A Better Look at Things

The box for the Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R has all kinds of information all over it and it’s actually attractive looking, it;’s very nicely done.

Included with the motherboard is of course the user manual, I/O plate, software/driver disc, floppy/ide cables, SATA cables and an interesting addition of an E-SATA PCI bracket.

The E-SATA PCI bracket is more than just a bracket, it allows you to turn any bare SATA drive into and external one by including an external power connector and cable. It’s a very nice bonus that could come in handy for many people, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this with other motherboards.

The Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R motherboard itself is laid out very well, the solid state components used mean they are smaller and more compact allowing for quite a bit of room around the CPU socket to allow for pretty much any after market cooler to be installed, but the chipset cooler is large which did cause me a problem. Most of the headers, USB, Firewire, audio, front panel, SATA are all near the edge of the board making it easy to access them. This board has 7.1 Hi-Def audio and a total of eight USB ports that can be made usable.

I did find three small problems:

-Only two fan headers, one is for CPU, so there is really only one

-IDE connection and ATX power header are just too close together making it difficult to connect one of the other.

-Chipset cooler is a bit tall, depending on the size and orientation of your cooler it might have to be rotated or positioned another way.