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J&W 780G mini-ITX has niche HTPC features
Author: Richard SwinburnePublished: 6th June 2008
The J&W 780G-SP128M mobo.
The iPartner features a power and reset button, as well as an eight digital LCD readout and Bluetooth built in - this allows you to connect a wireless keyboard or mouse directly to it, which is perfect for kicking back on the sofa and controlling your HTPC remotely.
The board features DVI, HDMI and VGA, both types of S/PDIF out, eSATA, four SATA, plenty of USB, Gigabit Ethernet and all solid aluminium capacitors. Most notably though it's the only 780G we've yet seen that has a 128MB frame buffer for extra GPU performance, although there's even a PCI-Express x16 slot if you want some serious graphic horsepower.
Both the north and south bridges are passively cooled by the same heatsink, and even the CPU PWMs get some heatsinking too - none of it was hot to touch as it played back a HD movie.
The only downside of this board was the fact you have to use SO-DIMMs, however it would be physically impossible to use DIMM slots and SO-DIMMs aren't that expensive, plus, you really don't even need dual channel for HTPC boards and general productivity.
There was no comment on price and availability yet though. Interested? Let us know your thoughts, in the forums.
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Is there any point to having the 128MB frame buffer though? Its not like you are going to be gaming on it (that's what the x16 slot is for) and they are fine with HD movies without it.
..... altho I think my 8800gt would look kinda funny plugged into it :b
This would be the perfect desktop companion to my EeePC. A quad-core phenom, along with a 3870 X2 (which would look ridiculous) and 4gb of RAM in a PC the size of a shoebox would be wonderful.
EDIT: Fudzilla.com (never heard of them) says it should retail for £90. This is amazing. :D