The Mini-ITX Mainboard is 10 Years Old

By Douglas Perry
published

The 170x170 mm mainboard form factor Mini-ITX is celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Inventor VIA, which launched its mainboard business with Mini-ITX devices back in 2001, has released an ebook that offers some background of the technology as well as a history of memorable Mini-ITX computers.

VIA first showed a Mini-ITX board design in March of 2001, sold first samples in April and the VT6010 Mini-ITX reference design in November. The first commercially available board was the Epia-8000, which was released in April 2002 and was built for VIA's C3 800 MHz processor with Eden core.

Mini-ITX 2.0 was announced in 2008 and the first board to support the Nano CPU, the VB8001, was sold in October 2008. More recently, dual-core Nano support was added with the Epia-M900 in July of this year. Most Mini-ITX boards are sold into the industrial and embedded applications markets today.

VIA believes that the biggest opportunity for Mini-ITX in the future will be in developing countries and geographies, including China, India, the Middle East, and Latin America. As cloud computing gains traction and small form factor thin clients become more attractive, VIA also hopes that it can place Mini-ITX as a "standard platform for powering such devices."

Take a trip down memory lane with VIA here.

Douglas Perry
30 Comments Comment from the forums
  • pwnorbpwnd
    MiniITX = No use for it except MAYBE HTPC, M-ATX ftw
    Reply
  • imsurgical
    Did a build not too long ago centered on the article talking about small form factor builds in a Lian-Li PC-Q08B case and its a little powerhouse. Used an ASRock A75M-ITX FM1 with an A6 3650 Llano, 8GB XMS3, EVGA GTX 580, Corsair H70 on the CPU, and a SeaSonic X650 Gold and its great. The little MiniITX board has newer I/O inputs too. First MiniITX build and I can understand why people would see little need for it, but for me saved lots of space for my living situation and its a low profile machine because of the board. So happy birthday or belated birthday to MiniITX!
    Reply
  • digitalw
    A lot of use.. plenty of use for mITX :) why should you have a big ugly monster in your office when you use ms word, e-mail and a lot of facebook ?!!? :)))
    big boards for "big" gamers and render work stations, evrything else should be small :)
    and yes, my newest HTPC uses mini atx 17x17cm board made by Sapphire wit AMD 350 Hudson and all i can say it is a dream! included USB3.0, Bluetooth 3.0... LAN (no wifi) and my HTPC is build in to the shelf :) i'have fallen in love in that little creature :)
    Reply
  • nordlead
    My file server is mini ITX. Came with an Intel Atom and can house 4 storage drives but can be expanded up to hold a lot more either with SATA splitters or a PCIe x16 expansion card.

    I wish I got a mini ITX board for my HTPC, but my only problem with them is they cost more for less features. Also, at the time IGPs weren't that great on the mini ITX boards.
    Reply
  • memadmax
    They are not powerhouses, but they are cheap enough for single purpose machines.
    Reply
  • I love my little GA-E350. It powers my Car PC. I was shocked when I actually saw an ITX board. Truly amazing.
    Reply
  • belardo
    Now compare these modern ITX boards to... an Apple II or Commodore 64 or even a PC from the 90s... In which the HD Controller card is bigger than an ITX board.
    Reply
  • f-gomes
    the memory lane link is dead
    Reply
  • mavroxur
    I still have an Epia 5000 ITX (533MHz Via C3) in use at home. It just sits on the top shelf in the closet, running XP and hosting a few applications. It's virtually maintenance free, being that it has no fans and no moving parts (boots XP off a 16GB CF card). Not to mention, power consumption is somewhere in the 5w-10w range (no fans or ventilation, and the phonebook-sized box never gets even warm.
    Reply
  • Onus
    The build I did in a PC-Q08R is running just fine as my backup PC. It is an i5-650 that right now has a HD6790 in it. In addition to the optical drive, it has an 80GB SSD and a 500GB HDD with room (and the port) for one more drive. Very few people (although they certainly exist, like anyone needing Crossfire or SLI) have needs that exceed what this form factor provides.
    Reply