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Hardware Hacking Hardware Technology

Pico-ITX, Because Size Matters 169

Posted by CowboyNeal from the on-the-head-of-a-pin dept.
An anonymous reader writes "It's not every day that a new form factor comes out, especially not one that is 10cm x 7.2cm. Despite its size, Pico-ITX is the hottest new thing in the rapidly changing small form factor market. It is considerably smaller than Mini-ITX (17cm x 17cm) which has proven itself to be quite versatile and though some sacrifices had to be made to shrink the platform, Pico-ITX is surprisingly complete. The system was tested with Feather Linux but the PX10000 has the power to run Windows XP or Ubuntu if you want to add on a hard drive."
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Pico-ITX, Because Size Matters More

Pico-ITX, Because Size Matters

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  • But but but... (Score:4, Funny)

    by cyberjock1980 ( 1131059 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @08:19AM (#20194501)
    All my ex girlfriends told me size DIDN'T matter. Of course, they'd dump me the same day... So this is news because size really does matter now?
    I'm in trouble cause i'm not 10cm x 10cm.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by rhyder128k ( 1051042 )
      We've got a great new system that, while using no pills or pumps can take you all the way up to AT or even ATX in some case. Go on, do it for you gal!

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm in trouble cause i'm not 10cm x 10cm.


      You should be seriously concerned if any of your ex girlfriends had any use for a 10x10 cm thing.

  • Units (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 6Yankee ( 597075 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @08:20AM (#20194511)
    From TFA: A full-sized ATX motherboard is 12 x 9.6 (305mm x 244mm) and Mini-ITX is 17cm x 17xcm

    That's nice and clear, don't you think?

    • Re:Units (Score:5, Funny)

      by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @08:57AM (#20194657) Journal
      If you can't convert mm to cm in your head, you should have your caregiver (who I assume typed your post and dressed you this morning) do it for you.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by 6Yankee ( 597075 )
        Had my "caregiver" typed my post for me, she would have noticed that the " symbols went AWOL during the cut and paste. Oops.

        My point, you blithering idiot, was that - in fact, no, it's too complicated for you. I don't want to hurt your poor little brain, especially after you've so recently converted from mm to cm.

        And, just for the record, I'm stark bollock naked, with only a laptop protecting my modesty. And I managed to put it there all by myself! So don't give me any of that crap about not being able to d

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Bobartig ( 61456 )
        This should, under all circumstances, be unnecessary to say:

        When you publish information, you should endeavor to make it understandable and digestible. Thus, when demonstrating a relationship by using units of measure, it behooves you to use the same units for both quantities. We can all convert inches to mm, or cm to mm, or rod perch to furlongs if we really have to (ok, google will do that last one). The point is, we shouldn't have to, because the article writer should be humane and considerate.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jamesh ( 87723 )
      Also:

      "
      The first is just how small it is-the 10mm x 7.2mm footprint makes for a board that is about the size of a 2.5 hard drive
      "

      10mm = 1cm ~= 0.4inch... now that is small enough that you'd just end up losing it behind the couch!

    • Re:Units (Score:5, Funny)

      by Viadd ( 173388 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @12:23PM (#20195903)
      Just to clarify, the areas of the form factors are:
      ATX: 17.2
      mini-ITX: 7.1
      nano-ITX: 3.6
      pico-ITX : 1.78

      In microacres, of course.

    • I guess if it is too difficult for you to instantly realize that 305mm x 244mm is 30.5cm and 24.4cm then I understand why you made your post.

  • if size matters (Score:3, Funny)

    by stoolpigeon ( 454276 ) * <bittercode@gmail> on Saturday August 11, 2007 @08:22AM (#20194523) Homepage Journal
    one would think they could keep it right in the article. The board is 10 cm x 7.2 cm - but they list it in the paragraph right before the second picture as mm instead of cm. i was going to comment on it there, but i'm not signing up for an account there just to do that.

