14 DAY TRIAL // At this year's CES fair, Zotac showcased its first motherboard built around the Intel Z7 chipset, a mini-ITX contraption that is designed to bring Intel’s next-gen 22nm Ivy Bridge processors to small form factor computers.
This mini-ITX board draws power from 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors and then delivers it to the CPU via a 6+1+1 phase power design that uses Dr. MOS capacitors to provide stable voltages no matter the power requirements placed on the PWM.
Right under the CPU socket, Zotac has installed two full-length DIMM slots that can house up to 8GB of DDR3-1333 memory in a dual-channel configuration.
The rest of the expansion options include a PCI Express x16 slot, a mini PCIe x1 slot that is populated by a WiFi 802.11 b/g/n WLAN card, and four SATA ports, two of these support speeds of 6Gbps, while the other two are limited at 3Gbps.
A second PCI Express x1 slot sits on the right edge of Zotac’s creation which was presumably added to support an mSATA SSD for caching purposes.
Taking a look at the rear I/O header, we find that Zotac has installed a wide series of connectors, including four USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet ports, and 5.1-channel audio (thanks to a Realtek codec) with an optical S/PDIF out.
Video connectors include an HDMI port and one DVI interface, according to TechPowerUp.
The entire board is passively cooled, and Zotac also fitted it with on-board Power and Reset buttons, a BIOS debug LCD as well as with a rear Clear CMOS button.
The recommended retail price of the Zotac Z68-ITX WiFi motherboard isn't known at this time. Availability is also unknown, but this is happen around the time of Intel’s Ivy Bridge launch which seems scheduled for early Q2 2012.