News H170 Thin Mini-ITX board by Gigabyte

GA-H170TN officially listed on the Gigabyte's site now:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5651
The first Thin Mini-ITX board with M.2 ports replacing mSATA/mPCIe ports and the storage M.2 is PCIe Gen3.0 x4.
Other things to note are: HDMI 2.0, 12-19V wide rage DC input (as usual for Gigabyte), PCIe Gen3.0 x4 slot, not an Intel LAN, no eDP.

 

[BirdofPrey]

Hey, sweet, M.2 on a Thin ITX board. Haven't seen that before, and was something I was looking forward to. M.2 has all but replaced mSATA for small SSDs (and look to be fast approaching the replacement of even the 2.5 inch bay SSDs), but it's still a bit hard to find M.2 expansion cards, though, so I would have loved to have kept at least a half height mPCIe. (does 802.11 ac even require more than the one PCIe lane it usually gets on mPCIe?)

Shame about no eDP as well. With just an iGPU I have little hope for high frame rates eDP can push, but it also means no huge screens.



I am somewhat insane, though, so I still dream of a Thin board with a discrete graphics option that isn't almost exclusive to OEMs

edit: so I was thinking, given the limited space available on the board, it seems odd thin mini-ITX boards don't use a smaller heat sink mount.

 

[iFreilicht]

Oh sweeeeet! I really didn't expect Gigabyte to renew their thin mITX series, but it looks like they feel it's worth it. They even left the I/O layout the exact same, and kept the wide input range, the open-ended PCIe x4 port is still there, too. And additionally, we finally see stacked M.2 on a Mainboard other than the NUC, which gives me hope that some companies might employ this on regular mITX boards as well.

HDMI 2.0 is a logical update, but I'm a bit disappointed about the lack of eDP. LVDS is so much more complicated for the "user", I really wanted them to adapt eDP. I hope their LVDS support has changed as well. I had great issues getting an LVDS display to run with the Q87TN, the BIOS was absolutely lackluster in that regard, especially compared to the DQ77KB.

I wonder whether the other 1151 chipsets will get their respective variant as well, for 1150 we had four different thin mITX boards from Gigabyte.

...

Shame about no eDP as well. With just an iGPU I have little hope for high frame rates eDP can push, but it also means no huge screens.



I am somewhat insane, though, so I still dream of a Thin board with a discrete graphics option that isn't almost exclusive to OEMs

edit: so I was thinking, given the limited space available on the board, it seems odd thin mini-ITX boards don't use a smaller heat sink mount.

What do you mean by discrete graphics option? You've got PCIe3.0 x4 at your disposal, that's pretty capable of driving any GPU currently on the market. The performance loss is negligible.

 

[BirdofPrey]

I think what's happening is the specification requires LVDS, but eDP is optional with a specified location if it IS present. Most companies probably figure LVDS is sufficient for most displays and thus don't include the eDP.

What do you mean by discrete graphics option? You've got PCIe3.0 x4 at your disposal, that's pretty capable of driving any GPU currently on the market. The performance loss is negligible.

but, but I want ALL the speed.
I'd love to see at least an x8, but that's inside the heatsink keep-out zone. 1x and 4x also don't supply all the wattage a video card asks for through the PCIe slot (the 6/8-pin 12V connectors are supposed to supplement not replace that; if you saw QniX's build, you might have noticed he had a problem with that when he forgot to power the riser; granted, it also demonstrates when the riser is powered, it doesn't present a problem).

Gigabyte made a thin Mini-ITX board a couple years ago with an x16 slot on the opposite side of the board which was a neat feature, but if I am not mistaken was a low performance chipset even at the time. I've also seen boards with MXM connectors, but haven't seen them available separate, just in fully built and bare-bones machines.

Yes; I am crazy
Yes; I know this fact.

 

[iFreilicht]

Yeah that's true, but for me as someone who likes to tinker, connecting an eDP display is much easier than an LVDS display. And indeed most AIO kits for thin mITX boards do use LVDS.

Yeah that current limiting factor is the most apparent issue, but from what I remember @QuinX actually never tried to use the GPU without powering the riser.
I personally tested this with my GTX970 in a Q87TN and it worked without a problem, but it might depend on the GPU. The only issue you get is when using a GTX750Ti that gets all its power from the PCIe port.

 

[BirdofPrey]

I definitely agree eDP would be nice to see. LVDS is pretty old and outdated despite any attempts to update it, but it's presence makes sense to me at least. Unfortunately, like DVI, LVDS seems to be taking it's sweet time getting replaced by something better.

I remember reading something about QniX thinking his GPU was broken because it didn't work when he forgot to plug in the riser power during a test. An accident to be sure (since power was always planned), but does demonstrate that it can cause a problem. It may be a problem that varies by motherboard and video card, but I am wary nonetheless. For me expansion cards aren't "I'll make it fit" territory (for instance I've heard of people using mPCIe slots to drive regular PCIe cards, and that's just crazy talk.)

 

[chx]

GA-H170TN officially listed on the Gigabyte's site now:
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5651
The first Thin Mini-ITX board with M.2 ports replacing mSATA/mPCIe ports and the storage M.2 is PCIe Gen3.0 x4.
Other things to note are: HDMI 2.0, 12-19V wide rage DC input

The manual says 19V. I do see the wide range input mentioned but the manual says 19V and the spec page has this example "Connector Dimension: 7.4 x 5.1mm, 150W = 19V / 7.89A" so I am not sure. Would be very nice.

I tried to read on the connector and I have a bad idea: do you think you could just plug in a 6 pin PCIe and power it that way?

Xbox One S PSU, PCIe 6 pin splitter, this motherboard, some low wattage CPU (i5-6400T), the RX 460 single slot card with this http://www.ebay.com/itm/USB-3-0-PCI...TA-Adapter-Card-Board-Cable-SET-/292090207507 riser so that both the motherboard and the card looks "outwards" and a custom case of course... the whole thing could fit in a less than 25x20x5 cm box... would be really, really nice!

 

[iFreilicht]

I tried to read on the connector and I have a bad idea: do you think you could just plug in a 6 pin PCIe and power it that way?

DON'T DO THIS! PEG connectors have opposite polarity, you risk frying your board completely! You can use an EPS connector, the same you use on normal mainboards for powering the CPU, but do NOT use a PEG connector.

 

[chx]

OK, OK, OK, that's why I am asking. Thanks for the advice.

 

[chx]

So use this splitter http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/6pcmato4epsf.html then?

 

[iFreilicht]

So use this splitter http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/6pcmato4epsf.html then?

That would work. It's a bit of overkill, you get 8 wires where you'd only need two, but yes, it would work.