  • pirce & why not fanless? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pimpimpim ( 811140 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @08:23AM (#20194527)
    I like this kind of stuff, but after comparing what building a system with this material would cost me, a mac mini would be way cheaper, and with the core duo in it, a heck of a lot faster as well.

    So it might be practical in embedded applications where the size matters (that thing is so small, incredible). But for those things, having a fan is big downer! Fan means: can break down, means: will break down, means: maintenance costs! Will there be a fanless version?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by TodMinuit ( 1026042 )
      PC/104 [wikipedia.org] SBC boards are usually fanless and about the same size. Only the procesors on PC/104 boards tend to be underpowered. Example [pc104plus.com]
      • What vias epia series provide is enough power to run modern windows (at least XP which is modern enough for most purposes) or linux at acceptable speeds while also being relatively small and cheaper than most embedded PC kit (the PC104 kit you link to doesn't show a price which i tend to intepret as meaning if you have to ask you can't afford it).

        Say you want to build a system of information screens. You can easilly build an epia into the back of your screen enclosure, add some ram and then run a network ca

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      I was wondering about that. You can get 4-600MHz ARM, SuperH, or PowerPC (with some form of GPU, usually PowerVR-based) based devices that are half the size of this board (think palmtop computers, mobile phones, etc) with passive cooling. Why does this run so hot? If you're running Linux, there's no reason to stick to x86.

      • Everything is a tradeoff for this sort of thing. A VIA C7 w/ Unichrome Pro graphics probably gives better performance than a PPC board at the same price point. If that matters (and it may) then this board meets the design requirements better for the product. If not then the answer is different.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Alioth ( 221270 )
      The PC platform is quite awful for embedded stuff, power hungry and demanding (requires a big operating system) - it's unlikely to find its way into embedded platforms (except where the developer has a severe lack of imagination, or the production run is so small they have to use people with commodity skills to develop the code rather than those who know embedded systems). It's more likely to be used in small form factor PCs.
    • Most of the time, VIA creates a board with a fan and one without. The one with fan use slightly faster CPU's: that's the price for more instructions/second. This is typed using a fully fanless system with a 1.2 GHz fanless. Completely silent, no moving parts *at all*. That is, the system crashed from my desktop PC some time ago, but having no *internally* moving parts probably helped it there as well.
    • this thing STILL has those !@#% PS2 keyboard and mouse connectors -- ugh. any small motherboard that still wastes circuitry for PS2 connectors for keyboard (instead of USB keyboard and mouse) is less desirable (imho).

      once you add up the costs of the REQUIRED USB Optical Drive, adding the IDE drive, its not so far to the mac mini -- which certainly has better graphics performance. if you get a used mac mini -- price should be within range.

      • drop the legacy ports; minimal IO configuration (Score:5, Insightful)

        by johnrpenner ( 40054 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @11:16AM (#20195437) Homepage

        | Despite the size, the specifications make it clear that the ITX motherboard
        | has a full range of connections, including DVI, VGA, ethernet, four USB ports,
        | two PS/2 connections and more.

        we do not want a 'full range' of connectors -- because anything that wastes circuitry
        for PS2 connections on a pico size board is a dodo (imo).

        we DO NOT WANT: IDE, PS/2 or VGA connectors cluttering up our motherboard.
        they duplicate functions already better achieved with: SATA, USB, and DVI.
        we want as few ports as possible and still be able to achieve any function.
        so, what ARE the desireable ports?

        -USB 2.0 (four ports)
        - SATA (two ports)
        - DVI (with optional VGA header)
        - SODIMM Slot for RAM (two)
        - ethernet (10/100/1000)
        - optional 802.11g/n

        that's it -- no extra ones besides that.
        get the bios working so it can boot with those,
        and drop the legacy cruft.

        j

        'Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler' (Einstein)

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by rikkus-x ( 526844 )
          Who are 'we'?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by screeble ( 664005 )
          No serial ports?

