Although we've been expecting Intel's new G45 and G43 chipsets to show up some time soon, we didn't expect Super Micro to be the first company to launch motherboards based on these new chipsets. The two models are labeled C2SEA and C2SEE, and although they use the same PCB, there are some differences between the two.

The C2SEA uses the G45 chipset and features HDMI output as well as a D-sub, two PS/2 ports, six rear USB 2.0 ports, with a further two for internal use and headers for four more ports, Gigabit Ethernet, optical S/PDIF out and 7.1-channel analog audio. The board also has headers for two FireWire ports and one serial port.

The slot layout is rather unusual on this board, as it has one x16 PCIe slot, a second x16 PCIe slot which is limited by a x4 interface, an x1 PCIe slot and two PCI slots. You can see that the board could have a pair of additional PCI slots, but these haven't been added. Finally, it also has six SATA ports and one IDE connector.

The C2SEE, on the other hand, lacks the HMDI port, FireWire and IDE connector, but instead has the two missing PCI slots. Super Micro has also removed two of the four memory slots on this board, which seems a bit strange.

We'd expect both boards to hit retail shortly, but we don't have a price for either board at this moment.

You can find the product page for the C2SEA here and the C2SEE here.