Photos Part Two: The I/O Bits
We’ll start our tour in SATAland:
Two SATA3 (6Gbps) ports, four SATA2 ports. You lose one of the SATA2 ports if you use the mSATA slot. I can’t say I’m overly impressed by the number of ports here.
mSATA is nice to have. mSATA3 woud be nicer, but mSATA2 is good.
On the lower edge of the board we have a bunch of ports: Front audio, SPDIF, a fan, a Trusted Platform Module port, three USB2 ports, another fan, the front panel bits plus a serial port. Decent selection here, it’s nice to see the fan ports.
The front panel ports are very well labeled, this is something Gigabyte is very nice about and I appreciate it.
The USB3 port is right next to one end of the RAM. This is not ideal in my opinion. That said, the official USB3 header and cable design is terrible in my opinion (not that Gigabyte had anything to do with the official standards). Theis is better than some boards though. Note the green fuses, nice to have! Every individual USB port has one, this is very nice.
Six USB2/3 ports, PS2, VGA/DVI/HDMI monitor ports, one Gigabit Ethernet, the usual audio stack, plus a pair of Thunderbolt ports. Not a bad selection, but those two Thunderbolt ports eat up enough space for another 2-4 USB ports. I feel like that could be done more efficiently.
Let’s get really up close and personal with this thing, on the next page.
