Sort by:
Title (
)
Date (
)
Rating (
)
Popularity (
)
Sites currently sorted by: Title (A to Z)
)
Date (
)
Rating (
)
Popularity (
) Sites currently sorted by: Title (A to Z)
The inexpensive Gigabyte H55M-UD2H may become a good foundation for a home theater or just for a simple home PC. This compact motherboard has reasonable layout and offers the complete basic functionality supplemented with FireWire and eSATA. Its key feature, however, is the full-fledged implementation of Intel HD Graphics, HDMI and DisplayPort included.
Mini-ITX motherboards are typically designed for low power consumption and cherished for their compact form factor. So what happens when you replace a low powered system with an Intel H55?
Not all that long ago VIA introduced a new form factor called Mini-ITX. It was a great idea; a small yet powerful board layout that allowed a decent amount of flexibility. Unfortunately VIA did not have the marketing muscle to get wide acceptance and the idea fell into obscurity. It was not until Intel launched the Atom CPU that we saw a return of the Mini-ITX. The form factor pioneered by VIA was ideal for the small Intel CPUs. We started to see products based on the Atom using the Mini-ITX and Mini-DTX form factors.
Today we are taking a look at the H55N-USB3, a mini-ITX socket 1156 motherboard from Gigabyte based on the Intel H55 chipset, allowing you to build a mainstream computer in an SFF (Small Form Factor) case. Let's check it out.
Gigabyte is boasting a full featured motherboard in roughly half the size. I find it hard to believe that they included that much in a board this small. Lets take a look at the H55N-USB3 and see if it really is full featured without any compromises.
After our short time with the H55N-USB3, we felt that we might be missing out on something. We knew from the testing that GIGABYTE had a great little board (literally), but we wanted to know if you could really push the H55N-USB3.
A few months ago when new chipsets were launching, I'd always go to the effort to try and hunt down some mITX versions of boards, because like I've said before, the mITX format actually has some serious power to offer people and can be paired with other high end components you'd normally see in standard ATX boards.
The majority of users that select an H67-equipped board do so to take advantage of Intel HD graphics built into Sandy Bridge processors and thus, won't be using a high-end graphics card or really any other add-in cards. Builds where a Micro ATX board would be suitable include home theater PCs and small form factor builds where a small footprint is needed. A quick check at Newegg revealed only three full size ATX H67 boards, one of them being the board we are taking a look at today, the Gigabyte GA-H67A-UD3H.
Today we have one of the B3 revision motherboards on our test bench, a mini-ITX model from Gigabyte, which packs a whole load of features into a tiny PCB. We'll be putting that model through its paces, along with the low energy 2100/2500T CPUs, in a selection of synthetic and real world tests to find out how they perform with a mini-ITX Fusion system included as a performance baseline.
execution time : 0.075 sec