Introduction

I can't help myself - I've got to say it. I love the mITX platform. I know I say it every time I look at an mITX based motherboard, but it's just such a cool little form factor that's made so much cooler by the chipsets used on the boards these days.

The last mITX board we looked at carried the A75 based AMD chipset and it's the perfect chipset for this kind of platform, as it's awesome for those cheaper systems. The one before that used the H67 chipset and while a good chipset, it never got the attention that the P67 did, nor the new Z68.

Today, though, we look at the Z68M-ITX HT which as the name suggests, sports the Z68 chipset. This is no doubt one of the best chipsets around in the market thanks to its strong performance when teamed up with the current crop of LGA 1155 processors and the excellent price point boards carrying the said chipset come in at.

There's no point delaying anymore than we already have; we may as well get into the package to see what exactly ASRock is offering us. Once we've done that we'll take a closer look at the board itself before we get into the BIOS to see what's going on and see if there's any overclocking potential on offer from this tiny board.

Then the fun stuff begins and we get into the benchmarking side of things before we wrap everything up; but first, we must check out what's going on in the package.

The Package

The front and back of the box aren't anything new to us and give us the normal information. The front gives us the model number and a few logos while the back of the box does a good job of running down some of the major features that are on offer from the board.

For the most part when moving inside the package we don't see anything we're not really used to. We've got a manual, driver CD, 3.5mm AUX cable, two SATA ports along with an I/O back plate.

Of course, we said for the most part there's nothing we're not used to, but there is one thing that stands out and that's the inclusion of a media center remote and remote receiver. What I love is that ASRock have also given us the batteries; there's nothing more annoying than getting something home to find out that you need to go and buy batteries for it.

The addition of the Media Remote really lets us know where exactly the board is targeted, though, and no doubt it's for people who are looking for a small HTPC motherboard that has the potential to offer some excellent power. We'll find out if it sits in that group well and if it can be used for someone who just wants to build a small system that can put out some strong FPS.