With CES 2011 just around the corner, motherboard manufacturers are continuing to tease us with information on their new Sandy Bridge LGA1155 products. Zotac has recently joined the ranks of those manufacturers with photos of their upcoming mini-ITX H67-based motherboard, the H67-ITX WiFi. Similar to its predecessor in many ways, right down to the bright orange and yellow colour scheme, the H67-ITX contains many of the features we’ve seen so far on other mini-ITX gaming boards.
Board layout is virtually unchanged from the previous model, the H55-ITX, but there are a few new improvements, most due to the new Intel H67 chipset. Drive connectivity is supported via two SATA 6Gbps headers alongside four SATA 3Gbps. Zotac employs a VIA controller to provide two rear USB 3.0 ports along with an internal header for two more. Four rear USB 2.0 and two more internal headers support an additional four USB 2.0 connections.
In addition to the USB, the rear panel provides connections for eSATA and a single PS/2 device. A full array of audio ports is present including an optical SPDIF output. Display options are a bit different on this board than other Sandy Bridge ITX models. Zotac has dropped the VGA port in favour of DisplayPort, a trend that will likely become more popular. The H67-ITX also includes HDMI and DVI display options. The rear panel also includes a Gigabit Ethernet connection and dual wireless antennas connected to and 802.11n card tucked into the board’s single mini-PCIe slot.
Like the H55-ITX, Zotac chose the larger 240-pin DDR3 memory, providing two slots with a maximum capacity of 8 GB of DDR3-1333. So far that leaves the ASUS P8H67-I as the only motherboard that requires the smaller 204-pin SO-DIMMs.