Supplier: Jetway
Price: $105	Reviewed: Dec 4, 2008

Jetway NC92-230-LF Mini-ITX Motherboard Author: Gh0sTly -- Posted: 2008-12-04 Some love power, some love speed, but with the Intel ATOM on board, you can have a balance of both, and save money too! Today, I bring to you the Jetway NC92-230-LF, the Mini-ITX board packing the Intel Atom N230 processor. The first thing I want to discuss is the NC92's CPU. This board comes with the Intel Atom N230 CPU, and operates at 1.6Ghz and is Hyperthreaded. This means it can process 2 instructions at one time. This makes the CPU more efficient. This CPU also only uses 4 watts of power. This makes it a great power saver on your electric bill. The amazing bit is that the CPU only needs to be passively cooled, as it runs at anywhere from 25-27C at normal use. The board is amazing in itself. In the back we have your standard keyboard and mouse ports, a serial port, VGA port, 4 USB, audio, and a Gigabit network port. You also get 2 USB headers on the board for another 4 USB ports, 2 SATA ports, a IDE channel, Floppy channel, and a header for a Parallel port and a second Serial port. There is also frontside audio headers and 2 three-pin fan headers. From research, this board offers the most connections and options out of almost all of the other Intel Atom Mini-ITX boards currently on the market for the price. Today, our tests consisted of a 2D test, a 3D test, a CPU test, and then a Multitasking test. The test rig consisted of a 250gb SATA hard drive, a 2gb stick of DDR2-667, and a 350w PSU This board packs one of Intel's greatest chipsets, the 945GC + ICH7, along with the venerable Intel GMA 950 Graphics core. This board will surprise you when it comes time to do some video or some light gaming. Its not your daddy's Intel i810 Graphics core. The NC92-230 is fully capable of displaying FULL 1080p video with ZERO hesitation, skipping, or frame reduction. When viewed on a HDTV using the VGA port, the picture was crystal clear, without any artifacts, and the color was bright and vibrant. As you can see, the GMA 950 does not slack off whatsoever in 2D handling. When it came to the complex test, it didn't fair so well, but in the simple and medium, it faired quite well, and I would be quite up to the challenge for Quake 3 based games, and games with similar requirements. Here we went about testing the CPU's performance capabilities, and faired far better than I thought it would. These tests were all started and finished all at once, with a test duration of 60 seconds. It faired very well, and never missed a beat. Jetway includes a program called MyGuard, that lets you monitor the system, and is quite an easy to use program, albeit the interface is larger than it needs to be. It lets you set heat alarms, monitor voltage, and adjust fanspeeds as well. Overall, this is an incredibly impressive board for the price, and if you are looking to build a tiny PC that can do a little bit of everything, this is where to start! You not only save money by not buying standalone motherboard and processor, but you save money on your electric bill because the Intel Atom only uses 4 watts, over your traditional CPU that uses anywhere from 45w to 130w! Jetway I would like to thank Jetway for allowing me to review this wonderful board, and I look forward to reviewing more of their products in the future. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

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