so I'm going to be unboxing a new motherboard from Gigabyte this is an h55
board you can tell from the name it is h55 that's a chipset M which is microatx
and normally they have UD something something something after here and this
is or S something this is not that they are just calling this out what's special
about this board is that it is usb3 so
you can see up here it is also USB 3.0
that is like huge it's like a quarter of the front of the block so it has a three-year warranty and it includes as
you may or may not have guessed USB 3.0 10x super speed also USB power 3x now
this is a cool feature because this gives you three times the power that is
speced for USB 3.0 through each Port so if you're running a hub you can actually
run three full power USB devices without using an external adapter very cool it
features Ultra durable 3 which is normally a huge icon like or logo like
this and isn't today smart 6 it supports Core i5 core I3 it supports core i7 LGA
1156 chips too but I think part of the reason they're not calling that out is
because the core i7 chips do not have Onboard video unlike the core i3s and
the core i5 dual cores so you won't actually be able to take advantage of
all of the features of this board and you'd probably be better off with a p-55
board if you are buying an i7 so here's our users manual which includes a
motherboard utility and Driver DVD don't use this download the latest off the
Gigabyte website all right then we've got a Dolby Home Theater sticker thank
you all right then we've got our smart 6 users manual
a bunch of different languages cool oh oh I dropped it it's no good okay
multilingual installation guide book so that'll show you how to install your CPU how to install RAM how to install the
front panel connectors bunch of different languages thanks so much IO
Shield so you can already see compared to the other h505 boards from Gigabyte
I've had a look at there are a few more extras in the Box although not much
you've got two SATA cables one of them is straight and one is right angle and
one IDE cable for crying out loud give us more SATA cables don't bother giving
us an IDE cable anymore that said this could be useful for a lot
of people I you know what I take that back because a lot of people running
sort of like a microatx more value solution are probably reusing their old
DVD drive which is probably IDE so I
totally take that back I can definitely see the justification okay fine I was
wrong Gigabyte was right all right let's have a look at the board itself so we'll
start with the general features first of all we have two PCI Express 16x
connectors this one is uh 16x true because you can see all the little
connectors inside this one is an 8X
connector so you see all the little slots here but it's only wired electrically for 4X so even if this
board does support Crossfire which I'm not sure if it does I I can't actually
tell it doesn't even really matter you wouldn't want to use this board for optimal Crossfire performance because
this is a PCIe 4X slot you're not going to get the best performance out of it
your chipsets down here you got a couple of USB oh sorry three USB 2.0 headers
right here and then you've got a wide variety of SATA slots
so these are all SATA 2 and I believe
these are SATA 2 as well yes they are so these are off the Gigabyte SATA 2 chip
which is also powering your IDE port and then these are off of the Intel chipset
okay here's your front panel connectors like all p55 and h55 Boards you've got
support for dual Channel DDR3 here's your 24 pin power connector located in
exactly its most convenient place along the right handed of the board here
here's your LGA 1156 socket now something to note about this is that it
does support all LGA 1156 CPUs core i3s
Core i5 dual cores Core i5 quad cores and core i7s but you will not be able to
take advantage of the onboard Graphics unless you're using a core I3 or a core
i5 dual core which has onboard graphics on the CPU because this chipset does not
have any onboard Graphics built into it so be cognizant of that okay here's all
of our power delivery circuitry up here I wouldn't have minded seeing some cooling on it but what are you going to
do it's a pretty value oriented board and quite honestly the kinds of chips
you should be putting in a board like this do not suck a lot of power you're
not going to make them all that hot up here is our eight pin power uh excuse me
CPU power connector so that will deliver power to your CPU in its ideal location
at the top left of the board and then let's have a look at the con activity we
have at the back so first of all we have one of those great mouse keyboard PS2
combo ports I love these then we got a couple USB ports we have every Onboard
video solution you could possibly want DVI VGA DisplayPort and
HDMI we have an optical audio out we
have a couple more USB 2.0 ports we've got a fire wire Port an e SATA port and
then we have two USB 3.0 ports so only
six USB ports on the back but two of them are USB 3.0 so and they're all 3x
power so you could I mean you could be running a hub off each one of these
without even worrying about overpower power ing them so I mean you've got a lot of expansion options really gigabit
Ethernet and 7.1 audio thank you for checking out my unboxing