already has a couple of decent mini-ITX motherboards based on Ivy Bridge silicon, but the GA-C1037UN might be the most interesting one.

Unlike most fully integrated ITX boards, it is passively cooled. Most similar boards, based on ULV Celerons, Atoms and AMD’s E-series APUs, tend to be actively cooled and many feature very cheap fans on their coolers. Gigabyte’s new board just has a couple of huge aluminium heatsinks on the CPU and chipset. This makes it ideal for HTPCs and “quiet freaks”.

It has a couple of other things going for it, too. It packs a dual-core Celeron 1037U clocked at 1.8GHz, two DDR3 slots, a PCI slot, VGA and HDMI video outs, eSATA and a bunch of legacy connectors that might come in handy in an office setting. Its biggest downside is that it doesn’t have any USB 3.0 ports.

Early listings put the price at €69 to €75 depending on region (VAT), which sounds fair.