Computex 2014: ECS’ Z97I-Drone mini-ITX motherboard and UHD/4K60 AIO
by Ian Cutress on June 6, 2014 11:59 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ECS
- AIO
- 4K
- UHD
- Computex 2014
Cruising by the ECS booth this year yielded a couple of elements I was not expecting. We have visited ECS booths in years gone by, but this time they are coming to market with a mini-ITX motherboard update. The Z97I-Drone motherboard is designed to be a lower cost Z97-series motherboard, with five SATA ports and an M.2 slot for WiFi/Bluetooth only. I’ll be honest – I have not seen many WiFi modules based on the M.2 standard. There is also an Intel I218-V NIC and six USB 3.0 ports.
Moving around the booth I came across a 4K all-in-one. I could not remember if I had seen a 4K AIO before without MST, but I enquired into the refresh rate, expecting it to be 30 Hz. To my surprise, it was 60 Hz. So this is a 24-inch, 4K, 60 Hz display, which I also found out was running an Intel i7-4790S CPU, a 3.2 GHz quad core model with hyperthreading. ECS is offering this as an OEM for anyone who wants to stick their name on it and sell it. I should have asked if the panel comes pre-calibrated, but it does come with space for two 2.5” drives or one 3.5” drive.
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ChadnSteff - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
Its ECS. Who cares? Oh btw, a tween from 1998 called and wants their lame phrases back ECS. No more lame product names.Computer Bottleneck - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
I don't like the product names (Gank, etc) either......but an affordable Z97 Mini-ITX with an Intel NIC is something I would like to have. Too bad they couldn't have fit an sixth SATA port in there though.JeffFlanagan - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
Five sata ports are still pretty good, though without expansion slots it would be too limited for my needs.Does anyone here have suggestions for a good MB and case for a media server with 8 sata drives? My Unraid server sometimes becomes unresponsive, and is doing poorly at preventing data loss, so I'm looking to build a 2nd server on a different OS.
DanNeely - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
5 ports on the board suggests that there is (or at least was planned to be) a version with an eSATA port; and that they only did 5 ports on board to minimize the differences between variants.extide - Friday, June 6, 2014 - link
"...and an M.2 slot for WiFi/Bluetooth only." -- What is preventing you from putting an M.2 SSD in there? Just the form factor (it's the smallest M.2 size and no SSD's in that size..?) or something else?I have never seen a M.2 wifi card either, but it seems like a logical idea, I mean the M.2 connector is smallerlower profile than the mPCIe connector, and obviously it provides PCIe (up to x4)