We've seen it reported on a couple of Websites and it made us really quite excited when we saw the design of this board, as Intel has done a cracking job on its upcoming G45 based mini ITX motherboard. The board goes under the fairly unexciting name of DG45FC, which really doesn't say much.

But once you start looking into its features, you realize quite quickly that there's something different about this mini ITX board. First and most importantly, it has an LGA-775 socket, which means it accepts affordable desktop CPUs from Intel's Core 2 series of processors. We're sure there are some limitations as to what processor can go into this board, especially as it appears to have a simple three-phase PWM design.

However, we're not really worried about this, as Intel has done just about everything right with this board. Around the back you'll find a DVI and HDMI port, six USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, eSATA and 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out. Due to the large CPU socket, the board itself is quite cramped and the chipset also features a rather hefty passive heatsink, but there's still room for a pair of DDR2 memory slots, four SATA connectors, a x1 PCIe slot for add-on cards and, finally, two USB headers for a further four USB 2.0 ports.

Hopefully, this board will be affordable enough, as it would make a very interesting platform for a wide range of DIY wet dreams for many enthusiasts. Even with a measly dual-core Celeron this could work out to be a decent HTPC setup thanks to Intel's new GMA X4500HD graphcis core, which should be powerful enough to offload the CPU when it comes to HD video playback. It could also work out as a nice high-end home/media server and it could most likely be used for a wide range of other things we haven't even had time to think about.

Hexus has a couple of shots of the board here and they're claiming that it should be available in time for Computex in early June.