DFI unveiled the P55 MI-T36 to the public a couple of months ago. It's an exciting little board based upon the P55 chipset, cut back to the most desirable essentials in order to facilitate a shrink down to the mini-ITX form factor.

What DFI are attempting to do is bring near enthusiast level performance to a form factor that is associated largely with web-browsing and HTPC use. Teamed up with a suitable GPU, the prospects of having a compact multi-purpose PC capable of delivering a high-end gaming experience is rather compelling.

Unfortunately, there's not exactly an abundance of suitable PC cases on the market catering for such builds. Right now, you're limited to a couple of ITX offerings from Silverstone, namely the SG-05 and SG-06 models, while Lian-Li have the PC Q07. Obvious limitations in going such a route are related to PSU requirements. Once you team a board like this up with a hefty GPU, cooling and power demands throw minimum case dimensions towards M-ATX sizing, which defeats the attraction of going for mini-ITX in the first place.

Nevertheless, products like these create demands for innovation and we're sure the MI-T36 has given PC case and PSU vendors something to think about for the future. So although the MI-T36 seems like a bit of an outcast in certain scenarios at this stage of proceedings, it's still interesting to see what DFI have managed to cram into the mini-ITX form factor.

We've spent the past week or so running various benchmarks on the MI-T36 to see how it fares against regular ATX sized P55 offerings. Of course, boards from DFI usually feature overclocking centric BIOSes, so we've taken the time to explore what's possible on that side of things too...

Overview/Conclusion

Our board arrived with the P55MIB02 BIOS, which worked well within the context of stock processor speed testing. Onboard peripherals work as they should for the most part, although we have seen reports of the board failing to work properly with USB wireless adaptors. Our issues/niggles during testing were primarily related to overclocking.

First of all, some of the memory sub-timings don't respond to manual changes, so you have to work with what you get. Although, we should add that the default settings are more than adequate in most situations, unless you decide to push the board harder than you should.

One of the other niggles is that you don't get any report of the applied operating frequency in the BIOS other than BCLK. Failed OC recovery tends to be hit and miss too; our board frequently froze on the post screen after OC recovery had kicked in, leaving us needing to reset CMOS to get back into the BIOS. We also found that the board failed to recognize our hard drives on occasion when loading saved BIOS profiles or when the board recovered from a failed overclock. Lastly, S3 resume seems to be limited somewhere between 150-160BCLK on the current BIOS. Any higher than this and the board gets caught in a reboot loop.

All of the above issues have been reported back to DFI who are working on fixes as we speak. The new BIOS will also cap over-current protection to around 90 amps with a maximum VID of 1.40V (currently set to 110 amps). The reason is that onboard power delivery for CPU VCore does not respond kindly to being pushed under heavy loads. We've seen one reported case of a reviewer pushing the board over 3.8GHz with a HT enabled 4 core CPU running stress tests like OCCT and burning out a couple of FETs. Just a heads up to those who are thinking of pushing the MI-T36: it's not designed for it. We'd say you're better off teaming a board like this up with a 750 CPU, and keeping operating speeds below 4GHz. Cooling the PWM FET's actively may help a little, but given the location of some of them, we don't think it is going to be practical or easy. It's something that DFI should have addressed prior to release.

The alternative is to wait and see what the upcoming H55/H57 platform and processors bring to the table. The IGP makes it a more ideal candidate than P55 for mini-sizing, while the reduced core count of Clarksdale processors should allow for reasonable overclocking headroom without being too demanding of power delivery. We haven't heard of any upcoming M-ITX boards from other vendors yet, although we're sure it's a work in progress now that DFI have laid down the gauntlet with the MI-T36. A beefier VRM from the likes of Volterra would see a board like this upstaging everything priced above it for overclocking. FET's delivering up to 45 amps a piece are readily available, and can deliver buckets of current within a small footprint so long as cooling is taken care of properly. Don't be surprised if you see someone running with the concept.

