Gadgetory

so this is a pretty cool product today we're going to be having a look at a very very small motherboard this is Ana sous a t3 and 7a - I and what it is is well why don't we just start by reading off the front of the box it is Windows 7 ready it features the Intel Atom processor and it has the Nvidia ion chipset so that means that it has full HD 1080p support which is accelerated by the ion chipset because the atom is not powerful enough for that it also features bluetooth something about perfectly suit your digital lifestyle and let's see this feature zod has the ion 330 so this is the dual-core atom sorry ion 330 it is the dual-core atom which is the one that it seems most people are more interested in so the first thing we find inside is a motherboard user guides with the ion support DVD read whatever DVD inside I don't use that download the latest drivers and utilities offices comm here is the i/o shield and there's a funny label here so that's the Bluetooth logo right there so we'll see exactly how they've gone an implemented bluetooth on this particular motherboard it includes two SATA cables and that is pretty much it now this is one tiny board I love ITX boards I think they're just hilarious you know they're so small yeah they featured you know really most of the same functionality of a larger PC ok so here is what we've got why don't we actually start with just the basic feature set so we've got support for ddr2 RAM ok and you can support I believe it's up to make sure before I say anything stupid that I believe it should support up to four gigs of RAM ok don't quote me on that one I think it's up to four gigs of RAM ok and then we've got a couple of fan headers spread out around the board we've got one two three including the one that the little tiny CPU fan is attached to so you can see this probably doesn't give off a whole lot of heat our power connectors are in their ideal locations with the four pin up at the top left you definitely don't need an eight pin for this guy and then with a 24 pin overall over here on the right-hand edge in terms of SATA connectors now this is something I'm a little bit disappointed in it's only three SATA connectors so they're using one of the SATA one of the SATA connections from the chipset for eSATA but I'd really like to see more ITX boards with between four and six connectors because otherwise they'd be great for use as unlike a home server or as the storage server because they don't use up a whole lot of power and they're plenty fast enough for just storing data on them you've got one PCI slot so that allows you to add whatever it is you need one off and you have one USB header here so that would be for your front USB on your case or for a card reader or for whatever else ok one one little little niggle I've got here is I hate little tiny fans I would have rather they put a bigger heatsink on it or put like a wider heatsink on it so that they could put a larger fan because these little fans tend to be the first thing that dies on anything that they're attached to so let's have a look at the back of the board so you got kind of a black brown sort of PCB you can see almost all of the traces lead back to that chipset right there which is the atom and the plate what hold on a minute just a moment huh no I think the atoms actually here I believe that's actually the Northbridge although I'm just guessing right now so why don't we just move on yeah there we go okay so let's have a look at the i/o on the back so we start with a standard ps2 keyboard part then we have eight USB ports and given that something like this would typically be deployed and somewhere where you're you're not going to be plugging in a whole lot to the front you're just gonna put it somewhere tuck it away lots of USB ports is very optimal we've got an HDMI port then we have two digital audio ports which makes it very well suited for something like like a home theater sort of box where all you're really doing is playing back media you got VGA just to complete the the output options right there you have one eSATA this is your bluetooth adapter which I believe is probably just plugged into okay it wouldn't surprise me if this is just something that's plugged into like a USB port or something or maybe it's oh you know what I bet it's running off what would have been your other USB header okay so then we've got Gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 audio thank you for checking out my quick unboxing of the eight three and seven a - I