Elitegoup's new GLKD-HTI motherboard is of a pretty niche sort. It's basically useless to the average PC gamer, but to those with very particular custom PC build needs, it could be just the ticket.
This incy-wincy motherboard doesn't really fit into a specified form factor category, coming in at an irregular 170 x 85mm (6.7 x 3.3in)—roughly half the size of a Mini-ITX mobo (via Chiphell). It'll still fit into your average Mid tower case, but it might look a bit goofy with all that wasted space around it. A custom case is probably the best pairing here, the whole point is to go compact, right?.
Besides, as we're looking at a mobo based around Intel's Gemini Lake SoC, you'll be limited to dual or quad core processors rocking the Goldmont Plus Atom cores, and there's no way to strap an Nvidia RTX 3080 to it either. In other words, you're not exactly going to be banging out a Cyberpunk 2077 session with this thing in your machine.
Still, the ECS GLKD-HTI comes with some fairly good features considering its size. It supports HDMI 1.4a at a max resolution of 1920x1200, and up to 8GB of DDR4-2133 memory. It features sockets for a 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA based HDDor SSD, and has space for a single M.2-2280 drive.
It's also got a good range of the standard connection greebles: a Realtek 8111H GbE port, an M.2 for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, as well as 4 USB 3.0 ports and 2 Realtek ALC662 audio ports.
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Oh, and it comes complete with fancy "Durathon technology" which basically means an extra-sure reliability promise from ECS. Not to mention it has "EDS Protection" to help prevent damage from electrical surges. So if you're planning an out-of-the-ordinary sized build, or some custom set-top box, ECS is one to watch.
The market for these kinds of custom mobos is still pretty slim, but considering the recent boom in tech, perhaps we'll see a lot more custom form factor PC gear surfacing in the near future. Here's hoping.