          They say a lot of things but that's the stupidest thing I've heard all week. Connectivity of the "most common denominator" is lost with your collective desires, "We." IDE, PS/2 and VGA connectors are not legacy ports. They are standards that should be maintained because SATA, USB, and DVI do not duplicate and/or replace the functionality of the ports you wish to remove.

          Yesterday I used a null modem and minicom to connect two systems via ttyS0. One of the boxes faces the internet and I don't

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by stickyc ( 38756 )
          we DO NOT WANT: IDE, PS/2 or VGA connectors cluttering up our motherboard. they duplicate functions already better achieved with: SATA, USB, and DVI.

          Why DVI over VGA? I've seen very few DVI-only monitors and there's still plenty of VGA-only monitors being sold. In this particular application, lower cost, compatibility, and reduced size weigh more towards "better" than pixel-accurate image reproduction. The DVI connector is physically larger than VGA and I'm guessing the hardware costs are still slightly h

          • Why DVI over VGA? I've seen very few DVI-only monitors and there's still plenty of VGA-only monitors being sold. In this particular application, lower cost, compatibility, and reduced size weigh more towards "better" than pixel-accurate image reproduction.

            DVI-I connections can be hooked up to both VGA (using a converter) and DVI. Probably 99% of all LCD monitors (which are the future) have DVI ports. Off-hand, I'd say that at least 2/3 of all PCs / notebooks sold are now using DVI on the external conne
        • Unless you're putting eSATA on there, add Firewire to the mix. USB 2.0 does not cut it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Guspaz ( 556486 )
          On the contrary, IDE ports are very important, as they can serve as a flash memory port. Your two choices are either a nice DOM (Disk On Module), which is essentially a flash card that plugs directly into an IDE port, or a CompactFlash adapter.

          Even if there was a SATA option available, due to the nature of a SATA plug, it would probably have to be attached by a cable and not physically mounted on the motherboard by pins like a DOM or flash adapter would be.

          I'd agree with you on PS/2, though. It's a dead for

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rich0 ( 548339 )
          It really depends on intended use - but a range of motherboards with IO options would be nice.

          Personally, I'd like to see:

          100MB ethernet
          TV-out (RCA or S-video)
          SPDIF
          DVI
          stereo audio out
          USB (a few)
          1 DIMM slot

          Of course, this is for a multimedia application - diskless mythtv front end. If you add an IDE interface for a compact-flash drive you expand the uses and it becomes a pretty generic multimedia front-end.
        • we do not want a 'full range' of connectors.
          I bet many boards that don't have the ports still have the features on the chips. Bringing them out to a few pins doesn't really cost much size wise and makes life much easier for those projects that need custom stuff interfaced as a keyboard or mouse. Likewise for serial ports for more general purpose interfacing (yes you can get PICs with USB support but the software needed to run the USB dominates the structure of your code and many projects end up dedicating a
      • ***once you add up the costs of the REQUIRED USB Optical Drive, adding the IDE drive, its not so far to the mac mini -- which certainly has better graphics performance. if you get a used mac mini -- price should be within range.***

        Also look at the Acer-Power 1000 which is in the mac-mini size range (about 1500cc vs about 1200cc).. It's cheap, comes with Windows(some folks like or need it) and runs Linux.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Graff ( 532189 )
      Even the size doesn't matter too much here. The Mac Mini is 6.5 in x 6.5 in x 2 in, that's 165 mm x 165 mm x 51 mm. The Pico-ITX is 100 mm x 72 mm with an unknown height. Of course the Pico-ITX is without a case, cables, optical drive, memory, hard drive, power supply, and so on. Once you add those on you would easily approach the Mac Mini's size.

