AAEON EMB-BT1: A Linux-Friendly, Mini-ITX, Atom "Bay Trail" Board

While the boards normally sell without storage or RAM, our sample was supplied with 4GB of memory and a 32GB Apacer mSATA card. The EMB-BT1 also has four Serial ATA ports: two SATA 2.0 and two SATA 3.0. This could make for very nice home file server applications with having mSATA plus four more SATA ports on this mini-ITX board. There's also dual Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The AAEON EMB-BT1 mini-ITX board also has a half-size mini card slot and one PCI Express x1 slot. Covering the Atom SoC is a small, passively-cooled aluminum heatsink.

Rear panel I/O ports include the +12VDC power connector, two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, two Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, COM, and audio jacks. Overall, the board offers nice connectivity options -- particularly dual Gigabit Ethernet out of the mini-ITX board -- though it would have been nice to see at least two USB 3.0 ports.