Gigabyte H55M-USB3 H55 Core i3 LGA1156 mATX Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2010-05-08
·
1,099 words · ~5 min read
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so I'm going to be unboxing a new motherboard from Gigabyte this is an h55
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board you can tell from the name it is h55 that's a chipset M which is microatx
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and normally they have UD something something something after here and this
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is or S something this is not that they are just calling this out what's special
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about this board is that it is usb3 so
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you can see up here it is also USB 3.0
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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
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you may or may not have guessed USB 3.0 10x super speed also USB power 3x now
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this is a cool feature because this gives you three times the power that is
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speced for USB 3.0 through each Port so if you're running a hub you can actually
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run three full power USB devices without using an external adapter very cool it
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features Ultra durable 3 which is normally a huge icon like or logo like
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this and isn't today smart 6 it supports Core i5 core I3 it supports core i7 LGA
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1156 chips too but I think part of the reason they're not calling that out is
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because the core i7 chips do not have Onboard video unlike the core i3s and
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the core i5 dual cores so you won't actually be able to take advantage of
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all of the features of this board and you'd probably be better off with a p-55
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board if you are buying an i7 so here's our users manual which includes a
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motherboard utility and Driver DVD don't use this download the latest off the
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Gigabyte website all right then we've got a Dolby Home Theater sticker thank
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you all right then we've got our smart 6 users manual
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a bunch of different languages cool oh oh I dropped it it's no good okay
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multilingual installation guide book so that'll show you how to install your CPU how to install RAM how to install the
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front panel connectors bunch of different languages thanks so much IO
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Shield so you can already see compared to the other h505 boards from Gigabyte
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I've had a look at there are a few more extras in the Box although not much
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you've got two SATA cables one of them is straight and one is right angle and
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one IDE cable for crying out loud give us more SATA cables don't bother giving
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us an IDE cable anymore that said this could be useful for a lot
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of people I you know what I take that back because a lot of people running
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sort of like a microatx more value solution are probably reusing their old
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DVD drive which is probably IDE so I
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totally take that back I can definitely see the justification okay fine I was
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wrong Gigabyte was right all right let's have a look at the board itself so we'll
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start with the general features first of all we have two PCI Express 16x
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connectors this one is uh 16x true because you can see all the little
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connectors inside this one is an 8X
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connector so you see all the little slots here but it's only wired electrically for 4X so even if this
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board does support Crossfire which I'm not sure if it does I I can't actually
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tell it doesn't even really matter you wouldn't want to use this board for optimal Crossfire performance because
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this is a PCIe 4X slot you're not going to get the best performance out of it
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your chipsets down here you got a couple of USB oh sorry three USB 2.0 headers
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right here and then you've got a wide variety of SATA slots
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so these are all SATA 2 and I believe
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these are SATA 2 as well yes they are so these are off the Gigabyte SATA 2 chip
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which is also powering your IDE port and then these are off of the Intel chipset
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okay here's your front panel connectors like all p55 and h55 Boards you've got
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support for dual Channel DDR3 here's your 24 pin power connector located in
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exactly its most convenient place along the right handed of the board here
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here's your LGA 1156 socket now something to note about this is that it
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does support all LGA 1156 CPUs core i3s
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Core i5 dual cores Core i5 quad cores and core i7s but you will not be able to
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take advantage of the onboard Graphics unless you're using a core I3 or a core
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i5 dual core which has onboard graphics on the CPU because this chipset does not
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have any onboard Graphics built into it so be cognizant of that okay here's all
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of our power delivery circuitry up here I wouldn't have minded seeing some cooling on it but what are you going to
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do it's a pretty value oriented board and quite honestly the kinds of chips
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you should be putting in a board like this do not suck a lot of power you're
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not going to make them all that hot up here is our eight pin power uh excuse me
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CPU power connector so that will deliver power to your CPU in its ideal location
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at the top left of the board and then let's have a look at the con activity we
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have at the back so first of all we have one of those great mouse keyboard PS2
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combo ports I love these then we got a couple USB ports we have every Onboard
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video solution you could possibly want DVI VGA DisplayPort and
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HDMI we have an optical audio out we
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have a couple more USB 2.0 ports we've got a fire wire Port an e SATA port and
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then we have two USB 3.0 ports so only
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six USB ports on the back but two of them are USB 3.0 so and they're all 3x
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power so you could I mean you could be running a hub off each one of these
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without even worrying about overpower power ing them so I mean you've got a lot of expansion options really gigabit
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Ethernet and 7.1 audio thank you for checking out my unboxing