The Pico-ITX motherboard standard truly lives up to its name as the smallest regular commercial motherboard that money can buy.

ENGADGET: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX motherboard gets reviewed

At least not anymore, thanks to Intel's Thin Mini-ITX platform, which it debuted roughly a year ago at Computex.

ENGADGET: Intel's Thin Mini-ITX platform gets stuffed inside a monitor

In addition, it conforms to Intel Thin Mini-ITX standards, meaning even the motherboard is upgradeable, a first in the PC industry.

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The VIA EPIA-P910 Pico-ITX is the first VIA board to include the VIA VX11H MSP which provides the latest in graphic capabilities, including DirectX 11 support, for richer textures as well as 3D stereoscopic display.

ENGADGET: VIA EPIA-P910 stuffs 3D display support, quad-core into a Pico-ITX size

Providing superior performance and outstanding display capabilities, the VIA EPIA-P910 Pico-ITX provides the ideal platform for a wide array of next-generation ultra compact devices for applications in health-care, logistics, fleet management and other vertical market segments.

ENGADGET: VIA EPIA-P910 stuffs 3D display support, quad-core into a Pico-ITX size

There's also a lack of enclosures for the Pico-ITX motherboard size, where there's a Catch 22 situation of manufacturers unwilling to create cases for a limited market, and consumers unwilling to buy motherboards without a decent array of cases.

ENGADGET: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX motherboard gets reviewed

The main board is the same footprint as Mini-ITX (that's a 6.7-inch square), but it calls for a much shallower construction -- with horizontally stacked RAM and a shorter port cluster to keep the whole thing under an inch tall.

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The VIA EPIA-P910 Pico-ITX supports up 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory, HD audio, HDMI, VGA and LVDS display connectivity as well as a high performance hardware HD video decoder in the shape of the latest VIA Chromotion 5.0 video processor.

ENGADGET: VIA EPIA-P910 stuffs 3D display support, quad-core into a Pico-ITX size

Based on the incredibly compact Pico-ITX form factor, measuring 10 cm x 7.2 cm, the VIA EPIA-P910 Pico-ITX combines a 1.0GHz VIA QuadCore E-Series processor and the latest VIA VX11H MSP to offer superior computing performance for ultra compact systems.

ENGADGET: VIA EPIA-P910 stuffs 3D display support, quad-core into a Pico-ITX size

It's not hard to imagine why people would want a motherboard as small as VIA's PX10000: its low power requirements (the guys at Mini-ITX.com couldn't get it to draw more than 16 Watts under full load) and miniscule size (less than 4 inches long) make it perfect for really small enclosures.

ENGADGET: VIA EPIA PX10000 Pico-ITX motherboard gets reviewed

Carrying a 4 x 4-inch form factor between a Raspberry Pi and mini-ITX board, it'll be equipped with a Core i3 Ivy Bridge processor, HD 4000 graphics, two SoDIMM sockets, an mSATA slot for an SSD drive, three USB ports, one HDMI port and a mini-PCI slot for wireless connectivity.

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