      The main thing here is price and effort. The Mac Mini costs $600 and comes fully assembled with a case, hard drive, connectors, memory, an operating system, a
      • Indeed! I have been looking at mini-itx websites a bit and especially the casings are very costly! A question of bulk-economics I guess. It is such a shame that via has a small chance to get anywhere with these small costly systems. Also notebooks, for example, I can get a 400 euro notebook with the c7, but then only 256 meg of ram and a dvd/cd writer combination. Make this into something useful and you end up with the price of a fully-specced bottom line Dell. This VIA stuff should at least half their pric
    • Don't know what the heat issues are with these Pico forms but I was able to remove the provided CPU fan on my VIA Mini-ITX board and replace it with a taller northbridge heatsink (lots of pins-style) plus a 12cm quiet fan providing airflow. Temps at idle are identical to those with the CPU fan, and are only slightly higher under load. The setup is nigh-on silent. The cheap fans they provide with these boards are normally very loud.
      • Ah, can you help me out here! Few points:
        (1.) I did the same on my VIA C3, as I found out that the CPU has a Northbridge fan-connector. I removed the very noisy 4 cm fan and replaced it with a Zallman heat sink. Unfortunately, the heatsink doesn't stick to well and always moves around over the chip, so if I accidentally hit the case the system reboots. I used the heatsink paste that came with it, but that seems only for conducting the heat, not helping the sticking. The two northbridge fan connector pins a
        • Sure, I can answer the questions.
          1) It was a generic PC heatsink component, cannot recall the brand, but it had the standard pair of screw-type clips at opposite corners and these fitted into the provided holes quite nicely. I removed the supplied heatsink & fan. I guess yours just isn't the right size? Thankfully mine fitted perfectly.
          2) It's a Nehemiah N10000, I use the on-board video - S-video mainly.
          3) That's easy, I removed the HD and went for PXE/NFS booting! Removing the HD cut out a lot of th
        • if you don't want a heatsink to come off there is always arctic silver epoxy (http://www.heatsinkfactory.com/shop/product.php?p roductid=16157) , it is a little permanent though.

          I have also heared you can mix ordinary heatsink compound and araldite rapid but i'm not sure i'd want to risk that.

    • Those things are usefull when you want a small, but plugged in computer. There is simply no point in comparing it with a Mac Mini. Unless you want some quite unusual gabinet (like a bottle), you shoulnd't even look into putting one of those at your desk. Tou also don't want to carry an entire PC around using batteries.

      But inside of a wall, for exemple, one of those could go (with proper ventilation).

    • I like this kind of stuff, but after comparing what building a system with this material would cost me, a mac mini would be way cheaper, and with the core duo in it, a heck of a lot faster as well.

      I found this little gem earlier. Pricing is very reasonable considering the size / features.

      http://www.cappuccinopc.com/pandora-945-d.asp [cappuccinopc.com]

      • 500 dollar for the base model with a celeron processor. Add 160 to go to the simplest core 2 duo, and you already passed the mac mini. Furthermore, apple learned from their mistakes and now deliver the mac mini with nothing less than 1 GB of ram. The cappuccino pc starts with 256 mb. I like the color options (black). If it would give me either half the mac for half the price, or the same as the mac for less than the price of a mac, this would be good for me. I don't care about the OS too much, I don't like
      • The cappuccino pcs have some pros I overlooked BTW, that is industrial grade quality and the availability of solid state industrial quality hard drives. Actually, with that in mind, they are in need a good price for what they're worth.
        • At least they're not horrendously overpriced for what they offer. A lot of the small form factor stuff is 2x as expensive as a regular PC with standard parts. This is only 25-50% more expensive. And their "delta" prices look reasonable. They're not charging $300 more for a decent CPU (there's a Core Duo for +$80).

          I was originally looking at using a small microATX case to build a PC for someone with limited space. Then I found that site and decided that their prices were good enough to skip building m

  • Add a radio card (Score:5, Interesting)

    by transporter_ii ( 986545 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @08:37AM (#20194583) Homepage
    Add a radio card, an outdoor enclosure, and an antenna, and this might make a good access point that has a little more horsepower than your average AP.

    I wonder if Mikrotik will run on it? I think it should...

