Zotac Shows Off Mini-ITX Sandy Bridge Motherboard with GeForce GT 430

During the 2011 Computer Electronics Show, computer hardware manufacturer Zotac has displayed an LGA 1155 mini-ITX motherboard prototype, based on the Intel H67 chipset with an on-board GeForce GT 430 graphics processor, that targets the HTPC crowd.

The Nvidia built GT 430 is a dedicated graphics card and packs 96 CUDA cores, 16 texturing units, 4 ROPs as well as a 128-bit memory interface.

In addition, the card can feature as much a 1GB of frame buffer memory and its standard GPU clock is set at 700MHz.

In Zotac's prototype, the GT 430 GPU is connected to the motherboard via PCI Express x16, leaving just a x4 slot open for installing other components, including other graphics card if the user decides that the GF108-based card isn't to much of an improvement over the Sandy Bridge integrated graphics.

The rest of the expansion options include four SATA ports, two of them of the SATA 6Gbps variety, as well as dual SODIMM memory slots.

Zotac's prototype also features what appears to be a mini PCI Express slot, but this is populated by a wireless card, probably supporting 802.11n transfer speeds.

The rest of the motherboard is fairly clean, except for the huge aluminum heatsink that sits over the GT 430 graphics card.

Moving to the back of the motherboard, we find that Zotac has included an eSATA port, analog and digital audio inputs/outputs, two USB 3.0 ports, dual USB 2.0 ports as well as a pair of DVI video outputs.



Furthermore, these are accompanied by a DisplayPort and an HDMI output and by a small button, that is probably used for clearing the CMOS memory.

Right now we don't know if Zotac's prototype enters mass production, but I sincerely doubt it, as such a product would have a tough time finding its niche market, especially considering the low performing GT 430 graphics card included. (via Hardware Secrets)