DFI has announced the world's first P55-based mini-ITX motherboard, the MI P55-T36. The company's new system board will allow users to cram the power of Intel's Lynnfield processors into a tiny package, and is aimed at overclockers and DIY enthusiasts. Unfortunately, no price or availability have been disclosed.

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One thing i notice here and I realize size and space was of course an issue. Isn't DDR3 + i5 or i7 best run in a triple channel setup? If I'm correct on this it kinda sucks to only have 2 DIMMs.

Another thought, I've always wanted to try doing this sort of thing, but I'd love to use this board in a higher end system with a highly modded case that actually looked like something else...for example I've seen people make theirs look like its actually say a school bus toy or VW Beetle etc..

I can't believe how small this motherboard is! This looks like something I could use for a media center PC for the living room.

nope. the new i-5's and i7's use dual channel memory, that's why only the 2 dimm slots.

Thats really small .I agree with swilllx2p more ram slots would be great,but really cool looking, I would buy one.

That's as dinky a board as I've seen. But as wagan8r said, perfect for a small, living room media center.

Isn't a Lynnfield a bit overkill for a HTPC??

@swilllx2p: You're thinking of the first round of i7 processors (Bloomfield), which support triple-channel memory. Lynnfield chips have a dual-channel memory controller.

*Edit*

Looks like I was a little too late haha. Good call Guest.

Hmm, So triple channel memory isn't better then dual? I thought that there was probably some sort of added benefit in it being a triple instead of dual, I never really read up on it though..or is it just the lower end ones use a dual-channel controller?

This would be amazing for HD movies in my livingroom (with the addition of a decent graphics card). Given how absolutely HUGE HTPC cases are right now, this board would make for a very small form factor.

Benchmarks show an absolutely negligible performance increase.. and when I say negligible, I'm talking about a 0.3 FPS increase or 20 points on PCmark etc..

You can bet if it is *that* negligible in benchmarks, then you definitely won't notice it in real life.

Wow.. this opens the door for ultra-small heavy gaming PCs

Needing to put a big video card on this kind of defeats the purpose of having such a small board. You might as well get a micro-ATX board. This form factor will make much more sense when Arrandale with integrated graphics comes out next year.

@ken777: Who says you need to strap a huge card to the board? Link

Now all we need is a low profile single slot Radeon 5870. :)

Now all I need is the price and maybe I would buy one to buid a small super server...
Hey it would be fun...

I smell a great new HTPC board. and you can play a game of two as well.
It seems to be very "techy" for any normal HTPC PC though...?

Wow that's some serious hardware.

Looks great. Wonder what the temps will be once an i5/i7 processor and a decent graphics card gets shoved inside a small HTPC box.

right now triple channel hasn't proven itself but it is still too new. Give it some time and everyone will want triple channel over dual channel. The performance concept is good the rest of the hardware needs to support it. I wouldn't expect triple channel memory on a mini-ITX like this one unless it gave up something else (the PCIe for onboard video), there's going to be a trade off no matter what given the limited real estate.