Introduction

When we think of Mini-ITX boards, the first name that comes to mind is VIA. It was VIA who started this trend of a 17x17CM baby motherboard with all the features jam packed into it. VIA's main problem with Mini-ITX is power, or lack there of. Until now, VIA has only had one CPU to pack onto its EPIA boards, that being the C3, which by all accounts is no where near what you would need to run a media center in HD.

Now C7 has emerged and things look better, but there is still no way it can compete with the power of AMD's K8 based CPU or Intel's Core 2 series. To this end if you wanted Mini-ITX you had to deal with a slower than average system, especially if you want to encode media on the fly.

Well this is all about to change thanks to the good folks at Albatron who have started to produce their own Mini-ITX boards around the K8 architecture.

We have already seen one of their boards based on the 754 socket and GeForce 6150 chipset, and while adequate for a basic setup its lack of dual channel memory and HDMI features make it a bit obsolete for a HD media center in today's market.

With that said, we now have the latest installment from Albatron, the KI690-AM2. By its name it gives away a couple of secrets.

1) It has got the AMD 690G chipset for its platform base

2) It is an AM2 series board, meaning any AM2 CPU will be right at home here

Let's now take a look at the complete specifications list.