14 DAY TRIAL // Just after a few others motherboards makers showcased their solutions based on Intel's H61 Express chipset, it's now time for Gigabyte to do the same as the company has just introduced the H61M-USB3-B3 motherboard that is compatible with Sandy Bridge LGA 1155 processors.
Since this is an entry level offering, the motherboard doesn't packs so many features as its more expensive siblings, but users will still get USB 3.0 support as well as Gigabyte's own Ultra Durable II design.
This means that the motherboard uses only solid state capacitors, that are supposed to have a longer operating life.
In addition, the board features four phase CPU power, two DIMM sockets, that can support up to 16GB of DDR3 memory, and four SATA 3Gbps ports.
Graphics wise, users can opt for the Sandy Bridge built-in graphics or can add a dedicated GPU thanks to the PCI Express x16 slot.
This is also accompanied by a PCI-E x1 slot as well as by two regular PCI slots, quite an impressive list for a micro-ATX board.
Moving to the board's I/O panel, we get all the basic ports and connectors that one would expect from such a motherboard, including DVI and VGA video outputs, four USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a pair of PS/2 ports and 5.1-channel audio.
Sadly, an HDMI output didn't make it to the list, so users interested in building an HTPC system are forced to look elsewhere.
The H61 chipset is destined to be used in budget Sandy Bridge systems and should be a great choice for users who will buy cheaper Pentium CPUs, which are expected to launch sometime later this year.
Until now, apart from Gigabyte, only Biostar, ECS and MSI have showcased solutions based on the LGA 1155 H61 chipset.