If you're looking to build an AMD-based Mini-ITX system, you don't have too many motherboard choices, especially if you're looking for a modern chipsets and the kind of mod-cons you'd find on a larger model. Thankfully, masters of the miniature ZOTAC have us covered with a pair of new boards built around AMD's 800-series chipsets.
The 880G-ITX WiFi manages to shoehorn the desktop class 880G and SB850 chipsets onto the board, which includes the Radeon HD 4250 GPU. The board will support AM3 CPUs with TDPs up to 95W, meaning that hexacore processors are more than welcome, and makes room for two DDR3 DIMMs at speeds of up to 1333MHz. ZOTAC has also managed to squeeze on a PCIe x1 slot, four SATA 6.0Gbps ports, support for two USB 3.0 and eight USB 2.0 ports and 802.11n WiFi.
In what it claims is a first, the company has also announced the M880G-ITX WiFi, which takes a mobile AMD CPU and repurposes it for desktop use. The chip in question is a dual-core Turion II Neo K625 clocked at 1.5GHz which, while unlikely to set the world on fire, should deliver more than enough performance for a cool and quiet HTPC or NAS box.
The board also includes the notebook-class M880G and SB820M chipsets - along with the Radeon HD 4200 GPU - and supports a pair of DDR3 DIMMS at up to 800MHz. Otherwise, the specs are fairly similar to the socket board, with a PCIe x1 slot and support for SATA 6Gbps, USB 3.0 and 802.11n WiFi all making the list.
If you're looking to build an AMD-based Mini-ITX system, ZOTAC's new boards seem to offer an impressive number of features and a fair bit of flexibility. Unfortunately, we don't have any details on pricing or availability yet, but we expect both models to be available in the coming weeks.
