ECS Adds Sandy Bridge Mini-ITX Motherboard to Its Lineup

As the mini-ITX form factor seems to be gaining in popularity, ECS has decided to design a compact LGA 1155 motherboard of its own, the company just announcing the H67H2-I that is based on Intel's H67 chipset and supports the second generation Core processors, code named Sandy Bridge.

According to ECS, the H67H2-I is compatible with all the CPUs built on top of the Sandy Bridge architecture, including Intel's unlocked parts.

However, since the board is based on the H67 chipset, it doesn't allow for overclocking the processor or the system's memory, overclocking support being limited to the integrated graphics.

Fortunately, ECS manages to overcome this obstacle by adding a strong feature set to the H67H2-I, as the board comes equipped with almost all the optional that one would require.

I say almost, since the motherboard doesn't pack on-board Wi-Fi connectivity, although ECS does provide users with a mini PCI Express x1 slot for them to install a notebook wireless adapter if they so desire.

In addition, the board also features a full length PCI Express x16 slot, that can be used for adding a dedicated graphics card or a high performance RAID card.

The rest of the board layout is pretty much standard, the H67H2-I featuring two regular DDR3 DIMM slots as well as four SATA ports, two of them supporting 6Gbps transfer speeds.

An extra eSATA connector is placed in the back, together with two USB 3.0 ports, one Ethernet port, six regular USB ports, a Bluetooth adapter, and the required input/output audio ports.

These are driven by an Realtek ALC892 High Definition audio codec, that supports up to 8 channel sound.



Also on the back panel, we find the regular slew of video ports associated with solutions built on top of Intel's H67 chipset, ECS pairing the H67H2-I with D-sub(VGA), HDMI, and DVI outputs.

Details regarding pricing and availability have not been disclosed together with this announcement.