Gigabyte C847N Motherboard

On Board Peripherals

The Intel NM70 chipset is a single-chip solution, which is known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip has three SATA-300 ports and only one SATA-600 port, with no RAID support. The GA-C847N is equipped with those four ports, but one of the SATA-300 ports is located at the rear panel of the motherboard, as an eSATA port.

Figure 4: The SATA ports

The portrayed motherboard also has one ATA-133 port, controlled by a JMicron JMB368 chip, supporting up to two parallel ATA devices. We couldn’t determine the point of having an ATA-133 connector nowadays.

The NM70 chipset supports eight USB 2.0 ports. The GA-C847N offers all those ports, four located on the rear panel and four available through two headers located on the motherboard. There are no USB 3.0 ports, which is a big drawback. There are no FireWire ports, either.

This motherboard supports 7.1 audio format using a Realtek ALC887 codec. This codec has the same specifications as the Realtek ALC892, except that the ALC892 has two extra channels for audio streaming. The main specifications of this codec include 97 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 90 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, and up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs, with 24-bit resolution. These specs are good for the mainstream user, but if you are looking into working professionally with audio editing, you should look for a motherboard that provides an SNR of at least 97 dB for the analog inputs.

The analog outputs are shared, meaning that if you want to use a 5.1 analog speaker set (7.1 audio is only available if you install a front panel HD audio module), you will have to use the “Line In” and “Mic In” jacks, and they won’t be available for their original uses. The motherboard doesn’t have optical or coaxial SPDIF outputs. Those drawbacks disqualify the Gigabyte C847N for HTPC applications.

The portrayed motherboard has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, controlled by two Realtek 8111F chips. This could be interesting in small server, NAS, or firewall applications.

The Gigabyte C847N has two legacy serial ports, one available at the rear panel of the motherboard, and one available through a header on the motherboard. There is also a parallel port available through a header on the motherboard, but the adapters to use these headers don’t come with the motherboard.

In Figure 5, you can see the rear panel of the motherboard with PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse, VGA output, a legacy serial port, an eSATA port, an HDMI output, four USB 2.0 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and the analog audio jacks.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel