The only P55 mini-itx board on the market

LANParty MI P55-T36 is the world's first Intel's P55-based mini-itx motherboard. DFI LANParty officially launched the board recently. The MI P55-T36 measures only 17cm x 17cm.

Unlike the J&W mini-itx 785G which runs on AMD chips, the Intel chip-based MI P55-T36 does not come with built-in graphics but it provides a PCIe x16 slot for graphics card.

MI P55-T36 comes with Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi technology on board which is a bonus for movie fans. It supports the latest Intel processors in the LGA 1156 package. There are also 2 DIMM sockets to support dual channel DDR3 memory and 1 power eSATA is on the real I/O. This is the most powerful Intel mini-itx board so far.


(source: http://www.tweaktown.com/pressrelease/2270/dfi_lanparty_mi_p55_t36_is_launched/index.html)

ZOTAC's new ION ITX-F-E Mini-ITX

ZOTAC has expanded its ION series of mini-ITX motherboards with the new ION ITX-F-E. The new ION ITX-F-E features an Atom N330 1.6GHz Dual-Core processors, a PCI Express x16 slot, MCP7A-ION Chipset, an integrated GF9400M graphics processor, Onboard 802.11n WiFi (mini PCIe), Coaxial and Optical SPDIF, etc. and supports up to 4GB 667/800 MHz DDR2 for high performance and energy efficiency.

Unlike the previous version which relies on a 90w external adaptor for power supply, the new ION ITX-F-E comes with a 20Pin ATX connector.

(source: http://global.hkepc.com/4175)

VIA VB8003 Mini-ITX

(source: http://www.slashgear.com/)

It is good to know that besides the popular Atom-Ion platform, we now have an alternative from VIA for the mini-itx 1080p solution, the VIA VB8003. 

The VIA VB8003 comes with a 1.6GHz VIA Nano processor coupled with the VIA VX800 media system processor and the S3 Graphics 435 ULP graphics processor offers stunningly smooth HD playback at resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 pixels. The connectivity includes dual HDMI ports, a DVI port, a VGA port, dual gigabit ethernet, 4 USB 2.0, PS2 and serial ports, 2 SATA ports, an IDE connector and a CompactFlash slot.


VIA calls this new board as the "Ultimate Mini-ITX HD Multimedia Platform Combines DX10.1 and Dual HDMI through both Discrete and Integrated Graphics".

ASUS AT3N7A-I best mini-itx ION-Based board so far

ASUS has just joined the NVIDIA's ION platform with their first NVIDIA ION-based AT3N7A-I motherboard. Boasting a mini-ITX form factor, the board comes equipped with a dual-core Intel Atom 330 processor with a core speed of 1.6GHz and all the necessary hardware to run a HTPC. It has 2 memory DIMMs slot which can support up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, 1 PCI slot, 3 SATA 3Gbps ports. It also comes with HDMI, DVI-D & VGA, Gigabit Ethernet LAN, 8-channel HD Audio Codec at the back panel. 

(pics are taken from http://news.softpedia.com/)

You can also find Express Gate on this small board, Express Gate is a simplified Linux OS which will enable you get access to your multimedia library or start surfing the internet almost instantly without log on the Windows.

The selling points of this small board are: mini-itx, ion platform, duo-core atom, express gate, e-sata (for your external hard disks) and low power consumption.

This is the FIRST mini-itx ion board from one of the world's few best motherboard manufacturers, personally I think it would outperform its counterpart Zotac ION 1680, still, it's cheaper than the Zotac.