We took a look on GA-EP31-DS3L, a motherboard from Gigabyte based on Intel P31 chipset targeted to the mainstream market, coming with a lot of features and a relatively low cost. Check it out!

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Figure 1: Box.

The motherboard box announces the main features available on this motherboard:  support for the 1,333 MHz front side bus and support for DDR2-1066 memories (under chipset overclocking, since Intel P31 officially only supports memories up to DDR2-800), besides being “Quad-Core Optimized” (which, honestly, means nothing) and “Windows Vista Certified”. On Figure 2 you can see the big stickers that come attached to the board announcing that all the capacitors are solid and that this board has a feature called “Dynamic Energy Saver”, which promises to up to 70% in energy savings.

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Figure 2: Motherboard with its stickers.

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Figure 3: Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L.

GA-EP31-DS3L uses the standard ATX form factor and a very simple passive cooling solution (i.e. no fan) on its chipset, both on the north and on the south bridge chips. In fact fancier cooling solutions are usually a feature exclusively found on high-end motherboards.

The silk screen layer from this motherboard announces the support for the 1,600 MHz front side bus thru overclocking.

Let’s now take a closer look on this motherboard.

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Figure 4: Overall view.

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Figure 5: Another angle.