Thread: Gigabyte H55M-UD2H Motherboard

With the launch of the new 32 nm Intel Core is and Core i3 CPUs, new Intel 5 series motherboards have already made their way to the shelves. Built around the Intel H55 chipset, the Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H is the first of its kind that we got our hands on. By looking at the rear panel you can tell that this board sports a rich feature set. The most striking feature is the presence of four video outputs-D-sub, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. The output from the CPU's on-package graphics processor is routed to these outputs. Along with these are six USB ports, an eSATA port, 8-channel audio output, Gigabit Ethernet and a FireWire port. As a feature of the H55 chipset, the H55-UD2H supports up to 16 GB of DDR3 memory, five SATA ports and 12 USB ports. Headers for six USB ports are lined up at the bottom of the board along with a header for a FireWire port drjven by a discrete controller. The on-chip graphics (Intel HD Graphics) are suitable for high definition video playback and casual gaming, but if you want a serious gaming PC, you can throW in a graphics card.



The board boasts CrossFire support but the second PCle x16 slot runs at a crippled x4 speed. Also you'll be blocking a PCI slot and a bunch of headers at the base if you configure two dual- slot graphics cards in CrossFire-we recommend a single card instead. The suffix UD2H means that this board is built using high-quality components and comes with Gigabyte'S Dynamic Energy Saver 2 and Smart 6 tools for optimizing power consumption, boosting performance, overclocking and managing the BIOS. The capacitors are all-solid and the layout is very good except for the quirky placement of the components around the PCle x16 slots due to the board's micro-ATX form factor.