Computex 2008: Pre-show products

MSI Wind PC motherboard

MSI’s desktop Wind PC motherboard is pretty similar to Gigabyte's solution below – it’s not explicitly mini-ITX although it is close. Instead of a separate heatsink and fan, the MSI Wind PC motherboard uses one large passive heatsink instead – this is quieter, but much harder to change.

However, MSI is concentrating on shipping the board as part of its barebones Wind system and not yet as a discrete product. It features a 1.33GHz Atom processor, which is embedded onto the motherboard and has an almost identical feature set to the Gigabyte board, except for the change of colours and the extra DDR2 533MHz DIMM slot.

Also included is Realtek ALC888 HD audio and PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet, two SATA, one IDE and a PCI slot to round things off.

Gigabyte Atom mini-ITX motherboard

Unlike other manufacturers that are concentrating on whole products around the Atom processor, Gigabyte is concentrating just on the core motherboard alone. The GA-GC230D is Gigabyte’s mini-ITX board with a 1.33GHz Atom processor hardwired to it. It has one 533MHz DDR2 memory slot, one IDE and two SATA ports, six channel audio and all solid aluminium capped capacitors.


Unlike the MSI solution, the Gigabyte board does require a fan, but only for the north bridge. As a nice extra, the heatsinks are all individual and easy to change if need be. Unlike other board makers that might offer a limited release, you can expect the board to ship worldwide and sell in places you can buy any other Gigabyte motherboard.