ATX Without The Waste
With support for full-sized components and up to four expansion cards, the Micro-ATX format has always been more than adequate for the majority of high-end builds. Yet while enthusiasts have typically cited inadequate quality or design as the primary reason for not considering this option, manufacturers have cited lack of demand as a reason for not putting their best efforts into a board this small. A few attempts by manufacturers to win loyalty among space-conscious enthusiasts have mostly been rejected by a market that maintained its traditional view of the former problems.
The popularity of Micro-ATX portable gaming enclosures is finally starting to break the cycle of negative assumptions as customers are forced to make a decision about what hardware to put inside. Current top products are undoubtedly as feature-laden as many of their full-sized counterparts, incorporating high-end devices and support for even the largest dual-slot graphics cards in CrossFire and SLI. Always a target of upper-range Micro-ATX motherboard sales, professional media and home theater enthusiasts may instead choose to load up to three media-centric devices in addition to a single-slot graphics card. With this much flexibility, confessing that they don’t actually need more expansion room could be the hardest problem for many builders.
Yet few of us will even consider smaller devices until we can see that they function as well in every respect as the larger parts they replace, so today we’ll compare these against the fastest of our full-ATX samples. Before we go into the details of that test, let’s take a closer look at the features we so eagerly endorsed.
| Micro-ATX Core i7 Motherboard Features | ||
|---|---|---|
| Asus Rampage II Gene | DFI LANParty Jr X58-T3H6 | |
| Northbridge | Intel X58 Express | Intel X58 Express |
| Southbridge | Intel ICH10R | Intel ICH10R |
| Voltage Regulator | Eight Phases | Six Phases |
| BIOS | 0705 (04-09-2009) | 217 (02-17-2009) |
| 133.3 MHz Bclk | 133.6 MHz (+0.20%) | 133.0 (-0.25%) |
| Clock Generator | ICS 9LPRS918JKLF | ICS 9LPRS918JKLF |
| Internal Interfaces | ||
| PCIe 2.0 x16 | 2 (x16/x16) | 2 (x16/x16) |
| PCIe x1/x4 | 0/1 | 0/1 |
| Legacy PCI | 1 | 1 |
| USB 2.0 | 4 (8-ports) | 3 (6-ports) |
| IEEE 1394 | 1 | 0 |
| Serial Port | 0 | 1 |
| Parallel Port | 0 | 0 |
| Floppy | 0 | 1 |
| Ultra ATA-133 | 1 (2-drives) | 1 (2-drives) |
| SATA 3 Gb/s | 7 | 6 |
| 4-Pin Fan | 5 | 1 |
| 3-Pin Fan | 0 | 5 |
| FP-Audio | Yes | Yes |
| CD-Audio | Yes | Yes |
| S/PDIF I/O | Output Only | None |
| Power Button | Yes | Yes |
| Reset Button | Yes | Yes |
| CLR_CMOS Button | Jumper Only | Yes (by PWR+RST) |
| Diagnostics Panel | External Device Header | 2-Character |
| I/O Panel Connectors | ||
| PS/2 | 1 | 2 |
| USB 2.0 | 4 | 6 |
| IEEE 1394 | 1 | 0 |
| Network | 1 | 1 |
| eSATA | 1 | 0 |
| CLR_CMOS Button | Yes | By Jumper |
| Digital Audio Out | 1 | 2 |
| Digital Audio In | 0 | 0 |
| Analog Audio | 6 | 6 |
| Mass Storage Controllers | ||
| Chipset SATA | 6x SATA 3.0 Gb/s | 6x SATA 3.0 Gb/s |
| Chipset RAID Modes | 0, 1, 5, 10 | 0, 1, 5, 10 |
| Add-In SATA | JMB363 PCIe, 1x SATA 3.0 Gb/s, 1x eSATA 3.0 Gb/s | None |
| Add-In Ultra ATA | JMB363 PCIe | JMB368 PCIe |
| IEEE 1394 | VT6315N PCIe, 2 x 400 Mb/s | None |
| Gigabit Ethernet | ||
| Primary LAN | RTL8111C PCIe | 88E8053 PCIe |
| Secondary LAN | None | None |
| Audio | ||
| HD Audio Codec | AD2000B | ALC889 |
