Gigabyte EP45C-DS3R uses Intel ICH10R south bridge chip, which supports six SATA-300 ports with RAID 0, 1, 10 and 5. You can still transform one of these into an eSATA port, using an adapter that comes with the board (see next page). Another advantage of this motherboard is the presence of an ATA-133 port controlled by a JMicron JMB368 chip, as Intel P45 chipset does not offer one.

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Figure 5: SATA ports.

This motherboard has two Gigabit Ethernet ports controlled by two Realtek RTL8111D chips, which are connected to the system using PCI Express lanes and therefore are able to achieve its maximum performance.

The audio section of the motherboard is 7.1, produced by south bridge chip with the aid of a Realtek ALC889A codec, one of the best available, with a signal/noise ratio of 108 dB for analog outputs and 104 dB at its analog inputs. The motherboard provides independent analog audio outputs in 7.1 format, which is excellent. It also has coaxial and optical SPDIF outputs on rear panel.

This board offers 12 USB 2.0 ports, eight of them soldered on the rear panel. By the way, ICH10 chip has a feature called “USB Port Disable” that allows you to disable individual USB ports. This is a very interesting feature to have on PCs that are used by several different people to prevent users from installing USB devices (for example, an external hard drive or a USB drive, which can contain viruses and also to prevent people from copying data).

This motherboard has three FireWire (IEEE1394) ports controlled by a Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 chip, two soldered on the rear panel and one available via external adapters or ports on the front panel of the computer case.

In Figure 6, you can see the rear panel of the motherboard: PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors, eight USB 2.0 ports, SPDIF coaxial and optical outputs, two FireWire ports, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and independent 7.1 analog audio outputs.

 
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Figure 6: Rear panel.