ECS Outs Intel H61 Motherboard with SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 Support

Lately, more and more hardware manufacturers have started to launch USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps compliant LGA 1155 motherboards based on the H61 chipset and the latest to do so is ECS, which has just introduced the H61H2-A2 Black Series board.

Since the H61 platform controller hub (PCH) doesn't come with support for USB 3.0 or SATA 6Gbps, the motherboard relies on third party controllers to deliver this functionality to its customers.

In the case of the H61H2-A2 Black Series, the two SATA 6Gbps ports present on the board are powered by an ASMedia ASM1061 chipset.

These are seconded by four SATA 3Gbps connectors driven by the Intel H61 PCH, which is also used for controlling the two PCI Express x1 as well as the two 32-bit PCI clots installed in ECS' latest creation.

In addition, the H61H2-A2 Black Series motherboard also features a full length PCI Express x16 slot for adding a discrete graphics card to the system.

A pair of DDR3 memory slots are also present and ECS states these can support up to 16GB of system memory when paired together with high-capacity 8GB DIMMs.

Moving to the board's I/O panel, we get all the basic ports and connectors that one would expect t osee in this type of motherboard, including DVI and VGA video outputs, four USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a pair of PS/2 ports and 5.1-channel audio thanks to the Realtek ALC662 HD audio codec.

An HDMI output is also provided, so users interested in building an HTPC system can go for the H61H2-A2 Black Series without any worries.

The H61 chipset is destined to be used in budget Sandy Bridge systems and should be a great choice for users who buy cheaper Pentium CPUs.

No information regarding pricing was provided by ECS, but the H61H2-A2 Black Series is expected to hit the streets in the coming weeks.