There’s a lot of new all-in-one PCs on show here at Computex, but most exciting of all is a big push with new Thin Mini-ITX standard motherboards. Same size as mini-ITX but half the height. Before the year is out you could be building a DIY All-In-One, and tweaking and upgrading it like any other home grown PC.
Intel has set standards around heat sink sizes for this form factor as well to ensure that any builder, and any chassis maker, knows how and where the components will need to fit. This will support Sandy Bridge processors, so there’s plenty of grunt available. BUT you will not be able to add any discrete graphics to a system built on this platform.
We saw two chassis styles on the Intel stand for Thin Mini-ITX mobos. One was taking the home theatre PC out of much chunkier boxes and putting it all into a very thin box that basically looks like any other standard consumer electronics media player. Great news for those who want an HTPC but can’t convince their significant other to let a computer sit next to the TV. (Let’s face it, even a lot of Shuttle cases are still pretty big compared to a DVD player).
But seeing a monitor that also included an empty space in the back and a drive bay window on the side was the moment it all clicked. All-In-One is now set to become a genuinely personal experience. Choose your monitor, insert the mobo, CPU, RAM, drive, and get going. Upgrade at your leisure… even shift the system you have into a newer monitor.
Who thinks they’d go down this path if they had the chance? Expected to be available in the last quarter of this year.