Gigabyte Reveal New Z97-HD3P Motherboard

Flagship, extreme performance and overclocking motherboards steal a lot of the spotlight, which is understandable, but the reality is that we often purchase our consumer based products from further down the range. The new Gigabyte’s Z97-HD3P is their latest entry-level socket LGA1150 motherboard for the Intel Z97 Express chipset and if you’re just after a reliable board for a day-to-day gaming and work PC, this could be a great option for you.

Priced at around $100 the board is certainly affordable, but it still comes packed full of features that make it a tempting option for any system builder; a 4-phase VRM for clean power delivery, four DDR3 DIMM slots, a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot, PCI 2.0 x16 (electrical x4), two PCIe 2.0 x1 and two legacy PCI.

There are six SATA 6Gb/s ports, one SATA Express port which draws from two 6 Gb/s ports, and an M.2 10 Gb/s slot; which overall may not be that impressive, but it’s more than enough for the majority of people. Other connectivity options include D-Sub, DVI, HDMI, 4 USB 3.0 ports on the back and two more from the header. There’s 8-channel Realtek ALC887 audio on-board; it’s also worth mentioning that the board features audio-grade electrolytic capacitors and PCB ground-layer isolation which should help improve the sound quality and reduce electrical noise.

This is a solid mid range board and if the performance is up to scratch, which I suspect it will be, this could be a very popular board for Gigabyte.

Thank you Gigabyte for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Gigabyte.