People who like HTPCs may have a reason to build a brand new one

Jan 16, 2012 08:39 GMT  ·  By

Intel's Cedar Trail Atom processing units now have some new motherboards to settle in, all of them featuring the mini-ITX form factors.

The Santa Clara, California-based CPU giant released several mini-ITX motherboards with support for the latest Atom CPUs.

They are five in number, but only two of them really qualify as consumer-oriented platforms.

One of them is the DN2800MT (Marshalltown), which is not so much suited for HTPCs (home-theater personal computers) as it is for all-in-one systems (AiO).

It comes with the Atom N2800 CPU (a mobile unit, not a desktop one, oddly enough) and has a mini PCI Express slot, plus a full-size PCI Express slot that can be set to work in mSATA mode.

There are two SATA ports as well, plus a PCI Express x1 slot, a pair of SD-DIMM DDR3 memory slots, VGA and HDMI ports and a bunch of peripherals (no USB 3.0).

Furthermore, Intel tossed in a D-Sub and HDMI port, plus an on-board DC-DC converter and headers for serial and parallel ports, plus LVDS and eDP.

That said, the DN2800MT should be able to work well as an HTPC motherboard, not just for AiOs, provided the HDMI video port is used for output to an HDTV or amplifier.

The other board, named D2700DC (Dry Creek), has one PCI Conventional Bus Connector, a PCI Express Mini Card, two SATA ports and four USB 2.0 ports (three more via headers).

Buyers will find six (5.1) channel Intel HD Audio, Optical SPDIF output (back panel), front panel mic/headphone header, two memory slots (as above) and the Intel Atom D2700 chip.

Both platforms can handle up to 4GB of DDR3 and have Integrated 10/100/1000 network connection (Gigabit Ethernet).

Retailers should already have the newcomers up for order, but the prices aren't quite as low as some would have expected.

The D2700DC ships for about 79.95 Euro, which translates into $101, while the DN2800MT ships for 94.95 Euro ($120).

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Intel D2700DC
Intel DN2800MT
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