So, while trying to get my hands on one of VIA's Pico-ITX motherboards a few months ago, i received an email from one of VIA's reps offering me one for a project. How lucky is that! VIA offered to send me one of the boards for a mod project.

It just arrived earlier today. Here's the box:





What's inside? The board, some cables, and a driver CD:





The cables: DVI, USB, PS/2, Audio, ATX power adapter, COM port, IDE Cable.

And here's the little monster:











Compared to a full size ATX motherboard:





Compared to a notebook HDD:







As you can see, this thing is unbelievably tiny. I actually find it quite ridiculous how small it is. It's amazing

I've been lucky enough to be sponsored by another company for this project too. A great bunch over at Logic Supply. This US based company sells an amazing variety of tiny stuffs like the Pico board that i have here. Check them out

Anyway, Logic is hooking me up with a 160GB SATA notebook drive, 1GB of So-DIMM RAM, and a fantastic PSU, designed SPECIFICALLY for this motherboard. The PSU is the Serener 120W DC-DC Power Converter.





They're also sending me a power brick for the PSU.

So i'm pretty much sorted for hardware for this mod. There's just one or two last things i want for this project. I'd REALLY like to pair it up with a 7" touchscreen, and with a small little VFD, but i'll first do some more planning.

Big BIG thanks to my sponsors for this mod, i really appreciate it guys!







Okay, so now it's on to the planning. I plan on building something REALLY tiny. I started with some rough sketches last week but i wanted to wait for the PSU to arrive before making any solid plans. The package from Logic was only shipped today, so i still can't do any solid planning, but so far, i know that i want this machine as tiny as possible, without compromising size for quality. I don't want a mod that's REALLY small, but looks crap. If it needs to be a little bigger in order to look a lot better, i'm cool with that.

I was originally planning on removing the heatsink that's on the board and having the case cool the board, but after some consideration, i've come to the conclusion that it'll just not be worth it. I might earn 3mm at most by removing the heatsink. So the heatsink stays.

I want the case to look REALLY really good here. I'm going to see if i can have it CNCed out of a block of Alu and then have that alu anodized to a nice colour; just not black. Please. Not. Black.

So that's it so far. I'm almost done putting an unboxing video together, i'll upload that soon.

Thanks for reading. I hope you like where this is going as much as i do


UPDATE 20/09

First off, my goodies from Logic Supply arrived:

The HDD, RAM, PSU, and powerbrick:





HDD and RAM. 160GB Seagate Disk and 1GB Transcend DDR2 667:





The Serener PSU. This thing is insanely small:









Another shot of the RAM:







Here's a FULL PC:





Compared to a Rubik's Cube:





Compared to a Swiftech Storm waterblock:





And lastly, the powerbrick:







All hooked up and running:





Then it was down to design. I spent so much time doing this. I went from design idea to design idea, and finally settled on something unique - A Rubik's cube









This is how the board will sit inside the case:







VIA also gave me rights to use their logo:





Some colour:





A clay render:





And two colour renders:







I plan on having the cube machines out of Alu, and then having the Alu anodized black.

Please also watch these two videos i've made for the project. The first is the Pico ITX unboxing clip:

Pico ITX Unboxing Video!



And the second is a video log of what i've done so far. Part 1

Pico Rubik's Cube - Video Log Part 1

Please let me know what you guys think so far

Looks to be a cool project - been wanting 2 use a PICO myself - I'll def be watchin to see this finished