Gigabyte has entered the market for thin mini-ITX motherboards with its new H77TN and B75TN motherboards. Gigabyte's new mini-ITX motherboards are 43 percent thinner than traditional mini-ITX motherboards since they have a thickness of just 2.5 cm. Of course, in laptop world this might be rather thick, but for a fully featured no-compromise desktop board that's rather thin.
The tricks are simple: use thin ports and cut out bulky legacy ports such as VGA and remove stacked ports, but place all side by side. The new H77 and B75 boards support almost all Sandy and Ivy Bridge CPU's that fit in socket 1155, with a max TDP of 77 W.
While the PCIe X4 slot is a step down from PCIe x16, the board does come with mSATA slot and mini-PCIe expansion slots, allowing users to install more than one PCIe device on a mini-ITX board.
Some other tricks include the use of the smaller SODIMMs rather than the larger space consuming DIMMs, allowing manufacturers to relocate the CPU socket and memory in order to create space for other onboard features.
Do note though, these boards are not necessarily intended for use in desktops, but rather all-in-one PCs. That said, there's nothing stopping manufacturers or DIY users from taking these boards and creating ultra slim desktop systems.
