Box and Packaging
The box and packaging has a surprisingly good quality feel to it. I was also surprised to see 4 SATA cables included. Most manufacturers only give you 2 SATA cable these days. What’s even more surprising, is that BIOSTAR has bundled their G300 M.2 256GB SSD with this motherboard … what a bonus!
The Motherboard
One of the first thing you’ll notice about this motherboard, is racing flag design imprinted on the PCB, as well as the “Carbon Fiber” heatsink for the chipset and on M.2 cooling heatspreader.
4 x DIMM slots allow upto 64GB DDR4-3200 of memory to be installed. Expansion slots include 1 x PCI-E x16 3.0 Slot(x16), 2 x PCI-E x16 3.0 Slot(x4) – Intel® Optane Technology ready, and 4 x PCI-E x1 3.0 Slot.
A Closer Look
The I/O panel includes, 1 x PS/2 mouse and keyboard combo, 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x DVI, 1 x HDMI, 1 x USB-C, 4 x USB 3.0, Gigabit LAN and an array of audio connectors.
There’s also a GT Touch panel for ECO and Sport mode, as well has Reset and Power on/off. You’ll also find the Super LAN surge protection feature (center pic), and the Hi-Fi 7.1ch Blu-ray Audio integrated circuit, shielded and labelled “Racing” (right pic).
