ECS H61H2-TI LGA 1155 Intel H61 HDMI USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Truly is a "thin mini-itx" form factor; any case that states it's limited to the Intel DH61AG Intel DQ77KB motherboards this motherboard *should* fit. I say this with caution as it appears the location of the CPU slot is identical to that of the Intel boards - meaning you *should* be able to use the low profile Intel cooler with this board and other cases problem free. I paired this with the Silverstone PT12B case, Intel HTS1155LP heatsink, i3-3220 processor and it all fits flawlessly. The cost of this board is also nearly half that of the Intel DH61AG and even more so than the Intel BOXDQ77KB. Two Mini-pci connectors. USB 3.0 slots.

Cons: Board only has 2 SATA ports (so does the Intel DH61AG) SATA ports are only SATA 3Gb/s Resetting bios returns SATA mode to default IDE-mode (AHCI is probably where it should always default). Weird jumper config required to update bios - make sure you visit the website and follow the instructions closely if you plan to update bios - and unplug power when you reset the jumper pin or else the board will boot up (weird). Reliability at this stage is unknown.

Overall Review: This is a great little motherboard and compared to its intel branded counterparts it is quite the bargain. With any ECS motherboard I expect some sort of quirks - hopefully they don't lead to instabilities. 4 SATA ports would be ideal: one for the solid state drive, one for the big slow storage drive and another for the blu-ray drive. That would be ideal for a HTPC which is what this board is being used for. This and the HD homerun prime are the foundation of a solid low profile Digital Cable Tuner with many other media options. I would have rated this board a solid 4-star rating had it not been for the price. Expect some quirks, but nothing out of control with this board.

Pros: - Excellent price point - Very good fan control via eSF utility - On-board 19V DC power - Many features for mini-ITX PC - Intel-compatible CIR header - Works with easy to find Dell 19.5V 4.74A AC adapters from old/dead laptops making reuse possible

Cons: - Geared very much towards AIO so many useless headers for regular PC - GUI BIOS has no mouse control, some features like fan control cannot be changed - Hangs on boot with card reader plugged into USB3 - Only one display output for regular desktop use - mSATA standoffs not compatible with mSATA SSD screws - BIOS documentation does not match the shipped BIOS - Website hosted in Taiwan and very slow

Overall Review: I bought this motherboard to make a small office PC in the Realan E-Q6i case. I installed a G530 CPU, 4GB of DDR3-1333 SO-DIMM, a Crucial m4 64GB mSATA SSD and a Dynatron K199 CPU cooler. This motherboard is dead simple to work with, especially with these components. The only install issues I had were first with the mSATA SSD. The motherboard standoffs did not take the screws that came with the SSD. No screw I could find would fit and none were in the box. I ended up having to use electrical tape to hold the SSD down. The second was installing the CPU cooler. There are some components on the back that interfere with the install of the backplate. I had to add some spacers to the backplate brackets so the components would not be crushed. Once assembled on boot, the BIOS came up and was surprisingly a GUI BIOS. However, there is no mouse support. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to change the fan control from normal to silent. I ended up having to do this with the eSF utility. I'd rather not run the utility but change it in the BIOS. Form rules over function here and the documentation shows a different BIOS so it's of no help. The website is of no help either and is very slow. A nice thing I discovered is that this motherboard is compatible with older Dell 19.5V 4.74A AC adapters that I have from some old dead laptops so I was able to reuse those and save money. These can easily be found all over making a cheap build even cheaper. This motherboard also appears to have an Intel-compatible CIR header. I have not tried it yet but I have a Intel CIR receiver on the way to see if it'll work. The only other place to find an Intel CIR header is on much more expensive Intel motherboards. The included CD has some decent utilities and all the usual bloatware. It will try to install some even if you think you are just installing the drivers so beware. The eSF utility is worth installing for fan control. The custom setting works well for keeping the PC quiet. It works very well for fine-grained control. One issue I've been having is if our card reader is plugged into the USB3 port, boot hangs until it's unplugged. This might be due to a BIOS setting -- perhaps it's trying to boot from USB and hanging. I need to check this. Overall though, I will buy this motherboard again for mini-ITX builds especially given the price point. It can fit in the smallest of cases and without the need for any cables. It's a very good value especially considering the on-board DC power supply and the ability to use a laptop adapter that's very inexpensive and easy to find -- maybe even for free. It has its quirks but they can be lived with. The one I'd like to solve the most though is the BIOS fan control selection.

