Intel Pineview review and Jetway mini-ITX

Jetway NC94-510-LF (Dual Core Atom)

Manufacturer: Jetway

On the other hand, Jetway's NC94 is more familiar, with a normal motherboard: here we have a 20-pin ATX power socket and even a PCI-Express x16 slot. Unfortunately, the slot only provides four lanes of bandwidth, so while graphics cards are supported, we wouldn't bother with a gaming graphics card. Since the NM10 chipset is limited in its PCI Express lanes, there is no mini PCI Express slot like on the NC96 either.

We do still get two DDR2 DIMMs for up to 4GB of memory, but we've also lost the extra pair of JMicron SATA ports. The two SATA ports from the NM10 Southbridge are included as necessary, but are nestled between the memory and PCI Express slots, so like many mini-ITX builds, you've got to start from the inside and work out.

Feature List:

• Intel Atom D510 (1.66GHz, dual core, four thread)
  
• Two DDR2 memory slots supporting up to 4GB of DDR2-667/800MHz memory in single channel mode
  
• Two SATA 3Gbps ports from NM10
  
• Realtek ALC662 5.1 Channel Audio
  
• IDE port pin-out (requires adapter)
  
• One PCI-Express x16 slot (x4 electrical)
  
• LVDS header/inverter and GPIO header
  
• 10/100 Fast Ethernet

The same appallingly loud 6,700rpm fan still adorns the Atom CPU heatsink, and the 10/100 Fast Ethernet and Realtek ALC662 sound leave us underwhelmed. the rear I/O of this board is equally shy of anything new, mirroring the NC96 in all areas.

The lack of up-to-date outputs on this board is less forgivable than with the NC92 as this is a board that's aimed at being more general-purpose. How many of us are going to attach a serial or parallel device to our mini-ITX mod or media PC?