    • Or add a few gigabit Ethernet ports and use it as a firewall. Has anyone used a VIA C7 system in this way? If so, I'd be interested in how well it's worked, and if it introduces any significant latency or limits bandwidth.

      • While we're at it (Score:5, Funny)

        by TodMinuit ( 1026042 ) <todminuitNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday August 11, 2007 @08:51AM (#20194637)
        Add a 500GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 8800, 5.1 channel speaker system, and use it as your gaming machine!
      • Here is someone selling a firewall that has a 1GHz VIA C7 processor, and is running Monowall:

        http://www.logicsupply.com/products/perimeter_r [logicsupply.com]

        Funny, we had a hotel that was having trouble with someone hammering the bandwidth. I wanted to build a Monowall firewall, but we ended up selling them an expensive wireless gateway. A year or two later, they were required, by the corporate office, to have 24-hour tech support for guests of the hotel. Since we didn't offer that, they outsourced. The company sent them a
      • I've tested a Via C7 (1.5 Ghz) in a load-balancing fashion, and was able to pull about ~800 mbps. Of course, that all wasnt going through the C7, only about 30 mbps was (3 direct route load balancing), but nonetheless. The numbers I've seen say the C7 I have (which has dual onboard gigabit ports) can push about 500-750 mbps sustained over the networking gear I'm using (which is junky). Keep in mind that the _majority_ of consumer gear cant get over 250-300 mbps.
      • Or add a few gigabit Ethernet ports and use it as a firewall. Has anyone used a VIA C7 system in this way? If so, I'd be interested in how well it's worked, and if it introduces any significant latency or limits bandwidth.

        Even my old VIA C3 600MHz fanless is fast enough to serve as a firewall (for speeds up to around 10Mbps at a guess). The only reason that I'm not running that C3 as a firewall currently is because CentOS5 hadn't come out with a version that would run on the C3.

        The downside of somethi
    • If there's a way to add TV tuner capability to it (I guess it would have to be via USB), I was thinking ultra-small MythTV box. It's certainly powerful enough for SD content, and I like the MPEG2/4 hardware decoding.

  • If size REALLY matters.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by superid ( 46543 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @08:44AM (#20194615) Homepage
    ... then I think I would try Gumstix [gumstix.org] for non-speed critical apps.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pla ( 258480 )
      I think I would try Gumstix for non-speed critical apps.

      Except, this board doesn't just target the non-speed-critical market.

      The Via C7 certainly doesn't compete with the latest offerings from Intel or AMD, but it does perform quite well for anything short of modern FPS games or hard-core number crunching.

      I have personally used it (the CPU, not that exact MB) as both a Linux fileserver and as an XP machine. For Linux, it works like a dream... Low heat, low power requirements, more than enough horsep

  • Pretty small, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Bombula ( 670389 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @09:05AM (#20194693)
    I'm no expert and I know this thing is tiny, but aren't laptop motherboards already pretty small? The motherboards in some of those tiny Sony Vaios must not be much bigger than this thing, and thinner too - and they've been around for a few years now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by iBod ( 534920 )
      Maybe. But Sony laptop boards aren't exactly a generic form-factor and they would probably cost a *lot* more - even if you could but them, which you can't except as Sony spares.
    • The motherboards in some of the smaller laptops probably are roughly that size; however they are irregularly shaped to fit the notebook's contours and can be sized to fit in all needed parts. This board is rectangular and has to deal with the constraints of its shape and size, so VIA had a tougher time packaging everything in there. Plus, many notebooks use heatpipe coolers that have the sink well away from the CPU and sometimes even the motherboard, whereas this unit did not. Not having that big old alumin
    • I'm no expert and I know this thing is tiny, but aren't laptop motherboards already pretty small? The motherboards in some of those tiny Sony Vaios must not be much bigger than this thing, and thinner too - and they've been around for a few years now.

      They're also not a standard form-factor usable for generic PC building. While this might be somewhat overdue, standards are a good thing.

