Intel's upcoming Essential Series ITX motherboards, packed with new Atom D510 and Atom D410 processors are starting to appear in European e-tail.

The more powerful, and hence more interesting version is the Intel Essential Series D510MO aka Mount Olive. It is based on a dual-core Atom D510 CPU clocked at 1.67GHz.The CPU has 2x512kB of cache and a 13W TDP, but bear in mind that it also features integrated GMA 3150 graphics.

The rest of the board isn't as interesting. It offers 1 mini PCIe slot,a plain PCI slot and a single DDR2 800/667 memory slot. Sadly, Intel is still sticking to VGA and there's no DVI or HDMI option, at least not in this particular SKU. You also get 3 external USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 5.1 audio, ancient PS/2 mouse and keyboard slots, as well as 2 SATA II connectors and 4 USBs internally.

The second board, codenamed Packton and designated Essential Series D410PT, seems to be similar to Mount Olive, but there are some slight differences. It has 100/10Mb LAN instead of 1Gb and it doesn't appear to have 5.1 audio.

We left the best for last. Both boards are passively cooled, so there's no pesky fans anymore and the pricing is quite fair. Mount Olive, with its new D510 Atom and GMA 3150 graphics is currently listed at €60, the same as the old Atom 330-based D945GCLF2 with Intel's horrid 945GC chipset. We still don't have the MSRP for the D410 board, but we're guessing it will end up slightly under €50.