New H57-Based Gigabyte Motherboard Boasts USB 3.0

With the Consumer Electronics Show just a couple of weeks ahead of us, we are seeing a surge of new products making their way on the Internet. Such is the case with an upcoming lineup of new motherboards, from Taiwanese manufacturer, Gigabyte. A number of the company's new Intel-based motherboards have recently been leaked on the Internet with prospects of them being made available sometime in the first quarter of next year. On that note, details of the new Gigabyte motherboard have just been made available online, with claims of an USB 3.0 connectivity option.

Dubbed GA-H57M-USB3, the new motherboard will be featured with Intel's upcoming H57 chipset, which will enable support for the chip maker's next-generation of LGA 1156-compatible processors. The new board will sport a micro ATX form factor and will boast four DDR3 memory slots, two PCI-Express x16 slots with CrossFireX support and no less than seven SATA 3.0 Gbps ports.

Additional specifications include the integration of two USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, DualBIOS, 7.1 channel audio and a number of video outputs, including D-Sub, DVI and HDMI. The micro ATX board is designed on a 2oz copper PCB and is expected to become available sometime late this month or in early January, likely after the CES 2010 event. Pricing should make it a choice for users looking for a mainstream board that supports the latest Intel processors and the upcoming Intel CPUs with integrated graphics.

USB 3.0-enabled boards will slowly make their way on the market, but with only a limited number of devices, currently using the new interface, you won't find USB 3.0 on the majority of the newly-released motherboards. Still, a board like this one will make for an excellent future-proof media system, thanks to its small form factor and support for the latest hardware technologies.