arghyle

The people over at mini-itx.com have posted the first review of a Pico-ITX motherboard. I’m not quite sure how they got their hands on a motherboard so early but I am guessing they bought a sample board from a retailer somewhere. Supposedly some retailers received a few boards as samples (though they sold out fast).

So how did it do? From what I can tell, pretty well. The motherboard is extremely small and has performance that is somewhere between Nano-ITX and Mini-ITX motherboards. Video playback looks solid though there seem to be problems with video acceleration. Some other flaws include a big battery enclosure on the bottom, a flimsy DVI cable, a lack of a Mini-PCI slot, and just one SATA port.

Other problems include a price that is going to be on the high side and the lack of available cases. Right now there are not any cases available and things are not looking good because of a limited user base. This is somewhere where VIA really needs to step in an put out a few cases (like their reference case) so enthusiasts have a starting off point. Another interesting point that came up was that the motherboard can’t be run without the fan, which is disappointing, though the fan should not take up much room.

I still have high hopes for the PX motherboards but I can see a number of details that are going to be problematic in the future. It looks like the guys at Mini-ITX were happy with it, which is a good sign, but they had their share of problems during the review.

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