Surprisingly Powerful Nano-ITX Motherboards Released by Axiomtek

One would think that a motherboard about as large as a measly hard drive wouldn't be that much to look at, but Axiomtek is definitely proving that assumption totally wrong.

True, the past couple of years did a good job of proving that even small platforms like nano-ITX motherboards could pack a lot of potential.

The level of computing and video prowess achieved by smartphones and tablets doesn't really allow for much skepticism here.

Still, nano-ITX motherboards measure 120 × 120 mm, or 4.7 x 4.7 inches, which is why it might be a bit hard to swallow the idea that a whole PC can be built with it.

It is true though. The NANO830 and NANO831, Axiomtek's newest products, not only have x86 central processing units (CPUs), but they also have memory slots, PCI Express and all other essential ports.

The former model is stronger, mostly due to the dual-core Intel Atom S2550 central processing unit (CPU), whose clock speed is of 1.86 GHz.

The CPU also has 1 MB L2 cache and a TDP (thermal design power) of 10W.

Meanwhile, the NANO831 relies on the Atom N2600 chip, which not only has a speed of 1.6 GHz, but also has only one core instead of two. Its TDP is far lower though, of 3.5W.

The rest of the features are the same on both motherboards: two SATA 3.0 Gbps ports (SATA II, no SATA III here, sadly), a DDR3 SO-DIMM slot, a mini PCI Express slot (on the back of the printed circuit board-PCB) and an MSATA connector, plus the required networking and I/O.

That means Gigabit Ethernet (there are two of these even), D-Sub and HDMI (NANO830 only).

Both the Axiometk NANO830 and NANO831 are built around the Intel NM10 chipset. Sadly, no price or availability information is available.