they do set a new baseline, one that hasn't been set in a long time. A "Mini-ITX 2.0" board will bring a guarantee of Vista support, DX10 expandability, Gigabit LAN, SATA 2.0 and a PCI Express slot.

VIA expect motherboards and systems based around the Mini-ITX 2.0 standard to be available from leading vendors in the fourth quarter of 2008.

VIA's Mini-ITX 2.0 page

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VIA Technologies have made inroads into the buoyant UMPC market over the past few months with the same CPU and chipset technologies used on their Mini-ITX boards.

Their OpenBook is a low cost laptop design released under a Creative Commons ShareAlike license, meaning OEMs can download the CAD files for nothing and create their own versions with just a nod to VIA. Specifications of course include a VIA 1.6GHz C7-M processor and VX800M chipset, with a wealth of wireless modules including WiFi/Bluetooth, AGPS, WiMAX, EV-DO, HSDPA and WCDMA all possible.

The OpenBook weighs 1Kg and measures 240 x 175 x 36.2mm with a 1024 x 600 pixel 8.9in screen, up to 2GB DDR2 RAM, a 2MP camera, memory card reader and a 4 cell battery giving 3 hours battery life.

The VX800M chipset is also new from VIA, and is the first to support both the C7-M and their forthcoming Isaiah processor, perhaps suggesting future OpenBooks will get a speed bump. The VX800M also supports MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC1 and DivX video decoding acceleration - however support for acceleration features on previous VIA chipsets has been weak, so we'll cross our fingers and reserve judgement until we actually test a VX800M based system.

VIA's OpenBook

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Mark Harris bought the GTA IV special edition, then decided to play with the packaging instead.

The safety deposit box was the perfect size to repurpose an old EPIA Mini-ITX motherboard and case and even came with a convenient carrying handle. This one's currently running Slax booting from a 1GB Compact Flash card and runs near silently with just a couple of fans to keep things running cool.

Mark Harris's "GTA-PC"

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Intel are showing a Mini-ITX board on their CeBIT stand with the DQ45EK moniker, suggesting it will utilise their Q45 "Eaglelake" 4-series chipset.

The board looks to have an LGA-755 CPU socket; 2x DVI ports; 2x DDR2 DIMM slots; 4x SATA 2.0; 1x LAN; 3x Audio; 6x USB 2.0 and 1x eSATA port.

This shorter PCIe x1 slot limits the board to the not at all shabby integrated DirectX 10 GMA 4500 graphics.

Also on display was a DG45FC board (codename "Fly Creek"). The G45 chipset has rather nice X4500HD integrated graphics, supporting High Def H264 and VC-1 decoding in hardware.

This one has an Intel G45 + ICH10-R chipset; LGA-755 socket supporting 65W FMB Intel Core 2 CPUs (Wolfdale and Conroe); Dual output through 1x DVI-I and 1x HDMI ports; 2x Dual Channel DDR2 800/667 DIMM slots; 4x SATA 2.0; 1x 82567LM Gigabit LAN; 5x Audio & S/PDIF out (10 channel audio with Dolby HT); 6x USB 2.0 + 4x USB 2.0 headers on the board; a PCIe x1 Slot and 1x eSATA port.

Photos from here and our friends at Hexus (maybe we'll actually go to CeBIT next year and take our own photos)

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Intel are planning to put their new Atom processor into at least two new low cost Mini-ITX boards later this year.

The design, code named "Little Falls" is the first Intel-designed board to include a full Intel chipset, the tried and tested 945GC and ICH7 combination. Last year's initial foray into Mini-ITX ("Little Valley") used a chipset from SiS.

The Atom brand incorporates the 45nm CPUs previously codenamed Silverthorne (slower, very low power consumption) and the tweaked and Silverthorne-derived Diamondville (faster, slightly higher power consumption). A dual core Diamondville is due in Q3 this year - this will be incorporated into "Little Falls 2", a few months after the first board.

Modelling for us today is a Little Falls board from Gigabyte, which looks like it may have the following specifications: 1.87GHz Atom CPU with 533MHz FSB and 512MB L2 Cache; Intel 945GC+ICH7 Chipset; GMA950 Intel Integrated Graphics; 1x DDR2 800 slot supporting up to 2GB; 1x PCI; 4x USB 2.0; 1x IDE; 2x SATA; PS/2 Keyboard+Mouse; VGA; LAN; Serial; Parallel; 3x Audio. Other boards are likely from Intel, and possibly Asustek and MSI.

Two quirks from Little Valley appear to remain with Little Falls. The board has a 12V P4 power connector (most Mini-ITX cases do not - including an adapter cable with the board would resolve this). But more importantly the CPU heatsink is taller than the backplate - severely limiting the choice of low-profile Mini-ITX cases available to it.

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