ECS has been building motherboards for over 20 years now (24, to put a precise number on it!) So when they decide to build something new and innovative, you know it gets done. So what do you do these days to be new and innovative?
You put the Intel Sandy Bridge platform into a Mini-ITX package. The H67H2-I might not be a catchy name, but the features are definitely eye-catching. Besides the fact that ECS has managed to get the H67 chipset and a 95W CPU with Intel VRD 12.0 to behave in a board less than 7″ to a side—which is no small feat—they did it while adding more features to the board as well.
Let’s start with the obvious question—yes, it has a PCI-Express 16x slot if you don’t want to use Sandy Bridge and the onboard VGA, DVI-D or HDMI 1.4A ports. It has Bluetooth 2.1 onboard, overbuilt to 10 meter range (that’s about 33 feet!) They packed in their M.I.B III BIOS interface with new features for boosting GPU performance. The two USB 3.0 ports can charge Apple devices even with the system turned off. It comes with their new software kit consisting of eSF/eBLU/eDLU/eJIFFY plus Norton Internet Security 2011.
Oh, and it comes with two SATA 6Gb/s ports and what I describe as a “special” Mini PCI-Express slot. Special doesn’t mean proprietary—it means quite the opposite. Unlike some other boards, ECS has made their Mini PCI-Express slot support not only wireless cards, but TV Tuners and my personal favorite, mSATA SSDs—the kind you find in netbooks. This board is pretty much everything anyone could want in a Sandy Bridge HTPC. Suddenly deciding on your build got a lot harder.
No word on exact availability or pricing, other than “very soon.”
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