  • For comparison... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @09:05AM (#20194695) Journal
    It's not every day that a new form factor comes out, especially not one that is 10cm x 7.2cm.

    Just as a basis of comparison, a typical full-height PCI card measures 15.5cm[*] x 9.5cm (not counting the external dangly bits or the actual PCI connector), making this entire motherboard half the area of most graphics cards.

    Or to put it another way, a laptop HDD measures 10cm x 7cm, making this MB just a hair bigger (Too close to call coincidence, I suspect Via chose the size based on that exact match).

    Not bad, as long as you need no expansion capability.



    *) They can actually get longer than that, I have an ancient one measuring 19cm long, but a quick glance at my box-o-obsolete-PC-parts shows 15.5 as the most common size for full-height cards).

  • MythTV Frontend? Is the Unichrome HD Capable? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tji ( 74570 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @09:50AM (#20194951)
    This would make an excellent MythTV frontend.. Flash-based OS or Net-Boot. Small size, VGA or DVI output.

    The 1GHz VIA C7 would not handle HD decoding on its own.. it's not fast enough.

    But, the Unichrome features an MPEG2 decoder which offloads the CPU so that even the C7 could handle HD playback.

    The question is: Is the version of the Unichrome GPU in this thing HD capable? Unfortunately, most of the Unichrome GPUs are limited to 1024x1024, which is obviously not going to cut it for HD.
  • What I want is something that I can use as a MythTV frontend (or something similar), that is small, looks cool, uses very little power, is capable of playing HD video streams, and most importantly IS 100% passively cooled!

    I have yet to find anything that meets those requirements. Sure, a few things like the Mac Mini come close, but I want something that does not make any noise at all. I've already got a super quiet mini-atx PC that hardly makes a sound at all and is buried inside a cabinet and it STILL dr

  • Wow... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MrNaz ( 730548 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @10:17AM (#20195103) Homepage

    Where Are They Now? Episode 205:

    The 1.0GHz VIA C7 processor is not as powerful as something like a Core 2 Duo

    Captain Obvious, the washed up superhero, now works writing hardware reviews.

  • I just don't understand one thing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @10:34AM (#20195197) Journal

    Why are these things always mentioned as possible solutions for a silent PC? They are NOT PC's. PC's are powerfull and can handle a ton of storage and are easily expanded. These things are not.

    No I do NOT question the usefullness of these things for certain tasks, but if you want a full PC that is 100% silent, might I offer a different solition instead? It too involves size.

    Make your case big. The simplest way to prevent noise from inside a PC reaching your ears is to use thick walls, and to force the sound to take the long way out. An even simpler solution is to use the layout of your house to put even more distance between you and the PC. My own PC is standing on the balcony, the wires going through the wall. Outside it sits in a thick wooden casing, with it basically having a small case at the bottom that sucks air in from the front and back and up into the main casing were I have put the PC itself (in my own layout) and then a similar case up above that blows the air out. The two fan cases force the air around several walls to break up the soundwaves.

    Result, soundless operation, I already picked quiet fans and the sound walls hide even their small amount of noise coupled with tremenedous cooling with no sacrifice on the components used for the PC itself. Regular Core 2 Duo, regular memory, and far too many HD's to hold all my porn eh business data.

    While this mini-boards occasionally tempt me, I always end up with the simple fact that they just don't have the raw power I would need. Take using it as a movie player, how the hell are these things supposed to do highdef? That can bring a fullsize system to its knees? As for who would want to use a desktop with less then 2 gigs of memory, do you like pain? (2 gigs is a bit of overkill perhaps for linux but I hate swapping. Swapping means the terrorists have won!)

    So nice board, intresting and all, but IF you are thinking about wanting a silent PC, consider instead in using regular hardware but an un-regular encasing. Size indeed matters and trying to make a 2mm thin metal encasing silent is doing things the hardway. 22mm wood, with isolation that is what makes a manly PC. Leave the tiny pc's for the japanese.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hypnotik ( 11190 )
      Or you could do what I am doing..