What DFI have done is to pave the way for future products by giving vendors a glimpse of what needs to be addressed and catered for to make the mini-ITX form factor attractive for such use. As it stands right now on the current shipping BIOS, the MI-T36 has a bit of an identity crisis. You've got overclocking features on tap that are usually reserved for boards costing twice as much, while onboard power delivery imposes limitations before you'll really make use of them. Being able to deliver both would have been nice, but we guess compromises were made to work within a reasonable target price. We applaud DFI for pushing the boat out regardless. The execution may not suit everyone, but we think the MI-T36 deserves consideration if you're looking for a little work horse. Just be prepared to work within its limitations.

Performance Summary

It's the same old story on the performance front; all P55 boards perform about the same during fixed frequency tests.

For the next test we measured AC power consumption from the wall while using the same set of components on all boards. All power saving features were turned on, with OS software installed where necessary to give maximum power saving at stock operating frequency on our i7 870 CPU. Real power consumption will probably be a few percent lower than what the AC wall meter reports but as we're going apples to apples here, the percentage of change is the important factor.

DFI's MI-T36 produces respectable power consumption figures during idle and full load scenarios, bettered only slightly by MSI, who are the class leaders when it comes to power saving features and software.

As part of the performance summary, we also include a DPC latency screenshot for the audio aficionado's out there;

Overclocking

DFI offers plenty of overclocking features within the current BIOS. However, the VRM for processor VCore is limited to 150w max (110w in the near future). Although we managed to pass our gaming tests at 4GHz, 860/870 CPUs are best left near stock operating frequency to avoid catastrophic board failure during heavy load tests.

We overclocked our 750 CPU to 3.6GHz with a 1800MHz memory speed at 7-8-7-20 timings (180BCLK x 20). Voltages were 1.25V CPU VCore, 1.25VTT and 1.65VDIMM. All other voltages were left at stock. On the DRAM side, we only needed to set the primary timings; the board defaults were perfectly adequate for this speed. We must add that we were using an open test bed and pointing a high speed fan directly over the PWM area. Within a PC case, we think you're going to be limited to stock operating frequencies on the CPU. S3 Sleep mode recovery is limited to around 150 BCLK on the current BIOS too, anything higher and the board gets caught in a reboot loop.

DFI includes the Realtek ALC 888 HD audio codec, Intel 82578DC LAN (PCI-E), JMicron JMB363 eSATA, and full support for the Core i7/i5 S1156 processor series. Creative X-FI drivers are included in the package, but you don't get any kind of Dolby Surround sound processing features in the bundled software.

DFI bundles the following with the board:
4 X SATA Cables
2X SATA Power Cables
1X I/O Panel
1X User Manual
1X Driver DVD
1X Creative X-FI Driver CD
2 X Smart connectors for front panel I/O

One of the software tools bundled with the board is a very basic overclocking utility called EZ Tuner.

EZ Tuner allows on the fly changes to processor VCore and also changes to BCLK within the OS as well as monitoring primary voltage rails and processor power monitoring. There are no options for changes to VTT or VDimm unfortunately, although the MI-T36 is limited in the overclocking department anyway.

AS with all DFI boards you also get Smart Guardian.

Smart Guardian offers temperature and power monitoring as well as comprehensive fan speed control for both fan headers.

The BIOS layout is generally good and offers a significant number of settings for overclocking although some of the settings seem out of place on this board given the power delivery limitations. You get fine control over DRAM reference voltage settings as well as options for adjusting compensation levels to critical signal lines. The latter is a feature we've only seen available on the more expensive EVGA boards.

BIOS flashing is taken care of within the OS only, DFI include a little tool called EZ-Flash. We prefer BIOS level utilities personally, especially when there's no redundancy, as you've only got a single BIOS chip on this board.

Board Layout

The lone PCI-E slot means that DFI needed to provide reasonable onboard sound and a desirable LAN solution. What you get is the Realtek ALC885 teamed up with Creative X-FI drivers and the Intel 82578DC for LAN duty.

Most of what you'll need is available on the rear I/O panel. You've got 6 USB connectors (one is eSATA combo), together with analog and digital audio outputs. There's also a CMOS clear switch available which comes in handy when OC recovery fails to work.

There are cutbacks in the VRM department. CPU VCC (VCore) is limited to 150W max on the current BIOS (future BIOSes will see OCP limited to around 90amps with a maximum VID of 1.40V). There is no cooling over any of the FETs either.

