Small Form Factor Tiny PC - ETX Express

Hmmm so I was just searching for some Small Form Factor PC sites and came upon http://www.adlinktech.com/PD/web/PD_detail.php?cKind=FN&pid=544&seq=2&id I am trying to find more info about it, but not so much luck with that

From you Hardware Guru's Point of view, does this seem to be a good motherboard form factor for making a small quiet gaming machine. I'm curious because it sdays it has a PCI-e x16 graphics bus, so would that be the same as a slot, but different word? I probably sound n00bish, but the correct word would probably be 'uneducated' about motherboards to a certain extent I just want to know if it's just you plug in your GPU and go, or am I going to have to buy some sort of adapter?

It's only 9cmx12cm which is fricking small!

http://www.adlinktech.com/PD/photo/display/ETXexpress-IA533/ETXexpress-IA533_bimg_4.jpg

I'd love to have this with a Pentium M 2.0Ghz (which I know is supported) and some sort of mid range graphics card, plus a wee notebook hard drive. I just think this looks promising and just the fact that it's smaller than Mini-ITX makes my mouth water.

I really appreciate any input and intelligent comments; I know i'm not the total hardware geek i'd like to be, but we all gotta start somewhere

Oh ya, first post, glad to be here, great boards, been reading em for a while.

 

That's a sweet board! Unfortunately, it's not what you think. Yes, it's an all in one, beautiful board, but the ports are on the bottom. Two very large pin-out ports (that I surmise look like DIMM slots) connect power, ports, and slots. Sorry. It's designed to plug into a larger, ATX size motherboard which has all of the ports and connectors, including the x16 slot. Unless you want to undergo an ENORMOUS soldering job, as well as a GIGANTIC PCB design, this is just a drop-in module. To actually make it small form-factor, you'd have to get the ATX mobo, desolder the slots, and design and order a PCB to solder them into which would have the slots and ports for expansion. But yeah. Good luck with whatever you want to do. Read the manual and the datasheet, it should answer many questions. There is a pinout diagram in the manual, as well as a full explanation. If you do go through with what I have suggested, send me the PCB design, please!

 

Thanks for the reply. Dang, yea I figured this was too good to be true LOL, especially considering I couldn't see any visible ports XD It's really too bad Nano-ITX doesn't support Pentium or AMD CPU's and of course a GPU slot (even AGP) Looks like i'm stuck with Mini-ITX.

Heh, well even though this isn't an ETX Express question, any one heard any news of Pico BTX?

 

Nothing on PicoBTX at the moment, but Mini-ITX.com is always worth a look.

ch424

 

I saw a 754 mini-ITX... it's on Xtreme's front page...

 

http://www.kontron.com/products/pdproductdetail.cfm?keyproduct=41660

thats probably about as much power as youre going to get in such a small package. Onboard gfx (dual display as well) but no slots. Expansion module for sound, takes standard DDR and P-M

different shape, but the same everall size as nano-itx (10x14 vs 12x12)