Gigabyte EP45-UD3L uses Intel ICH10 south bridge chip, which supports six SATA-300 ports without RAID support. There is also an ATA-133 port, which is controlled by a JMicron JMB368 chip, as the southbridge chip does not offer one.

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Figure 5: SATA ports.

This motherboard has a Gigabit Ethernet port controlled by a Realtek RTL8111C chip, which is connected to the system using a PCI Express lane and therefore is able to achieve its maximum performance.

The audio section of the motherboard is 7.1, produced by the south bridge chip with the aid of a Realtek ALC888 codec, with a 97 dB signal-to-noise ratio for analog outputs and 90 dB at its analog inputs. This motherboard provides independent analog audio outputs in 7.1 format, which is excellent. It also has coaxial and optical SPDIF outputs on the rear panel.

EP45-UD3L has 12 USB 2.0 ports, with eight of them soldered on the rear panel. Incidentally, ICH10 chip has a feature called "USB Port Disable" that lets you disable individual USB ports. This is a very interesting feature on computers that are used by several people that can install random USB devices (e.g. external hard drives or USB flash memories, which can contain viruses, and also to prevent people from copying data). This motherboard has no FireWire (IEEE1394) ports.

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

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Figure 6: Rear panel.