Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

Intel H55 chipset is a single-chip solution. The basic features provided by this chipset include six SATA-300 ports (no RAID support), no support for parallel ATA (PATA) ports, 12 USB 2.0 ports supporting port disable, embedded Gigabit Ethernet MAC (Medium Access Control) and six x1 PCI Express lanes.

Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 provides a total of seven SATA-300 ports, five (blue connectors) controlled by the chipset and two (white connectors) controlled by a “Gigabyte SATA 2” chip, which is actually a relabeled JMicron JMB363 chip. The sixth SATA-300 port supported by the chipset was converted into an eSATA-300 port on the rear panel from the motherboard. The two SATA ports controlled by the JMicron chip support RAID (0, 1, 0+1 and JBOD).

The SATA connectors are positioned between the two x16 PCI Express slots and the installation of long video cards won’t block them (we tested).

Figure 4: SATA ports.

Even though Intel H55 chipset does not provide a parallel ATA port, Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 has one, controlled by the JMicron JMB363 (a.k.a. “Gigabyte SATA 2”) chip. This motherboard also comes with a floppy disk drive controller, feature not present on several H55-based motherboards.

From the 12 USB 2.0 supported by the chipset, this motherboard has 10, four soldered on the rear panel and six available through three motherboard headers (the manual says this board has 12 USB 2.0 ports but this information is not correct).

The main feature of this motherboard is, of course, its two USB 3.0 ports, which are controlled by a NEC μPD720200 chip and available on the motherboard rear panel (blue connectors).

GA-H55M-USB3 also has two FireWire (IEEE1394) ports, one on the rear panel and one through an internal header, controlled by Texas Instruments TSB43AB22A chip.

Like several other H55-based motherboard, this model from Gigabyte comes with a legacy serial port, but not with a legacy parallel port. To use this port you need an I/O bracket, which doesn&rsqu
o;t come with the product.

Audio is generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC889 codec, which is a professional-grade component, allowing you to professionally work with this motherboard for audio editing and conversion (e.g., converting LPs and VHS tapes to digital format) without the need of an add-on audio card. The audio section provides 7.1 audio with 24-bit resolution, 108 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the outputs, 104 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs and 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs.

This motherboard from Gigabyte comes with an on-board optical SPDIF connector, making it a good choice if you are building a home theater PC (HTPC).

Analog audio outputs use completely independent jacks, so you can hook-up an analog surround speaker system up to 7.1 without needing to “kill” the line in and/or mic in jacks.

Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 has a Gigabit Ethernet port controlled by a Realtek RTL8111D controller, which is connected to the system through a PCI Express x1 lane, thus allowing this port to achieve its maximum performance.

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel with four USB 2.0 ports (the ones that are black or yellow), a shared mouse/keyboard PS/2 connector, VGA output, DVI-D output, HDMI output, DisplayPort output, optical SPDIF output, FireWire port, eSATA port, Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports (the blue ones) and independent 7.1 analog audio jacks.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel.

This motherboard comes with four types of video connection, VGA, DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort.