JETWAY MIGHT NOT be the most popular motherboard brand out there, but the company does have some rather unusual solutions from time to time and now the company has unveiled a pair of Intel H61 chipset motherboards ahead of the chipset launch. It’s possible that the H61 chipset will launch earlier than anticipated, although it’s not something we’ve heard so far.
The two board models are the MIH61M-D and MIH61-DU3 and the two boards are variations on the same PCB. In fact, the only difference between the two that we could spot is the inclusion of a single port ASMedia USB 3.0 host controller that has as yet to appear on the ASMedia website and Jetway has conveniently not included the model number in its specifications. Jetway is using the same controller on its MIH67M-HU3 board as well, which we saw a couple of weeks ago and that’s where we noticed the unannounced ASMedia controller.
As the H61 chipset is Intel’s budget solution for the LGA-1155 platform it doesn’t come with a lot of features. For starters it’s limited to only two DIMM slots and four SATA 3Gbps ports, although the latter at least has native AHCI support, but lacks RAID. Both boards are tiny at 180x245mm and as such you only get a single x16 PCI Express slot and two x1 PCI Express slots. The boards have a very basic PWM design which according to Jetway’s specifications is a 3+1+1 implementation.
Around the back you’ll find a PS/2 port, four USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port in the case of the MIH61-UD3, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a DVI and D-sub connector and a mere three audio jacks alongside a coaxial S/PDIF out. Not exactly loaded with features, but most likely good enough for budget systems and the board also sports two USB 2.0 pin headers for an additional four front USB 2.0 ports and a serial port header.
It’s hard to get excited about motherboards such as this, but if the price point is right, we can see both models finding their way into several entry level systems. However, for that to happen we’ll have to wait for Intel to launch its Pentium branded Sandy Bridge processors, as the current crop of CPUs are unlikely to find their home in an H61 board.S|A
Lars-Göran Nilsson
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