Related Articles

The Board

As you can see below, the board is tiny - it is barely wider than the I/O panel.

Lately I've been getting quite interested in Mini-ITX boards for use as home servers, HTPC's, and nettop boxes - I like the idea of small computers instead of the 18" - 24" monsters we have now. The D945GCLF2 with its dual core Atom 330 processor can easily handle most 'normal' home computing needs, but it is not meant for gamers - mind you, that may be a good thing, as the rugrats are then less likely to confiscate it for gaming!

Here is a closer look at the processor and the Northbridge - isn't it amazing that the processor is passively cooled, yet the chipset requires a fan?

The single DIMM slot is probably the biggest mistake Intel made with this board. Allowing a second DIMM, and thus dual channel memory, would have helped memory performance slightly due to contention between the processor and the on-board graphics - but I guess they really want to differentiate this board as a low-cost essentials board.

There are two SATAII connectors here, which is enough for most small computers, along with an obligatory IDE connector. You can see the battery and the ICH7 chip towards the top of the photo.

Here we see the SP/DIFF connector (black 3 pin connector in the center) along with the Chrontel video encoder for the S-Video output.

Plenty of connectors on the back I/O panel - PS/2 keyboard and mouse, parallel port, serial port, VGA out, four USB2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, S-Video and three audio connectors. I wish they provided an SP/DIFF output jack!

The Stuff

You don't get a lot of extra's with the D945GCLF2:

• I/O shield
• fold-out quick reference guide
• I/O panel and connector sticker for inside the case
• IDE cable
• one SATAII cable
• Driver/Utility CD
• Promo blurb with Atom sticker