Pros: This is a mini-ITX board will fit SFF PC cases. It is really a nice compact board that used laptop SODIMM cards and a laptop power supply. I paired this with a Celeron Ivy Bridge G610 (22nm) and it runs cool as a cucumber will decoding 1080p video with no problems. I had a 60GB OCZ Vertex4 SSD kicking around and put the build together with Win7 Ultimate and off to the races. This is one kickin' system for the price of this MB and the processor since I already had the drive and the memory. It runs nearly silent and cool as well. With the heatsink and fan included with the G610 it doesn't get hotter than 45C while decoding 1080p

Cons: The documentation leaves something to be desired. Things to note: - You'll need a 19V laptop power supply that is 90W or so. I had a Dell laptop supply kicking around and it did the trick. - Check out the socket 1155 pins before you inser the CPU. The first MB I got form the Egg was damaged but the fine folks there RMA'ed it and got me a new one. Awesome as always! Thanks Yvette in Customer Service! You guys are the best!

Overall Review: There is no reason to get anything more powerful if you are looking to build yourself a nice and nearly silent HTPC on the cheap. The Intel NUC might be a good choice but the need for a PCIe SSD and adding memory to their Celeron NUC would push it way over $200. I did this build for under $200.

Pros: SMALL Low Power Shipped with tiny wireless card (but no antenna) Good price

Cons: Would not install Windows from external DVD drive (had to create an install USB using Microsoft utility)

Overall Review: The inability to install Windows 7 Ultimate N from an external hard drive was a minor inconvenience. I am not using all the features on the motherboard because it is only for an HTPC and I am using HDMI for video and audio. However, when combined with an i3-3220T (35W Ivy Bridge low power i3) and the stock fan, the processor runs at 40-50C under normal load (playing video ripped from BluRay over wireless). I built a custom case to attach to the back of my LED TV in the living room, so the small footprint with the low power processor is going to allow for a completely passive system. However, with the stock cooler, it makes virtually no noise (with an SSD of course, I can't even hear the fan when I am right next to it).

Pros: all of the many connections

Cons: none

Pros: This is a great board. It is one of the few thin mini-ITX boards available. I really like the fact that it has a CIR header that can control the MCE functions and wake from S5. ECS seems committed to this form factor.

Cons: None

Pros: Been using this for my mail server for a couple month now. It a great board. Very stable, the server is up a few weeks at a time. It makes such an affordable and powerful platform for linux servers. Just buy a dell laptop power brick, like one of the other commentors said, a cheap Ivy Bridge-class CPU, say Pentium G2030, and a couple sticks of RAM, you have yourself a virtual machine power house.

Cons: NONE

Pros: Good small motherboard for HTPC installation into a thin mini-itx case. I used the Lian Li PC-Q05b. Installation was a breeze.

Cons: LAN randomly disconnects and randomly the LAN peripheral is not discovered in devices. Called tech support and they were unhelpful. First he said try new drivers, which is a complete cop out, but I did so and tried many new drivers. All have the same issue. Its a motherboard specific problem. After exhausing the drivers issue, ECS tech support stopped responding to me. Another issue is with the HDMI in. I can not for the life of me get this to work. Nothing is detected when sending signal to the HDMI in. Tech support was equally helpful as with the LAN issue, saying 'well that port is meant to be for AIO pc's and probably wont work for manually connecting other sources and we're not even sure if that works with XP' That's great ECS, then don't say the motherboard is compatible with XP. Another i

Overall Review: I'm dissatisfied but my options are few; completly take the computer apart and wait for a new motherboard to RMA or continue waiting on non-existant ECS support. If you don't need LAN and don't need HDMI in port, then this MOBO might be for you. If you want basic lan capability and as-advertised HDMI in; look elsewhere.