thoughts on micro-atx (itx?)

[tony.silveira]

man, i know i've been posting a lot, forgot just how much i love this hobby...

besides the full size machine that is in the planning stages, i have a second project in mind, sort of a mini-cade, but not really.  it's to soon to let the cat out of the bag but i am starting to think of what will be needed.  i was going to use an extra pc i have laying around but they are old and the boards would make the project larger than i wanted.

so, anyone have any experience with micro-atx, a.k.a itx systems?  i still have a ton of research to do but would something like this be powerful enough to run most of the games in current mame?

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=itx&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=imvnsrzl&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1285&bih=879&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=9182398935229451915&sa=X&ei=Eaq9T9SJI4XgiAKRpvj0AQ&ved=0CKUCEPMCMAM#ps-sellers

[FALSE]

I use an older mini-itx board with an atom processor for a car pc.
It's got a 1.6ghz atom processor, a gig of ram, and onboard video.
I tinkered with mame for a bit on it (not a lot) but it ran most all the games I tested.  
Obviously it couldn't run newer 3d games.

Just guessing cause I have no direct experience with the board you linked to...
But I think it should run pretty much all of mame no problem.
Drop an i3 processor in it and 4 or even better 8 gig of ram.
Throw a cheap vid card in it for good measure and your playing diablo 3 : )

[Samstag]

My cabinet runs on a really old ITX board but I don't play anything beyond mid-90's.

[ed12]

hi
a little of off your question
but we use them in our wireless routing eq.
they work flaylessly
and are as fast as all get out
with them we boosted our through put
just letting u know my exp with them board's

ed

[BobA]

I use fairly new mini ITX boards and they just get better and better.  For 90 percent of the games in MAME a dual core intel atom processors do well but now that newer boards are available an I3 based board is really fast.

[stan2323]

I used a mini-itx to make this http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/moocowmoo/ back in 2006.  It worked great.  Once the case broke in shipment I used it in the Star Trek Captains Chair Mame http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=83338.msg874656#msg874656.  If you go to this web site http://www.mini-itx.com/ and look on the right side a few inches down you will see all kinds of projects where people put mini-its boards in unusual objects.  I think they are great.

[lanman31337]

New ITX are great, they just don't have all the expansion slots like you would a micro-atx or a full sized atx board, that's all.  Some come with a processor built in, most of those will run just about all of the 2d games.

[MTPPC]

I was just given an HP mini-ITX PC with a dual core processor and onboard nvidia 7100. It has a blown power supply and a proprietary HP PS connection on the board. I ordered an standard ATX to HP mini-ITX adapter and I'll be using this as the brains of my next build. I'll use Soft15Khz with a CGA monitor, Hyperspin, MAME, NAOMI, SNES, NES, N64, Daphne, TurboGrafx16 and some SEGA consoles. I like the idea of one tiny board without a video card.

[RyoriNoTetsujin]

so, anyone have any experience with micro-atx, a.k.a itx systems?  i still have a ton of research to do but would something like this be powerful enough to run most of the games in current mame?

http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=itx&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=imvnsrzl&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1285&bih=879&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=shop&cid=9182398935229451915&sa=X&ei=Eaq9T9SJI4XgiAKRpvj0AQ&ved=0CKUCEPMCMAM#ps-sellers

Depends on your CPU, but since you're looking at Sandy/Ivy Bridge, you're probably going to be fine with whatever.

My project runs this board with an i5-2500K, using the Intel HD 3000 built-in graphics, and the only things I've had trouble running full speed are some PS2 games and Model 3 emulation, neither of which I've spent any time optimizing. Everything else runs damn near flawlessly... including some of the old benchmarks like NFL Blitz.

That said, pay a little more and get the newer version with the Z77 chipset. That way you can utilize both the onboard graphics AND overclock the K-series chips without issue.

Just note, depending on the heatsink you use, you might run into issues if you try to use the PCIe slot...