Pico-ITX

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Pico-ITX is a very small PC motherboard form factor that was introduced by VIA Technologies in January 2007 and shown to the public later that year. It measures 10 by 7.2 centimeters (about 3.9 by 2.8 inches), roughly half the size of Nano-ITX, and the standard was handed to the SFF-SIG in 2008.

The first Pico-ITX board, the EPIA PX10000G, uses a 1 GHz VIA C7-M processor on a 10-layer printed circuit board. It operates from 0 to about 50 °C and can withstand 0% to 95% humidity. It includes onboard VGA video and Ethernet, with a set of I/O options that can be extended through add-on modules to provide DVI or LVDS video output, USB 2.0, serial ports, and 5.1-channel audio. It runs Windows XP and Windows Vista, and older Linux distributions such as Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu 7.10. The Pico-ITX can be bought as a single board or as part of a barebones package called Artigo.

There are related boards, such as the PX5000G and PX5000EG, which use a 500 MHz VIA Eden ULV CPU and come with a fan or a fanless heatsink, respectively. A range of daughter cards and add-ons (including PX-O, VT1625M, Serener PXFPIO, and PX-TC) expands the Pico-ITX’s I/O and multimedia capabilities.

The second major line, the P700 series, improves on the PX10000G with features like Gigabit Ethernet (or 10/100 Ethernet as an option), integrated power to allow direct +12V power, and optional P700-A and P700-B daughter cards that control ports and power. The P700 comes in models such as the EPIA-P700-10L (1 GHz C7) and the EPIA-P700-05LE (500 MHz Eden ULV, with passive cooling).

While VIA-based boards are common, there are also Pico-ITX options using Intel processors and ARM-based designs (for example, DHCOM modules). The Pico-ITXe specification adds to Pico-ITX by upgrading to the VX800 chipset, expanding RAM support up to 2 GB with 667/533 MHz SO-DIMMs, upgrading the GPU to VIA’s Chrome9 HC3, and adding SUMIT support, along with an increase in board thickness from 10 to 12 layers.