Mini-ITX Boards for video gaming? Yeah, that’s cool.

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My friend the chemistry teacher texted me the other day to share what he considered groundbreaking news: A leading producer of consumer-grade computer components had just introduced a Mini-ITX motherboard specifically designed to meet his grandest video-gamer ambitions. That was indeed big news for the video-gamer community and, while I was genuinely pleased that this made him so happy and replied to his text with the appropriate, “Cool!” it was hard to consider his news truly groundbreaking given that Advantech has been well ahead of the curve in delivering the benefits of compact Mini-ITX boards, albeit in industrial-grade quality.

Advantech supplies Mini-ITX motherboards that support Intel’s power-sipping Atom processors to its power-house 3rd-gen Core i7 mobile processors. There’s even a model formatted for AMD’s G-series T40N and T56N processors.

Advantech’s AIMB 212 Mini-ITX board is configured for Intel’s N450 and D510 processors with support for cost-saving 12-volt DC power input. At the other end of its M-ITX spectrum, the AIMB 273 supports Intel’s third-generation Core i7, i5 and i3 Celeron mobile processor and incorporates a PCIe X16 expansion slot and support for iManager, SUSIAccess and Embedded Software APIs SMBus, H/W Monitoring, Watchdog and GPIO.

To complete the picture, Advantech offers a comprehensive range of embedded Mini-ITX chassis, including its newest, the ARK-6610 that supports the AIMB-212 and 213 boards, configured with front I/O interfaces and reserve cutouts for COM, DVI/LVDS, S/C-video, USB and WLAN-antenna ports. The 6610 also features shockproof bays for a slim CD/DVD drive and a 3.5-inch hard-disk.

Mini-ITX may be the latest video-gaming hardware craze, with whole websites dedicated to that recent phenomena (e.g., www.itxgamer.com), but Advantech has long been refining the Mini-ITX format to meet the harshest

embedded industrial applications. My friend will soon be stressing his maximally overclocked M-ITX board to within a fraction of its design life, even while Advantech’s field-proven industrial Mini-ITX boards continue to deliver long-haul performance in compact embedded systems
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