H77 chipset

[time]

I haven't bothered to look up any articles on it, but I see new motherboards with this chipset are now available.

The main difference appears to be that USB 3.0 is integrated rather than courtesy of a 3rd party chip. As a result, manufacturers are no longer being too tight-assed to provide a USB 3.0 motherboard header as well as 2 sockets on the rear panel. Incredibly, still only 2 6Gb/s SATA ports, but at least pricing finally seems more reasonable.

MicroATX
Asus P8H77-M LE ~$85
Gigabyte GA-H77M-D3H ~$90
Asus P8H77-M PRO ~$115

ATX
Gigabyte GA-H77-D3H ~$115

Apart from H77, what really caught my eye was this little B75 mATX board:

Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H <$75

The only significant drawback I've found so far is that B75 is apparently limited to a single 6Gb/s SATA port. Considering most desktop PCs I can envisage will be based on a single SSD with maybe a couple of multi-terabyte spinning disk drives, this doesn't seem much of a limitation after all.

All the boards I linked appear to have both DVI and VGA display ports, a combined PS2 mouse/keyboard port, 2+2 USB 3.0 ports, and what looks like a parallel port header.

 

[CougTek]

I for one am glad to finally see more reasonably-priced motherboards with the internal 20-pin USB connector. The H77/Z77/B75 motherboards have shown on my price list for the past two weeks, but I have yet to order one. The Z77 motherboards are 15-20$ more expensive than the H77 ones.

 

[mubs]

Based on Anandtech's write-up, the H77 seems to be the budget chipset. Single PCIe slot, no CPU overclocking.

 

[Mercutio]

Based on Anandtech's write-up, the H77 seems to be the budget chipset. Single PCIe slot, no CPU overclocking.

Yes, but "budget" chipset will fill the needs of some ungodly percentage of desktop systems at this point. I suspect, though I have no evidence to support this assertion, that 90-something percent of extreme edition and k-series processors never get overclocked or paired with a dual GPU configuration, let alone both. Almost all the LGA1155 systems I've sold have been on H61-based motherboards. Even now there's nothing truly compelling about H77.

 

[LunarMist]

You really think that only 10% of the Extreme CPUs are over locked? I find that hard to believe. I can see that 2500Ks or 2600Ks, etc. are less often overclocked. Sometimes they are on sale for less than the non-K version.

 

[Mercutio]

I suspect that a lot of EE CPUs are purchased because someone has a budget that says computers should cost $X and the only way they're going to get to $X is with a $1000 CPU. That's certainly the the case with the steel mill most of my students come from.

 

[LunarMist]

I don't doubt that there are excessive purchases made to meet budgets sometimes, but

 

[time]

Based on Anandtech's write-up, the H77 seems to be the budget chipset. Single PCIe slot, no CPU overclocking.

Have you got a link for that? There's probably only a single PCIe 3.0 slot, but even the B75 has multiple PCIe slots and supports CrossfireX.

The H77 allows you to change the base clock and the GPU clock, but not the multiplier. So limited overclocking, but that also means you won't see any benefit from the more expensive Z77 unless you use a K-suffix CPU and want to use multipler overclocking.

IMO, the H77 is clearly the mainstream solution, B75 is the only marginally less capable budget option (that includes PCI as a bonus), and H77 is the premium platform for overclockers. But frankly, there's really not much to separate these chipsets.

 

[time]

Almost all the LGA1155 systems I've sold have been on H61-based motherboards. Even now there's nothing truly compelling about H77.

And now we can replace H61 with B75 and get all of the benefits of H67 anyway, while still keeping PCI.

 

[LunarMist]

Too many different chipsets. There should be one that does it all.

 

[CougTek]

IMO, the H77 is clearly the mainstream solution, B75 is the only marginally less capable budget option (that includes PCI as a bonus), and H77 is the premium platform for overclockers. But frankly, there's really not much to separate these chipsets.

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz....77!

I sold my first H77-based motherboard today. I deliver the system Tuesday. It's a GigaByte H77M-D3H. The customer is a bean-counter and he wants a reliable and power computer for counting beans. I sold her the following :

• Intel core i5 2320 (4x 3.0GHz cores)
• GigaByte GA-H77M-D3H motherboard
• Kingston KHX1600C9D3K2/8GX memory kit (will operate at 1333MHz, but I get the 1600MHz kit cheaper than the 1333MHz kit this week)
  
• Hitachi 1TB 7200rpm SATA 6Gbps HDD
  
• Pioneer DVR-219BK DVD burner
  
• many-card internal 3.5" reader
  
• NZXT Source 210 Elite enclosure
  
• Antec EA-450PLATINUM 450W power supply
  
• Windows 7 Pro provided by the customer

Nope, no SSD. Didn't fit in the budget. I already had the PSU, CPU and HDD in stock, so it will help me move my stock. I would normally prefer to use an Antec Three Hundred V2 enclosure, but there is no place for the 3.5" internal card reader in the Antec. I've used the NZXT before and while it's not perfect, it's quite acceptable.

 

[CougTek]

Too many different chipsets. There should be one that does it all.

You've read Tolkien too often. Many chipsets = more profit for the blue gorilla.

 

[Mercutio]

Intel has Blue Men, not blue gorillas.

 

[mubs]

Have you got a link for that?

Here you go. Scroll down to the "Chipset Comparison" table.

 

[Chewy509]

Too many different chipsets. There should be one that does it all.

I tend to agree, the number of chipsets does seem excessive. Maybe two chipsets is all that is needed, one mainstream and one for the enthusiast group. With the former having 4 SATA ports, single PCIe x16 slot, single x8 slot and a few x1 slots, up to 8 USB ports, and the latter giving more PCIe x16 slots, SATA ports, more USB ports (especially USB3) and Crossfire/SLI support.

 

[time]

Here you go. Scroll down to the "Chipset Comparison" table.

There appear to be errors in that table, eg PCIe 3.0 achieves 8 GT/s, not 5 GT/s, and the number of lanes should be 16, not 8.

H77 and H75/B75 are limited to a single 3.0 slot (no switching), but you can still run it at x8 alongside the 2.0 slots at x4 + x1 + x1. I was under the impression that anything over 2.0 x8 was wasted on any known graphics card, let alone 3.0 x16 with 4 times the bandwidth?

 

[sdbardwick]

I was under the impression that anything over 2.0 x8 was wasted on any known graphics card, let alone 3.0 x16 with 4 times the bandwidth?

True for graphics, but I wonder if that holds for GPU computing applications. Haven't seen any comparison tests (but I haven't looked either).

 

[mubs]

No idea sir, I am out of touch with a world wizzing by too fast!

 

[LunarMist]

Uh, I think you mean whizzing. Wizzing would be something else.