Gigabyte Debuts AMD Fusion Mini-ITX Mainboard

Wednesday GIGABYTE announced its first AMD Fusion Mini-ITX form factor HTPC motherboard, the GA-E350N-USB3. The company is currently showcasing the mainboard this week during CES 2011 in Las Vegas.

Driving behind the Fusion wheel is AMD's E-350 dual-core processor, Radeon HD 6310 graphics core and Hudson-M1 FCH chipset. The new board also boasts an SATA 6 Gbps interface, an HDMI interface and hi-def 7.1 surround sound audio with S/PDIF out support. It also provides GIGABYTE's On/Off Charge technology for "quick and convenient" charging iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch devices, GIGABYTE's 3x USB Power Boost, and USB 3.0 ports from an onboard Renasas (NEC) controller.

"We’re excited about the GA-E350N-USB3 motherboard because it’s the first all-in-one Mini-ITX board with DX11 capabilities, and we expect it to go a long way towards bridging the gap between discrete and integrated graphics performance," said Tim Handley, Deputy Director of Motherboard Marketing at GIGABYTE Technology Co. Ltd. "With its specially designed low profile fansink and multitude of hi-def, high-speed connectors, we expect this little power house to be popular amongst HTPC system integrators, DIY enthusiasts and case modders."

GIGABYTE said that the GA-E350N-USB3 was built to withstand the pressures of an "always on" device in terms of temperature and overall energy consumption by using GIGABYTE's Ultra Durable 3 Classic design. This layout utilizes 2x the amount of copper of a traditional mainboard PCB, allowing for lower temperatures and better power efficiency than other mainboard designs. The Ga-E350N-USB3 is also equipped with ultra durable all solid Japanese capacitors as well as GIGABYTE's DualBIOS technology-- the latter provides a backup BIOS chip in case the main BIOS gets damaged or somehow becomes corrupted (cough).

Other bells and whistles included with GIGABYTE's new mainboard includes support for DDR3 1333(OC)/1066 MHz memory modules (2 slots), a redesigned EasyTune 6 for managing and monitoring hardware resources, HDMI 1.3 certification, WHQL certification, support for ErP 6 and more.

For more information, check out the product page here. Pricing and availability was not provided.