Can MicroATX Boards Do the Job?

Elitegroup G33T-M2

The first motherboard in this little roundup is the G33T-M2 by Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS). When we looked at the ECS website, we found this model promoted on the front page, described as being "designed for Ultra Slim Multimedia Systems". Great, that’s what we were looking for ! However, we did not find the board in the product portfolio.

Compared to the other two products, the G33T-M2 is a rather simple product that does not come with many on-board add-ons. Yet the motherboard layout is ready for more SATA ports and a Firewire controller. At least ECS did not save in the wrong places, as the board supports all important chipset features. These include an x16 PCI Express port for a later graphics card upgrade, an additional x1 PCI Express slot and two 32-bit PCI slots for expansion cards, four DDR2 DIMM sockets, and a connector for a system fan in addition to the CPU fan header. There are four Serial ATA/300 ports, because only the basic ICH9 Southbridge is used. ICH9DH or ICH9R supports six SATA ports, which the motherboard is prepared for.

ECS designed this board with additional components in mind, such as Firewire or more SATA ports, but focused on the essentials. Serial and parallel ports obviously were considered dispensable, which usually is the case for home PCs. The total lack of ATA/100 controllers, though being a step in the right direction, is more controversial, especially given that low-cost optical drives still utilize the classic UltraATA interface. In case of the G33T-M2 you’ll have to look for SATA drives ; knowing that there are as many as 12 USB 2.0 ports may leave you considering an external optical drive. The three-phase voltage regulators are strong enough to support all mainstream Intel processors, including the quad core Core 2 Quad Q6600 : we recommend against deploying 130 W Extreme Edition quad cores, though.

This motherboard is not an overclocker whatsoever. You may increase the system clock speed within the range of 200 and 510 MHz, but there are no options to adjust the processor or chipset voltage. You do get a feature to adjust the memory voltage, though, as the memory clock speed steps up as you increase the Front Side Bus speed.

We found that leaving out all the components that aren’t required for a solid but basic motherboard has a positive impact on energy requirements. While the motherboards by MSI and Gigabyte required a system idle power of 83 W and 88 W respectively, the ECS G33T-M2 had our multimeter displaying a maximum of 76 W with the Pentium Dual Core E2160 processor.

If you’re looking for a system with high energy efficiency, the ECS motherboard is a good choice. It also sports one serial port, which you don’t find with the other two products.

At less than 200 MHz base clock the ECS motherboard runs slightly underclocked.