Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H, review of this motherboard.

Many people do not need a high-flying, high-priced motherboard to assemble a computer that suits their needs, and it is not a few times that users end up realizing over time that they have not used not half of the features offered by their brand new motherboard and which they were only aware of on the day of its installation. On the contrary, if you belong to that group of users whose motto is not to pay for something that they will not use, our next guest will be quite attractive, her name is Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H and it is a very interesting proposal for users of medium / low profile. Let’s see what it offers us.

Design and build of the Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H.

We are facing a very compact board, with a brown PCB and in Micro ATX format, so it is ideal to install it in any type of box, being at ease in any mid-tower on the market, but being also suitable for small focused boxes to multimedia PCs where space prevails.

As is common in Gigabyte for some years now, this board has the ULTRADURABLE technology, which is nothing more than a commercial name that encompasses a series of specific technologies in its components designed to extend the useful life of the product. Among the most outstanding aspects in this regard we have:

• Gold-plated CPU socket that prevents corrosion and bad contacts, while increasing the reliability and life of the socket.
• A “Glass Fabric” PCB that prevents condensation from ambient moisture from damaging the board.
• Low-profile RDS MOSFETs that maximize efficiency and decrease heat generation.
• Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection systems on the Ethernet LAN port and on the USB ports.
• Separate audio circuit (illuminated) to reduce electromagnetic interference with high-quality audio capacitors.

Yes, there are a couple of details that do not convince us, such as the absence of any type of dissipation for the feeding zone and voltage regulation and the fact that the SATA ports are facing up and not perpendicular to the board, something that is not usually ideal for the cleanest installation possible, at least from our point of view.

Processor and RAM support.

The Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H has support for the latest (6th) generation of Intel Skylake processors (at least until Kabylake hits the market), which implies chips manufactured at 14nm that have one of their greatest strengths in efficiency .

On this board we can install from the most modest Celeron or Pentium to an i7 6700K, but if we take into account that the chipset used (Intel H110) is quite basic and does not allow to take advantage of K-series CPUs (Unlocked multiplier), we do not recommend installing processors intended to practice overclocking, since we would be wasting them; something that is also ratified by a power supply zone of only 4 phases without passive dissipation.

The RAM memory support remains acceptable, since we only count two slots. Of course we can activate the dual channel in the processor memory controller and install up to a maximum of 32 GB of DDR4 type at a maximum frequency of 2133 MHz, more than enough for most users.

Connectivity, audio and expansion possibilities.

This plate arrives well served in the section of connectivity, since we have up to 3 video outputs (DVI, VGA and HDMI), 6 USB ports on the back (2 of them 3.0) and the possibility of “taking out” up to 6 extra ports through the box, two of them USB 3.0, thanks to the internal port between the connector power supply and SATA ports and that is usually uncommon on low-cost boards.

The board does not have support for Wi-Fi networks, something normal in low-budget boards, but it does have a connector Realtek GbE LAN, which comes with the software “cFosSpeed ​​Internet Accelerator”, which is intended to improve latency and ping of the network as much as possible.

As we already said, the Audio It has a separate area on the PCB and offers 3 outputs on the back panel of the board. Even so, Gigabyte advertises support for 7.1 systems, although this will also mean using the two front connectors of our tower, which is not the most recommended solution and which almost restricts us to a 4.1 or 5.0 system, which is not bad either. In any case, we cannot forget that using the HDMI connection, we will be able to get digital audio of up to 8 channels without any problems.

The area dedicated to audio is separated to avoid electromagnetic interference.

Regarding the expansion possibilities, and once the RAM support has been studied, mention that we have a PCI Express 3.0 port that electrically operates at 16x, but you have to take into account the detail that the Intel H110 only offers support for 6 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, which means limiting the usable bandwidth for a graphics card (which will use 4 of those lines, equivalent to a PCIE 2.0 8x port) and an important “bottleneck” for graphics cards of a certain size. In short, what the board will seriously limit the performance of graphics cards above an AMD Rx 460 or an Nvidia GTX 750 Ti, to give a couple of examples (estimation).

We also have at our disposal two PCI Express 2.0 x1 ports, so we can install a couple of sound or network cards, but taking into account that if the graphics is double slot (the most common) we will lose access to one of the two x1 slots mentioned.

We ended up talking about the ability to storage of the Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H, where we have only 4 SATA 3 ports, enough for normal equipment.

Technical specifications in detail.

Here is a summary table with all the details of the plate summarized:

Conclusions, availability and price of the Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H.

This board seems to us to be a very interesting and balanced proposal for anyone looking to build a compact PC with medium / low performance and does not want to spend too much money without having to give up a good quality product. It is not a perfect plate, but taking into account its price and the use to which it is intended, the truth is that we find it highly recommended.

We would have liked to see heatsinks in the power supply area, so we recommend a sufficiently ventilated box to extend the useful life of the board and the rest of the equipment, but otherwise, it is difficult to miss something else.

For anyone who is interested in getting the Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2H, down here we leave you a couple of purchase links in two trusted stores.