      Build a big honking PC to sit off in a closet, or basement or somewhere far away where you can't hear it, then build a small, noiseless mini-ITX or smaller box that connects via gigabit ethernet and acts as a thin client. These have more than enough power to play music, dvds, etc local, and even surf locally. Most other apps get run off the server.. Even 100baseT is fast enough, but gigabit gives that extra little to make things seemless.

      Best of both worlds... Unless you wa
    • They can work as entry-level green (as in low-power) PCs. Everex [crunchgear.com] came out with one recently. If you want a low-noise PC with more power, maybe one built around a mobile processor would be appropriate.

    • They're x86 boards compatible with PCs. Big (ahem) difference.

      Me, I'd imagine these would get the most use in industrial control. Medical equipment, highly interactive process control with lots of graphics. Stuff like that. Or maybe for a home-PC type application that you don't ever intend to upgrade. Like a MAME cabinet or a homebrew router or something like that.

      They're useful, and it's great engineering...but yeah, not really a PC even though you could use them as one. Sort of like how if you r

      • Maybe someone should tell the companies that are making PCs out of these boards, such as Systemax [via.com.tw].

        • Those are cool, and if size is important probably a pretty good thing. But I still don't think they fit the modern definition of PC. They're just not as expandable. Sort of reminds me of the Packard Bell PCs from a decade ago. Everything in it was so custom you couldn't upgrade it.

          These would be good for office work though. Saves on desk space, and office-types hardly ever do upgrades.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Animats ( 122034 )

      Over 60% of PCs never have the case opened during their operating life. Expandability is rarely necessary.

      • Over 60% of PCs never have the case opened during their operating life. Expandability is rarely necessary.

        By your own numbers, 40% of computers are opened up. How is expandability not important again?
    • (Let me preface this by mentioning I love big cases and multicore CPU's, so I hear what you are intending to say.)

      OK, so the Apple droids have started redefining the language and are trying to make "P.C." mean "the wintel competition of Apple".

      BUT

      I would like to mention that P.C. is an abbreviation for PERSONAL COMPUTER. Thus, it is a P.C. -IF- it does what a person needs. (maybe word processing, surfing and astrix?)
  • The Geode development boards have been around for many years, are a bit smaller than this thing, are lower power, and can include CPUs that will absolutely run rings around the 1GHz Via C7, while running fanless.

    To this day, I don't see why VIA's CPUs have gotten so popular in the small space. There have always been many other CPUs from both Intel and AMD that can outperform them, with much lower power requirements.
    • Such as?

      Even the mini-itx boards run about 16W under load. Geode boards with a lot less performance and fewer features consume around 12W. I'd say the via stuff is not bad.
    • they are cheap! the bottom end epia board is about £60. If you plan to net boot then the only thing you need to add is ram to get a functional device. even with a compactflash card and adaptor for booting (needed to easilly run windows) and a copy of whitebox OEM windows XP home i'd imagine you are looking less than £200 all in.

  • Still waiting for Femto-ITX (Score:4, Funny)

    by ezdude ( 885983 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @11:28AM (#20195519) Journal
    I need a new mobo for this cool wrist watch I'm designing...

  • Warning against VIA EPIA motherboards (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Grue ( 3391 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @11:44AM (#20195637) Homepage
    I picked up a Mini-ITX for use as a MythTV box a few years ago. It was an EPIA Nehemiah M10000, and from the day I started using it all I had were problems. Do a search for VIA EPIA and DMA and you'll see what I mean. They released several flash updates for the BIOS, but they never seemed to fix the actual problem. Maybe they did finally figure out the issue, but if they did, they never told the user community.

    The feature set was nice. Built in MPEG2 decoder, 5.1 audio, ethernet and 3D acceleration. But the constant hardware lock-ups made the machine unusable. Finally, it started rebooting more and more often, and then just died.

    There are a ton of other manufacturers of SFF machines out there, my suggestion is to purchase from a company that will support you after they sell you a machine.

