A number of motherboard companies have tried dipping their toes into the mobile-CPU-in-desktop-motherboard market over the years, but you can count on the fingers of one hand the number that have stayed the course. One company that has kept the faith is AOpen, whose mobile CPU motherboards have got progressively more feature-rich as chipset technologies have improved.

Its latest board, the i945GTt-VFA, uses (as you may have guessed by the product number) Intel's i945GT Express mainstream chipset along with the ICH7-MDH Southbridge, but the real show-stopper is its size.

Unlike previous boards in this series, this board is Flex ATX (mini ITX) format; 170mm by 170mm, the same size as VIA's popular original EPIA series.

But that's where the comparison stops; the AOpen board is light-years ahead of the EPIA boards in performance as the board supports any of Intel's Socket 479 CPUs, including the Core Solo and Duo. With a 2.0GHz T2500 Core Duo processor and a gigabyte of PC5300 DDR2 memory, it gave a Sysmark04SE score of 250 - more than a match for many a desktop mobo.

Just like the VIA boards it's a marvel of integration. Thanks to the chipset, it has a very good feature set including two SO-DIMM slots supporting up to 2GB of 677/533 or 400 DDR2 memory in Dual Channel mode, plus integrated graphics, Gigabit LAN and 7.1 audio.

The I/O panel is testament to all this integration, with DVI and S-Video ports, single serial, LAN and Firewire ports, four USB 2.0 ports (with headers on the board for a further two), two PS/2 ports, six audio ports and the power-in connector.

The board is powered by an external 90W power brick just like a laptop, while a 4-pin Molex connector powers the hard drive and optical drive directly from the board. Although there are two SATA ports, you may need to go for a beefier power supply to get the best results with such drives. But as the regulators on the board are rated up to 180W this shouldn't pose too many problems.

There has to be a downside with a motherboard this small, of course, and that is the lack of expansion options. But to AOpen's credit it has tried; the board has a single x1 PCI-E slot and a Mini PCI card slot.

The other major drawback with the board is its cost, and when you factor in the cost of a mobile CPU it's a very expensive - if very capable - bundle.

Verdict
An expensive motherboard, but an almost perfect basis for a true media centre PC which offers plenty of performance in a quiet and tiny package.

Company: Aopen

Contact: +31 73 645 9516

Tags: intel corporation central processing unit universal serial bus mini-itx gigabit ethernet motherboard pci express usb 2.0