During a European roadshow, Gigabyte showed off a new Mini-ITX form factor motherboard for the first time. Called the GA-H77N-WIFI, the motherboard is well suited for home theater and home server tasks. Based on the H77 chipset, it is compatible with the latest Intel Core i3 (coming soon), i5, and i7 "Ivy Bridge" processors. The board goes for an all-black PCB with minimal heatsinks on the VRMs, and the form factor is the same size as the motherboard that Ryan recently used in his Mini-ITX HTPC build.
The GA-H77N-WIFI features a LGA 1155 processor socket, two DDR3 DIMM slots, PCI Express slot, two SATA 3Gbps ports, two SATA 6Gbps ports, and an internal USB 3.0 header. There are also two Realtek Ethernet controller chips and a Realtek audio chip.
- 1 PS/2 port
- 2 USB 3.0 ports
- 2 HDMI ports
- 1 DVI port
- 2 Antenna connectors (WIFI)
- 4 USB 2.0 ports
- 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports
- 1 Optical S/PDIF port
- 5 Analog audio jacks
The dual Gigabit Ethernet ports are interesting. It could easily be loaded with open source routing software and turned into router/firewall/Wi-Fi access point. To really take advantage of the Ivy Bridge support, you could put together a nice media server and HTPC recording/streaming box (using something like SiliconDust's HDHomeRun networked tuners or Ceton's USB tuner since this board is very scarce in the way of PCI-E slots). What would you do with this Mini-ITX Gigabyte board?
Unfortunately, there is no word yet on pricing or availability, but the motherboard is likely coming soon. You can find more information on the motherboard over at tonymacx86, who managed to snag get some photos of the board.
Stoked on the dual nics!
I
Stoked on the dual nics!
I was trying to build a media server a year or two ago using a small form factor motherboard. Couldn’t be done. I need a board with dual nics, but no one had one. I couldn’t drop a nic card into the PCIE slot because I’m using an Areca card.
Glad to see a product come out for this niche market.
I’m a bit unsure of the dual hdmi part…but I’m sure someone will find a use for it.
Yeah I’m not sure on that,
Yeah I'm not sure on that, can intel processor graphics even do multi-display like that or is the second HDMI just for mirrored display or something? I'm not really sure how useful it would be, but otherwise it looks like an interesting board!
The only thing I can think of
The only thing I can think of other than that, is if someone is using it for 3d. Some receivers and/or tvs require the 3d hdmi to goto the TV and one to the audio source, otherwise the 3d gets filtered out or audio comes out as 2CH PCM. Other than that, it would be make sense as a multi display.
Just keep in mind these are
Just keep in mind these are Realtek NICs. Depending on which chip used and implementation; they can work good or are junk. I have seen dual Intel NIC boards, but they are more expensive.