Gigabyte H55N-USB3 Motherboard
On-Board Peripherals
Contents
The Intel H55 chipset is a single-chip solution. The basic features provided by this chipset include six SATA-300 ports (RAID support is optional), no support for parallel ATA (PATA) ports, 14 USB 2.0 ports supporting port disable, an embedded Gigabit Ethernet MAC (Medium Access Control), and eight x1 PCI Express lanes.
The Gigabyte H55N-USB3 provides five SATA-300 ports, with no RAID support. Four of them are available as standard SATA ports and one is available as an eSATA-300 port at the rear panel.
Figure 4: SATA ports
No ATA-133 port or floppy disk drive controller are present.
From the 14 USB 2.0 ports supported by the chipset, the H55N-USB3 offers eight of them, four soldered at the rear panel and four available through two motherboard headers.
One of the highlights of this motherboard is the presence of two USB 3.0 ports, controlled by a NEC μPD720200F1 chip, available at the rear panel of the product.
No FireWire port is available.
Audio is generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC892 codec. Unfortunately this component is not listed on the manufacturer website, so we can’t discuss the audio quality. This motherboard comes with an on-board optical SPDIF output.
This motherboard uses independent 7.1 analog audio outputs, meaning that you can have an eight-channel analog speaker set without "killing" the line in or mic in jacks.
The Gigabyte H55N-USB3 has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by a Realtek RTL8111E chip, which is connected to the system using a PCI Express x1 lane, and thus not presenting any potential performance issues.
This motherboard supports CPUs with integrated video, with three different connectors, VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI. If you install a CPU without embedded video (a Core i7 or some Core i5 models), you must install an add-on video card, as the motherboard has no video controller: the video connector are installed on the video controller embedded in the CPU.
In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel with a shared PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector, VGA, DVI, and HDMI outputs, four USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA-300 port, one Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports (blue), independent 7.1 analog audio connectors, and an optical SPDIF output.
Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel