Mini-ITX

Originally, Mini-ITX was a niche standard designed for fanless cooling with a low power consumption architecture, which made them useful for home theater PC systems, where fan noise can detract from the cinema experience.

Designed by Robert Kuo, VIA's chief R&D expert, the 215×191 mm VT6009 ITX Reference Board was demonstrated in "Information PC" and set-top box configurations.

In October 2001, VIA announced their decision to create a new motherboard division, to provide standardized infrastructure for lower-cost PC iterations, and focus on embedded devices.

The result was the November 2001 release of the VT6010 Mini-ITX reference design (again by Robert Kuo), once again touted as an "Information PC", or low cost entry level x86 computing platform.

Hollowed out vintage computers, humidors, toys, electronics, musical instruments, and even a 1960s-era toaster have become homes to relatively quiet, or even silent Mini-ITX systems[citation needed], capable of many of the tasks of a modern desktop PC.

Mini-ITX boards primarily appeal to the industrial and embedded PC markets, with the majority sold as bulk components or integrated into a finished system for single-purpose computing applications.

They are produced with a much longer sales life-cycle than consumer boards (some of the original EPIAs are still available), a quality that industrial users typically require.

Typical applications include playing music in supermarkets, powering self-service kiosks, and driving content on digital displays.

Intel introduced a line of Mini-ITX boards for the Atom CPU, which demonstrates a significant increase in processing performance (but without added power consumption) over older VIA C3 and C7 offerings and helps make the design viable for personal computers.

These processors are designed to draw minimal power resulting in lower TDP ideal for fanless (passively cooled) configurations and embedded applications.

[48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55] These motherboards often use mobile CPUs and passive cooling, and feature more powerful integrated graphics compared to their Intel counterparts, which makes them suitable for HTPC.

According to the official website, the board "offers an ultra-low power SoC with a variety of I/O and OS support for Android / Linux2.6 / Windows Embedded Compact 7".

Boards using full-power Intel or AMD CPUs typically use ATX12V 2.x connections and require a case with appropriate power supply and cooling for these more power-hungry chips.