Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 Motherboard
On-Board Peripherals
Contents
The Intel Z77 chipset is a single-chip solution, which is also known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip supports two SATA-600 ports and four SATA-300 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 10, and 5). Two of the SATA-300 ports and the SATA-600 ports are located at the motherboard’s edge and rotated 90°. One SATA-300 port uses a regular SATA connector and is located near the motherboard edge; a video card installed in the third PCI Express x16 slot (“PCIEX8”) may block it. The fourth SATA-300 port, routed to the motherboard rear panel, is available as an eSATA-300 port.
Figure 4: The three SATA-300 ports (black) and the two SATA-600 ports (white)
The Intel Z77 chipset supports 14 USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports. The Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 offers 10 USB 2.0 ports, four available on the motherboard rear panel and six available through three headers located on the motherboard. It also offers four USB 3.0 ports, two located on the motherboard rear panel and two available on a header located on the motherboard.
The Gigabyte G1.Sniper M3 doesn’t support FireWire ports.
This motherboard supports 5.1 audio format, which may seem like a drawback, since most motherboards in the same category support 7.1 audio. However, this motherboard uses a high-end audio codec, the Creative CA0132. Unfortunately, the precise specifications for this chip are not available to the public. The motherboard has a shield against electromagnetic interference around its audio section. See Figure 5.
Figure 5: Shield against electromagnetic interference
The motherboard has an optical SPDIF output and an amplified headphone output on the rear panel (the dark green jack).
The portrayed motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by the chipset and using an Intel WG82579V chip to make the physical layer interface.
In Figure 6, you can see the motherboard rear panel with four USB 2.0 ports, shared PS/2 connector for keyboard and mouse, VGA output, DVI-D output, DisplayPort output, HDMI output, eSATA-300 port, Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports, optical SPDIF output, and the analog audio jacks.
Figure 6: Motherboard rear panel
