One question I often hear is what brand and model motherboard would I recommend for someone looking to spend the least amount of money to upgrade. The answer always comes down to the user’s particular purpose and peripherals needed to fill that purpose. A basic assumption users make is that they have to buy a model motherboard somewhere in the middle just short of the flagship to get the most out of the processor or peripherals. But that’s not always the case. For example, this entry level micro-ATX motherboard from GIGABYTE called the H61M-UD2-B3 offers the same advanced Sandy Bridge performance features as premium boards, but costs well under $100. Let’s see what it can do!
Features and Specifications
To put it bluntly, the GA-H61M-S2P-B3 is basically a full speed single slot PCI Express 3.0 motherboard in a micro-ATX package. With features like Humidity Protection, Electrostatic Protection, Power Failure Protection, Dual BIOS Protection, High Temperature Protection and intersil VRD 12 CPU to PWM controller regulation, this seems more like a motherboard built for endurance or 24/7 use in a dusty office environment where no one cares about that box shoved in the corner of a cubicle.
The rest of the features include On/Off Charge Technology for charging devices through USB, 3TB HDD support, Smart 6 software management and AutoGreen to put the system in sleep state when you and your cellphone are out of range. Think of it as Bluetooth security of sorts, or just a nod to Mother Nature.
Because this budget board supports Sandy Bridge integrated graphics, you’ll find a VGA out port. However, there isn’t any Lucid Logix Support to utilize discreet and integrated graphics at the same time. That same budget placement shortens the memory DIMM slot count to two, and adds old school PS2 ports for keyboard/mouse, serial port, parallel port, D-Sub port, 4 USB on the back, 4 USB internal header, single LAN port and a 3-channel audio jack. It definitely has all the signs of an upgrade board for legacy users and at under $90 bucks, not a bad way to bridge the gap.
What’s in the Box?
Inside there are a couple blue SATA data cables, generic IO shield, Manual and DVD with the GIGABYTE software and drivers. There might even be a sticker or two floating around in your box. Whatever you need to get set up is on the DVD. If you’re new to PCs, the manual is pretty detailed as always and well manicured by GIGABYTE’s copy editors. You should be able to figure out what you need to do step by step.
Test Setup
I compared the GIGABYTE GA-H61M-S2P-B3 to a regular ATX Intel DP67DX Extreme edition motherboard. Here’s the break down of just how it was set up.
- Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge
- Motherboard 1: GIGABYTE GA-H61M-S2P-B3 (as tested)
- Motherboard 2: Intel DP67DX Extreme
- Motherboard 3: ASRock P67 Pro3
- Memory: Kingston HyperX Genesis 1600MHz 8GB Dual Channel
- Graphics: Single MSI GTX 560 Ti TwinFrozrII
- OS Storage: Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD
- SATA3/6 Storage: Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD
- USB2/USB3 Storage: Kingston Data Traveler Ultimate 32GB
- Power: Thermaltake Tough Power Gold 1200 Watt
- OS: Windows 7 Pro 64-bit
Since the GA-H61M-S2P-B3 only supports 1333MHz DDR3 memory, both systems were tested at that frequency. There’s very little overclocking potential when it comes to the H61M. You’ll get some extra MHz out of the CPU but not enough to reach higher memory frequencies. We found overclocking to be fairly fruitless overall as it wasn’t designed for that at all so we decided to leave it be.
Benchmark Setup
The test is a bit simpler than usual. PCMark7, Metro 2033, Batman Arkham City, RightMarkAudio Analyzer and IO components were the only things tested. From these, we should more than be able to see if the H61M-S2P-B3 can keep up or not.
PCMark7
The scores aren’t too far apart in PCMark7. Again, most of the performance is in the CPU, memory, video card and SSD storage. However, the H61M-S2P-B3 doesn’t have any fancy audio or sub-components to improve performance overall and there is likely little to no tuning that is implemented on its higher end brothers. That’s okay though as this is a budget board. It can still get the job done all day long.
