The MicroATX

It's that small!

Anyone who can remember the days of the IBM AT can remember the sizes of the cases and motherboards that made up the form factor. We're not even talking about full sized towers here, these were giant, desktop behemoths, where motherboards easily took up 90 of the area on the bottom of the case. As with all things electronic, smaller is always better, and motherboard manufacturers have since been continuing to shrink their products down to save space and reduce costs.

With size come tradeoffs however. One of the most fiercely-protected traits of the modern PC is its expandability - everyone wants more PCI slots, more RAM slots, more drive bays, and all of the bells and whistles they've come to expect. The compromise is where MicroATX comes in. It adheres to the basic ATX guidelines, but "cost-reduces" (read: hacks out) expandability features to cater to a smaller footprint and a lower price point.

FIC has been in the motherboard business for some time, and while their product line is well stocked with Baby-AT, ATX, and NLX boards, the push towards truly cheap commodity systems has led them to integrate the MicroATX standard as well. This brings us to the CL31-A, which isn't taking home any prizes for expandability, but rather sets its sights on providing a low-cost entry-level system.