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Compact microATX motherboards are all well and good, but they’re no substitute for a full-size ATX motherboard if you need the flexibility of lots of expansion slots. Gigabyte’s H55-UD3H has plenty – four PCI slots and one PCI Express x1 slot. This is more than many other motherboards we’ve seen. It unlikely you’ll need to add any USB PCI cards, as there are eight USB ports and four headers built-in. There are six SATA ports for connecting internal storage devices. There’s no RAID support though for configuring multiple hard disks for increased performance or data redundancy. This is a little disappointing in a full-size ATX motherboard at this price, although you could opt for software RAID using certain versions of Windows 7. There’s little point in overclocking RAM, but if you feel the need to do so, the H55-UD3H supports boosting DDR3 memory to PC3-17600 speeds if your RAM can handle it. Another largely unnecessary but supported upgrade option is CrossFireX. Two ATI graphics cards can be plugged in, theoretically giving better 3D performance over a single card. Generally, the performance gains aren’t worth the expense though, especially since fitting two graphics cards can obstruct the other expansion card slots. Otherwise, the ports and slots are all widely spaced out, so there’s little chance of one component obstructing another.
If you need its plentiful expansion slots, then the H55-UD3H is worth the £20 premium over less flexible microATX motherboards. However, if you care about the number of expansion slots, then you will probably also RAID and the latest storage connectors such as USB3 and SATA III which aren’t present here. For those, look to Asus’ P7H57D-V Evo. It may cost £50 more, but is even more flexible.
