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ZOTAC Previews a Z77-Based Mini-ITX Motherboard

Zotac was one of only two manufacturers who brought the overclockable Z68 chipset to the mini-ITX platform (ASRock was the other). Their attempt, the Z68-ITX, was met with decidedly mixed results. Some boards were highly overclockable and stable. Others, not so much. Not wanting to leave ITX overclockers out in the cold when Ivy Bridge drops, Zotac has added to their promised mini-ITX line up with the addition of a Z77-based mini-ITX motherboard that was shown off at CES.

On first glance, the board appears to be built to live up to the large uppercase “SUPER OVERCLOCK” label printed on the PCB. The board features an 8-pin EPS connection to provide plenty of power to the upcoming unlocked Ivy Bridge processors. This ITX motherboard also features DriverMOSFETS that are cooled by a heatsink and with a heatpipe that connects to the Z77 heatsink to assist in cooling. The processor socket itself is powder coated, presumable to assist with cooling.

Most of the other features are similar to those found on its H77 siblings. Two DDR3 dual channel memory slots, single PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot, two SATA III 6Gbps, two SATA II 3Gbps and one mSATA. Display connections are handled by HDMI and DVI. Rounding out the features list is 8-channel HD audio, Gigabit LAN, 802.11b/g/n WiFi and USB 3.0. The board is also said to feature a UEFI BIOS.

The board has yet to be officially named, but as with most Zotac motherboards, it not much of a stretch to assume that the board will be released as the Z77-ITX Wifi. Hopefully we’ll know for sure sometime soon. When we do, we add the new Zotac to the ITX Gamer Motherboard Comparison Tool so you can see how it stacks up against other mini-ITX gaming boards.

Source: TechPowerUp