The Mini ITX standard is not diminutive by accident and miniaturization has been achieved primarily by doing away with various components. The first victim of the red pen was the CPU socket, which simply took up too much space. That is why the processor is always soldered directly onto VIA EPIA boards.
The preferred processors are models from the C3 line (M9000 up to 933 MHz). The Ezra-T core is still being used, although versions with the Nehemiah core running at well over 1 GHz are already being developed.
The Eden processor (Eden 1500 with ESP5000 / 533 MHz) is another available option. This offers the added advantage of having the lowest power consumption of any x86 processor on the market.
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Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.
