14 DAY TRIAL // At the upcoming Computex 2011 fair, Gigabyte plans to unveil a wide series of new motherboards and one of the models that will be on display is the mSATA equipped Z68P-DS3 which has been designed as a low cost Rapid Storage-enabled solution.
The motherboard is based on Intel's Z58 chipset and is compatible with all the second-generation Core processors that use the LGA 1155 socket.
Most probably, consumers who opt for the Z68P-DS3 will pair it with one of Intel's low cost Core i3 or Pentium CPUs as the board features a pretty basic set of features.
The only exception is the mini-SATA slot which was installed to house a 20GB 311-series (formerly known as Larson Creek) mSATA solid state drive for Intel's Smart Response SSD caching technology.
Other features include two PCI Express x16 slots, a pair of PCI-E x1 slots and two legacy PCI slots, which are driven by an ITE controller.
Of the two PCI Express x16 slots, only the first one has 16 PCI-E lanes routed to it, while the second one is limited at x4 speeds.
The storage configuration is also pretty basic as it features two 6Gbps SATA connectors and four SATA 3Gbps ports, all powered by the Intel Z68 chipset.
Moving to the back of the board, we won't find anything more than the most basic of connectivity options and users don't get any USB 3.0 or eSATA ports. The most advanced features that Gigabyte has included here are an HDMI port and a digital S/PDIF output.
Since the Z68P-DS3 is a low-cost motherboard, Gigabyte has also dropped the Ultra Durable 3 design that is featured in most of its current solutions and instead went with the older UD2 technology.
The Gigabyte Z68P-DS3 is expected to make its appearance at the Computex 2011 fair and it will most probably be one of the cheapest Z68 motherboards to be present there. (via VR-Zone)
