Smallest Commercial Motherboard Reviewed
Size isn't everything. At least when it comes to electronics. Driven by popular demand and semiconductor process technology, cell phones, MP3 players, motherboards, and other devices have evolved to become smaller, more powerful, and more portable. At just 10cm x 7.2cm, the pico-ITX VIA EPIA PX10000 motherboard is currently the smallest commercial motherboard available. Of course, it seems that one must always sacrifice performance for a smaller package, and the PX10000 does indeed have many ups and downs. It supports the VIA C7 NanoBGA2 Processor, which runs at just 1.0 GHz. Moreover, the board only has 1 x SATA input, 1 x 10/100 LAN input, and 1 x IDE (UltraDMA) input. UniCrome Pro II AGP graphics comes integrated, as does 7.1 channels audio output. However, thanks to the additional PX-O I/O Board that comes in every package, users can still enjoy 4 x USB 2.0 ports. Although tests reveal the PX10000 to be incredibly power efficient, at only 14W idle and 16W under extreme load, it seems to have trouble dealing with accelerated video.
"The PX 10000 is an excellent playback machine for low to medium resolution content. The majority of content available on the web is still in this format. The PX will playback your DivX and XviD files, DVDs, and lower resolution H264 and WMV9 files."
"If you throw anything high resolution at the PX... the power of the CPU becomes a bottleneck."
"720p WMV9 playback is out of our clutches on the PX 10000 for now."
"If you throw anything high resolution at the PX... the power of the CPU becomes a bottleneck."
"720p WMV9 playback is out of our clutches on the PX 10000 for now."