Media Espresso 6
It’s an even fight because the benchmark is strictly using the CPU. The board does just fine doing a little transcoding but of course if the board had the full Lucid Virtu implementation, it would decrease that encoding time further. However, the biggest take away is that it doesn’t lose any CPU performance because of its size or design.
Now that we’ve looked at the standard level of performance, which seems to measure up just fine, let’s see how it does in a game or two.
Metro 2033
The H61M does just fine running the GTX 560 Ti in the single PCIE x16 slot. And, you don’t have to worry about dual GPU cards since they don’t need an NVIDIA SLI chip to operate. Just plug and play whatever you want and go.
Batman Arkham City
Again, super close frame rates since it’s all GPU performance being measured here. The CPU doesn’t hold it back at all and most importantly, neither does its sub $90 price point going up against boards that are nearly twice the price. The sweet spot is limiting the multi-sample settings to keep things smooth. But if you have a high end card, turn up the settings. The board will handle any card even without additional power connectors.
IO Performance
You no doubt noticed the board doesn’t have SATA3 and USB 3.0 support. Consumers who choose this board most likely don’t have the latest and greatest SATA3 SSDs. SATA3 platter drives are barely faster than SATA2 anyway so making the jump up to this board from anything older has more to do with the CPU power provided by Sandy Bridge than anything elese. USB 3.0 can come in handy though if you want to use this board in a home theatre build and it’s unfortunately that it wasn’t included.
Audio Performance and Power Consumption
The board uses a VIA VT1708 audio processor. It’s a standard 2/4/5.1/7.1 channel codec that does pretty well for media and music. But don’t expect it to break any ear drums or bring the shock and awe in video games. If you value your gaming audio experience, drop in a discrete audio card.
The H61M uses a little less power when loaded up. Otherwise, it’s pretty lean when it comes down to it. If you use some of the low power settings, you can shave off a few more watts when it’s not loaded down. I also want to mention the board is very quiet. There’s no special EMF noise coming off this board even though it’s quite affordable. So overall, good quality, and if you’re in an office building with 100 machines, this board can save quite a bit on the power bill.
Final Thoughts
I’d like to say the GIGABYTE H61M-S2P-B3 Cougar Point Motherboard takes the Sandy Bridge processor to new heights. But, that isn’t the board’s objective. The board’s mission is to offer the same level of performance you would get from any standard ATX platform board without spending nearly as much. In order for it sell below the $100 US level, engineers had to scale back some of the most expensive features. Overall, performance is still competitive especially in regards to full speed PCI Express graphics and the Sandy Bridge optimizations for CPU and memory. But don’t expect to overclock the heck out of it for free MHz. It wasn’t designed for that.
Even at this price, I would like to have seen USB 3.0 as it’s a useful feature especially if you plan to use this motherboard for a home theater PC or just want faster external transfer speeds. USB 3.0 can easily handle moving around a lot of those big media files. If you want those media and game programs to impress your ears, you’ll probably want to get some kind of after market audio card like the Asus Xonar DX which is very affordable or something from Creative Labs.
If you’re looking for one of the most affordable motherboard upgrades for a media or casual gaming PC, the GIGABYTE GA-H61M-S2P-B3 is about as good as it gets at a meager $76 US from places like Amazon and other retailers. And if you’re coming from an older system, then it’s nice to know that much of what you’re bringing with you will easily plug in, further decreasing your total upgrade cost plus you still get that GIGABYTE 3 Year Warranty. That’s why we think this product is a great value and have happily slapped it with our “Value Added Award”.
Pros
- Extremely Affordable
- Low power consumption
- Full speed performance micro-ATX
- Full speed PCI Express x16 slot
- Very stable platform throughout testing
Cons
- No USB 3.0 support
- 16GB DDR3 MAX Supported (via 2x8GB DIMMS)
- Overclockers will be disappointed
Overall Rating: 8.0 / 10.0
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