While we would have thought that innovation such as this would be first seen from a company such as Asus or Gigabyte, it is DFI who is paving the way, releasing a mini-ITX board based on the Intel P55 chipset with LGA-1156 support.

Mini-ITX has been gaining ground as a popular solution in the home theatre and basic system market, with its small 6.7″ x 6.7″ form factor. Until now however, most of the products have focused on a all-in-one solution with Intel’s Atom processor, or supported only Intel LGA-775  or AMD processors.

DFI however is looking to bring the current generation of computing to a tiny platform with the MI P55-T36, the first on the market to do so. The board features the LGA-1156 socket with support for Core i5/i7 CPUs. It has a 6-phase PWM, and ABS II CPU auto upgrade technology if you wish to overclock. It includes two DDR3 memory slots, and a single PCI-Express x16 slot which is required due to the lack of integrated graphics. For connections it has eSATA and 3xSATA II ports, 4XUSB 2.0, Gigabit LAN ,8 channel audio with SPDIF, along with CMOS reset button and debug LED.

DFI has created the potential to house an absolute monster of a machine inside a very small bundle. Big things really do come in small packages.

Photos courtesy of Clunk.org.uk.