Introduction

Some may ask, what is the point of owning a mini ATX motherboard, not being able to see the potential outside of a small workstation. Others may have seen some cool rigs and case mods produced with them, but do not know how to get started. But with a mini ATX board, there is plenty of potential for some great computers and some awesome LAN boxes. You just have to look for the items that suit your style.

A great place to start would be to decide on your needs and what you want out of what you are going to build. Do you want a LAN box to take with you, or a small HTPC so you do not have a big rig in the living room? With the LAN box, you want power and portability, with the HTPC, you might want something slim and slick looking. And the best place to start is by deciding what kind of motherboard would meet all your needs. Does it have a PCIe slot for a graphics card or on board video to eliminate the need for that card? Does it have SATA capabilities for better technologies or do you want to use some older components and will the board support those?

The Sapphire PURE Innovation 780V motherboard has the options to meet your needs. The Pure Innovation 780V by Sapphire has both a PCIe x16 slot and on-board graphics so it can be used as both an HTPC and a LAN Box. The Innovation 780V also supports Hybrid Graphics with other 3000 series graphics cards to boost the performance of your system. The PURE Innovation 780V also sports the SB700 South-bridge chip set which was designed for fast Windows Vista compatibility and up to 14 USB devices, not to mention, the new Phenom IIs are compatible with the Pure Innovation 780V.