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Gigabyte H55-UD3H review

Gigabyte H55-UD3H motherboard
Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £93
inc VAT

If you need a LGA1156 motherboard with lots of expansion slots at a reasonable price, Gigabyte's H55-UD3H is a good choice.

Specifications

LGA1156, ATX, Intel H55 Express chipset, supports: Core i3, Core i5, Core i7

http://www.scan.co.uk

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.

Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor socket LGA1156
Form factor ATX
Size 305x210mm
Processor support Core i3, Core i5, Core i7
Processor external bus 133MHz (2.0GB/s Direct Media Interface)
Chipset north bridge Intel H55 Express
Chipset south bridge Intel H55 Express
Passively-cooled north bridge yes
Integrated graphics Yes
Supported memory type DDR3 800/1066/1333/2200
Maximum memory speed PC3-17600
Memory slots 4
Maximum memory 16GB
Dual-channel support yes

Buying Information

Price £93
Supplier http://www.scan.co.uk
Details www.gigabyte.com.tw

Internal Ports

Power connectors 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 4-pin ATX
PCI-E x16 slots 2
Dual graphics architecture CrossFireX
PCI-E x4 slots 0
PCI-E x1 slots 1
PCI slots 4
Fan headers 3
Floppy ports 1
IDE ports 1
Serial ATA ports 6
RAID chipset (max disks) none

Features

Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Sound (ports) Realtek ALC889 (6x analogue out, optical S/PDIF)
USB2 ports / headers 8/4
Firewire ports / headers 0/0
Legacy ports 1x PS/2
Other ports HDMI, DVI, VGA
Cables included 2x SATA, 1x IDE
Brackets included none
Software included Norton Internet Security 2009

Setup and Overclocking

Voltage adjustment CPU/RAM/Chipset
CPU clock max adjustment 600MHz

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