ITX

Short for Information Technology eXtended, ITX is a small motherboard form factor from VIA Technologies released in November 2001 with the Mini-ITX. Later versions of ITX include the Nano-ITX released in March 2003, the Mobile-ITX released in March 2004, and the Pico-ITX released in April 2007. With the compact configuration of ITX motherboards, they are used in low-cost small setups found in cars, network devices, set-top boxes, and other small computers. Below is a picture and comparison of all of the ITX motherboards from VIA.

Mini-ITX

The Mini-ITX motherboard form factor measures 17 cm x 17 cm (6.75" x 6.75") in size. Mini-ITX often has two memory slots, 1 PCI Express or mini-PCI slot, several USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports, and one network port. Some Mini-ITX motherboards include an onboard VGA (Video Graphics Array) port and an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) port.

An important feature of a Mini-ITX motherboard is its low power consumption, using less than 25 watts of power, with some as few as five watts.

Nano-ITX

The Nano-ITX motherboard form factor measures 12 cm x 12 cm (4.7" x 4.7") and has removed the legacy ports, and moved to mini-PCI and SO-DIMM (Small Outline Dual In-line Memory Module).

Pico-ITX

The Nano-ITX motherboard form factor measures 7.2 cm x 10 cm (2.8" x 3.9") and is 75% smaller than the Mini-ITX form factor. The motherboard supports any processor that uses VIA's NanoBGA2 technology with speeds up to 1.5 GHz with 128 KB L1 and L2 cache. Pico-ITX uses DDR2 400/533 SO-DIMM memory with support for up to 1 GB and AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) video with built-in MPEG-2, 4, and WMV9 decoding acceleration.

Mobile-ITX (2.4" x 2.4")

The Mobile-ITX motherboard form factor measures 7.2 cm x 10 cm (2.8" x 3.9") and has no computer ports unless an I/O carrier board is used. The Mobile-ITX design is intended for medical, transportation, and military embedded markets.

Computer abbreviations, Form factor, MicroATX, Motherboard, Motherboard terms, TLA, VIA