14 DAY TRIAL // Miniature personal computers can only accommodate as much hardware as their mainboard allows, which is why motherboard designers seem to be in the middle of a race to see who makes the best and/or most balanced one.
ASRock is among the ones that most often release something for this sector. Case in point, the company has introduced the Q1900DC-ITX.
A mini-ITX motherboard, the newcomer ships complete with its own integrated CPU (central processing units), or rather SoC (system-on-chip).
There was a time when even mini PCs had to follow the old adage of motherboard + socketed CPU + everything else.
For a few years, however, Intel has been dealing in System-on-Chip devices as well, CPUs of a sort that integrate both graphics and the memory controller, plus a host of other things.
It's the same concept as the one behind all the central chips powering the many tablets and smartphones in the world.
In this instance, it's the quad-core Intel Celeron J1900 "Bay Trail" SoC, with a frequency of 2 GHz, and Turbo Boost technology that can push the frequency a fair bit higher, to 2.42 GHz.
A PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot is available, as is a mini PCI Express slot, but it's up to you to find a video card that won't be wasted on the tech (no x16 slots here, alas).
Fortunately, even the iGP inside the SoC can handle media playback, so you'll be able to view films in full quality regardless of what hardware you add. So long as you populate the two DDR3L SO-DIMM memory slots anyway.
In case you were wondering, SO-DIMM is a smaller type of memory module, the kind normally used in laptops (DIMM are the desktop variant). For mini PCs, though, the smaller form factor is preferred, just like in all-in-one computers.
Moving on, the ASRock Q1900DC-ITX low-power computing motherboard benefits from two SATA 6.0 Gbps ports, as well as a pair of SATA 3.0 Gbps connectors.
Then, we have the same number of USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 connectors / headers, PSI/2 mouse/keyboard support, 8-channel HD audio, Gigabit Ethernet, and even LPT and COM legacy connectors.
All in all, the ASRock Q1900DC-ITX mainboard will make for a good HTPC platform (has DVI, HDMI and D-Sub outputs after all) but will do fine in embedded applications, like point-of-sale. The fanless cooling can only help (owed to a low power draw and, thus, reduced heat generation).