VR-Zone

In a prepared statement, Richard Brown, Vice President of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc said: "November 6th marked the 10 year anniversary of the Mini-ITX form factor which spurred a revolution in the modding community."  Brown observed that "the VIA VE-900 delivers an affordable, high performance Mini-ITX mainboard that will spur a new wave of inspiration and innovation in the next generation of enthusiasts."

The VIA VE-900 Mainboard features a high-performance VIA Nano X2 dual core processor clocked at 1.4GHz and an onboard VIA VX900 unified all-in-one media system processor.  The latter provides hardware acceleration for VC1, H.264 and WMV9 HD video for the system to output video at resolutions of up to 1080p via without incurring a heavy processor loading.  The system's Mini-ITX format means the entire board measures just 17cm x 17cm, with two DIMM sockets for support of up to 8GB of DDR3 system memory.

Video output ports are VGA and HDMI, while the VIA VT1708S chip provides 5.1 Channel high definition sound at 24-bit stereo with up to 192 kHz sample rates.  On the rear panel I/O are standard PS/2 ports with a Gigabit LAN port and four USB 2.0 ports.  Audio jacks for microphone, line-in and line-out rounds off the complement.  Up to two hard disk drives are supported via the integrated SATA 3.0 Gb/s host controller, while a 32-bit PCI slot allows for a limited amount expansion.  There are internal headers for four more USB 2.0 ports.

The VIA VE-900 Mini-ITX Mainboard is currently shipping, though pricing information was not available at press time. More information about the VIA VE-900 Mini-ITX board can be found here.