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Archive for the ‘mini-itx’ tag

Mini-ITX Hi-Fi case anyone?

Posted on 31st May 2010 at 02:49 by Richard Swinburne with 18 comments

While we've had our concerns about the Mini-ITX bandwagon, it's still a trend that we're broadly in favour of. After all, small, potent PCs can be great.

One of the nicest - and smallest mini-ITX cases we've seen comes from Taiwanese company Lutec's retail brand, SEED.

SEED is a shoehorned acronym of "Saving Energy Efficiency Directly" - the brand promotes mini-ITX and low power chassis, as well as a few 80Plus ATX PSUs and some laptop accessories too.

Mini-ITX Hi-Fi case anyone? Checking out SEED's latest mini-ITX chassis
Click to enlarge

Our interest was perked with the MU-380: a gently rounded and elegant aluminium mini-ITX case. It measures a very tiny 315 x 215 x 63mm, which also limits its compatibility to Atom-esq products under 6cm tall.

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Will mini-ITX lead to disappointment?

Posted on 27th May 2010 at 11:37 by Richard Swinburne with 32 comments

Richard Swinburne
If you've been reading the site recently, you've probably noticed the real resurgence of mini-ITX mortherboards. We've got Intel to thank for that since it's pushing the form factor hard this year - all these new mini-ITX boards are made for its Core i3 and i5 CPus with integrated graphics.

However, mini-ITX has been a real backwater until now, which means that many of the companies are exploring unknown territory.

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Revisiting the Akasa Enigma

Posted on 27th Mar 2009 at 13:29 by Richard Swinburne with 7 comments

It wasn't unexpected that Akasa had a few points of concern about our review. Akasa said that in order for the case to perform optimally, the mini-ITX board needed to be less than 30mm tall and we needed to use Akasa's LGA775 or AM2+ coolers specially designed for it.

We checked our Gigabyte GA-230D and found the northbridge heatsink and fan was 35mm tall, while the Jetway NC92-330-LF was 29.5mm, as was the reference Intel Atom board.

Revisiting the Akasa Enigma Revisiting Akasa's Enigma Revisiting the Akasa Enigma Revisiting Akasa's Enigma
Click to enlarge

Our immediate concern is "how do I know what mini-ITX motherboard I buy is compatible?" We looked around at mini-ITX boards listed on websites and seldom do they list the total height, making choosing the right board a very difficult task.

Revisiting the Akasa Enigma Revisiting Akasa's Enigma Revisiting the Akasa Enigma Revisiting Akasa's Enigma
Click to enlarge

Another thing is the complete lack of manual in the box - we had to be instructed by Akasa of the "correct way" to install everything which is very specific. Just a sheet of A4 explaining that a 90 degree SATA connector is required (another additional purchase from Akasa), and the hard drive should be installed upside down and facing inwards would have been good.

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