So, this is a pretty cool product. Today, we're going to be having a look at a very, very small motherboard. This
is an ASUS AT3N7A-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 features ah it has the ion 330. So this
is the dual core uh 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 guide with the ion support DVD rev
whatever uh DVD inside. Uh don't use that. Download the latest drivers and
utilities off asuse.com. Here is the IO
shield and there's a funny label here. So that's the Bluetooth uh logo right
there. So we'll see exactly how they've gone and 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, cuz they're so small and yet
they feature, you know, really most of the same functionality of a larger PC.
Okay, so here's what we've got. Why don't we actually start with just the
basic feature set? So, we've got support
for DDR2 RAM. Okay. And you can support
I believe it's up to I better make sure
before I say anything stupid, but I believe it should support up to 4 gigs
of RAM. Okay. Don't quote me on that one. I think it's up to 4 gigs of RAM.
Okay. And then we've got a couple of fan headers uh 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 8 pin for this guy and then with a 24
pin over 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 um 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
like a home server or as a 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
of. 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. Okay. One one little
little niggle I've got here is I hate little tiny fans. I would have rather
they put a bigger heat sink on it or put like a wider heat sink 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 Wait, what? Hold on a
minute. Just a moment. Huh. No, I think
the Atom's actually here. I believe that's actually the North Bridge,
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 IO on the back. So, we start with
a standard PS2 keyboard port. Then we have eight USB ports. And given that
something like this would typically be deployed in somewhere where you're uh
you're not going to be plugging in a whole lot to the front. You're just
going to 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 uh like a home theater sort of box where all
you're really doing is playing back media. You got VGA just to complete the
uh 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 AT3N7A-I.