Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer Asustek has just unveiled its new M3N-H/HDMI model, with Nvidia's Geforce 8300 integrated graphics. This is the first board on the market to come with the new GeForce 8300 graphics core, that delivers superior 3D performance as compared to the older Geforce 8200 graphics core.

According to the first evaluations, the extra performance comes at a price: the graphics core is reportedly running a little over the average temperature specifications. Asus decided to go with a large, passive cooler, with no visible heatpipes for the cooling solution.

The rear panel offers a plethora of connectors, including a PS/2 port for the keyboard, six USB 2.0 ports, a HDMI connector, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a FireWire port and 7.1-channel analog audio jacks with an additional coaxial S/PDIF out.

The expansion slots are not as varied as we would have expected: a single x16 PCI-Express slot, two x1 PCI-Express slots and three PCI slots. Also, the motherboard gives users access to some additional six USB ports that can be mounted on the case's front panel, or on a fully-fledged card reader. An extra FireWire port is also available.

Additionally, there are some other six SATA connectors. However, the most bizarre addition to the motherboard is a centrally-placed connector that is used as a bypass for the rear bracket with an attached D-sub interface.

Despite the fact that the manufacturer bundles a HDMI to DVI adapter with the motherboard, in order to fully enjoy the built-in Hybrid SLI technology, you need to get an HDMI to DVI cable or a monitor that natively supports the HDMI standard.

The motherboard is exclusively built using highest-quality components, such as multiple-layer PCB and solid, aluminum capacitors manufactured in Japan. The solid capacitors do not leak their dielectric content when overheating or when exposed to high drops/increases in the supplied power.