  • Poor cable management (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Saturday August 11, 2007 @01:40PM (#20196489) Homepage

    A basic problem with this thing is that they just bring out the connections to header connectors. So you have all the internal mess of a regular PC, crammed into less space.

    It would be more useful in the PC market to have a board with roughly the same footprint as a CD or DVD drive, with all the external connectors on the back edge of the board. Get rid of all those internal jumper cables. If the thing is going to go in a box with a CD or DVD drive, there's not much point in making it smaller than the drive. I realize this is more or less an Intel Mac Mini. At that density, you have to have integrated design of board, packaging, and airflow.

    The Mac IIci, over a decade ago, was the first machine to get this right. No internal cables. Even the power supply clicked into the motherboard. The machine was designed for automated assembly, instead of low-wage assembly.

    • (Warning: all links PDF) Maybe you'd like an EPIC [pc104.org], EBX [pc104.org], or if you want two systems in not much more than the space of a 5.25" drive, a PC/104 [pc104.org]. Get PC/104+ [pc104.org] and you'll have a PCI bus instead of just ISA. You can stack them with modules that do just about anything [pc104.org]. And they're cheap, like $100-$600 depending on CPU, all the way up to Core2 Duo.

      That said, why is everyone evaluating an embedded system using criteria usually applied to laptops and/or desktops. Does no one here ever do (or even know about)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ErikZ ( 55491 ) *
        no.

        A friend of mine does Embedded work. But he's a C freak. I wouldn't mind getting into it, but would have no idea how to.
      • That said, why is everyone evaluating an embedded system using criteria usually applied to laptops and/or desktops. Does no one here ever do (or even know about) embedded work anymore?
        The epia boards sit on the boundry between PCs and embedded computing. They are just about powerfull enough to run desktop software which means no specialist development tools and easy testing. They are also just about small and low power enough for embedded use. Finally they have one off prices that make them accessible to ho
  • I just got a mini-itx computer to replace my old 333Mhs computer. I used that as a build box. The new mini-itx now runs both windows and FreeBSD and continues to be a build box, but will also be my itunes box. It is really fast, faster than I thought it would be. It does a buildworld in a few hours as opposed to the 333Mhz which took a few days. I love the space savings of these little systems and I am planing to replace my server with another mini-itx system.

    I have found small PSU's. In fact my curr

  • I use them. They're big in "THIN CLIENTS".

    For a project of mine, I need a small data collection PC to be used in the field. I use thin client machines based on the same chip. I pay under $500 for a machine finished nicely with reasonable video, sound, usb, network ports, mini-pci for wifi, and a big heat sink on top. There is no fan in the unit, and it uses flash ram instead of a hard disk. Mine come with 512megs of ram, windows XPe, and 1gb of flash drive for storage. With no moving parts they last a long time, and the use about 20 watts of power rather than about 220 for a typical desktop pc.

    They are also available (cheaper) with linux embedded, but in my case the app they run is written for XP and until I have time to re-write it, that's what I need.

  • One thing that these small boards have to do to make room is stack vertically some of the components.

    Is anyone aware of boards that might be a little larger in width and height, but not quite as thick? The thinnest I have seen still have large VGA connectors and Ethernet connectors sitting on them.

  • DIY case. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Sunday August 12, 2007 @02:07AM (#20200713) Homepage Journal
    The answer in the short term to the lack of cases for the job is very simple: Lego and superglue.

    This has always been an option for any form factor, but of course it quickly becomes impractical as Lego does not scale all that well when strength is a concern. With a motherboard this size though, the hard drive or optical drive are going to be the constraint on how small the case can be.

    Another viable option is to use a case designed for an optical drive. Once the supplied electronics are gutted (and possibly used elsewhere), it should be possible to shoehorn this board, a 3.5" drive, and a slimline optical drive in there. All you'd have to hack would be the front and back panels, which is pretty trivial with Lexan and a rotary tool.

    Mal-2

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