150w is just about enough to support a very mild overclock on a 750 CPU long term. 860/870 CPUs are probably best left near stock if you run heavy loads. Over-current protection should kick in if you push things a little too far, although we often find that it's better not to test the limits of OCP in the first place. DFI will be releasing BIOS shortly that limits OCP to around 110W, which is a smidgen above stock TDP - basically, you'll be limited to near stock operating frequency on all CPUs.

You get 3 SATA ports courtesy of the Intel P55 PCH. Front panel I/O for audio, USB, IrDA, and power are all placed above or to the right of the PCI-E slot together with the CMOS battery holder, allowing access to all connectors when the PCI-E slot is occupied. A hex post code display is placed to the right of the DIMM slots for debugging purposes.

Testbed Setup

We utilized memory kits from Corsair> and G.Skill> to verify memory compatibility on our test boards. Our OS and primary applications are loaded on the OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD drive and our games operate off the WD Caviar Black 1TB drive. We did a clean install of the OS and applications for each motherboard.

We used Intel's stock cooler for the stock comparison testing, while water-cooling via the superlative Heat Killer 3.0 water block was utilized for overclocking. For graphics duty, we used MSI's 275 Lighting GPU to provide performance comparisons between boards during gaming benchmarks.

For our test results we set up each board as closely as possible in regards to memory timings. Otherwise all other settings are left on auto. The P55 utilized 8GB of DDR3 (apart from DFI's MI-T36 which is limited to 4GB), while the X58 platform contained 6GB. The P55 and X58 DDR3 timings were set to 7-7-7-20 1T at DDR3-1600 for the i7-920 and i7-870 processors at both stock and overclocked CPU settings.

We used DDR3-1333 6-6-6-18 1T timings for the i5-750 stock setup for all system benchmarks (non gaming tests) as DDR3-1600 is not natively supported at a stock BCLK setting of 133. The current DFI BIOS appears to offer the 2:12 ratio on 750 CPUs, but selecting the option reverts to 2:10 anyway. Most vendors have removed the 2:12 option for these processors because of instability issues. We expect DFI will do the same in the near future.

The 4GHz gaming results are included for fixed frequency comparison purposes only. The MI-T36 is not comfortable running these frequencies 24/7, but managed to complete our gaming suite because the processor is not loaded heavily by most 3D intensive game engines. We included these results merely to tie in with our database without having to rerun tests on a variety of boards just to cater to a single board.

Non-3D test results are all identical to the P55 boards, so we've not spent too much of our time re-running the same tests for the same numbers. We're not providing a running commentary for that section of benchmarks as there are no discernable performance differences when running each of these boards at the same operating frequency.

Far Cry 2

Featuring fantastic visuals courtesy of the Dunia Engine, this game also features one of the most impressive benchmark tools we have seen in a PC game. For single GPU results we set the performance feature set to Very High, graphics to High, and enable DX10 with AA set to 2x.

The MI-T36 gives up a couple of FPS here, which are within the bounds of variance between repeated benchmark runs.

Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II

We are big fans of the Warhammer franchise, especially Dawn of War II. One of the latest RTS games in our library is also one of the more demanding titles on both the CPU and GPU. We crank all options to Ultra, enable AA, and then run the built-in performance benchmark for our result.

Resident Evil 5

For our final game benchmark we decided to add the Resident Evil 5's fixed time demo, running DX10, Ultra settings and 4xAA.

DFI's offering is hot on the heels of the big boys in our gaming suite. What you're giving up by using it for a gaming system is the ability to keep up with ATX sized boards that can hold 4GHz CPU speeds day in and day out. In most benchmarks this equates to a performance disparity of around 5% between stock and 4GHz on the current Intel platforms.

Sorenson Squeeze 6

We are using Sorenson Squeeze to convert eight AVCHD videos into HD Flash videos for use on websites. This application heavily favors physical core count and processor clock speed.

WinRAR 3.9 x64

This benchmark compresses our AT workload consisting of a main folder that contains 954MB of files in 15 subfolders. The result is a file approximately 829MB in size.

Bibble 5.0

We utilize Bibble Labs' Bibble 5 v2 to convert 50 RAW image files into full size JPEG images with the program's default settings. This program is fully multithreaded and multi-core aware.