Biostar USB 3.0 Intel H61 Mini ITX DDR3 1333 Intel – LGA 1155 Motherboards TH61 ITX
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- Supports LGA1155 Sandybridge CPUs up to 95w
- Supports 4 USB 3.0 ports (2 Rear I/O + 2 Front Header)
- HDMI, DVI and D-Sub Video Out
- 4 SATA2 3GB/s Connections
- 7.1 Channel Blu-Ray Audio & Rear Optical Audio Connector
- 100% Solid Capacitors
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Mini ITX form Factor, Only 6.7″ x 6.7″
The Small Mini ITX form factor and support o the latest LGA1155 CPus makes this the ideal HTPC motherboard
Biostar motherboard
Biostar USB 3.0 Intel H61 Mini ITX DDR3 1333 Intel – LGA 1155 Motherboards TH61 ITX
List Price: $ 89.99
Price:
Pretty good!,
I made a build around this mobo to what is basically going to be a mini digital audio workstation for my brother (his Christmas present). He plans on running Reason and Pro Tools on it. His requirements – A small formfactor (so he can bring it to studio), cool running (because he lives in LA), quiet, and low power. I paired this TH61 with a Intel i3 2100t, Silverstone SG05bb case (which includes a 450watt PSU), 8gb Corsair XMS3, an old WD sata drive I had laying around, LG slimline dvd/cdrw, and a EVGA 520 graphics card.
The mobo doesn’t come with a manual booklet, but instead with a large foldout – 1 side covers cpu installation, the other side displayed the different parts of the motherboard including the proper pin connections for the front usb/power etc. The install with WIN7 64bit was easy going. The included CD driver disc updated the drivers that WIN7 didn’t have. After hooking it up to my network it went through the series of WIN7 updates as it should. All the video and usb ports work, no problems with audio.
After a week of breaking it in, I honestly can’t say anything negative about this motherboard other than I wish it had built in wireless and/or bluetooth – But for the price, I honestly can’t complain. 5-stars until my little brother notifies me otherwise.
[UPDATE] – I recently purchased another one of these motherboards for a build for my grandfather. The build specs are identical to my brothers, only I used a different case/psu MI-008 Tower Black P4 Chassis with 250W Itx Psu+sata Power Supply and no video card. He’s only using it for home office applications and solitaire. It was every bit as easy going as the first build.
Other thoughts: The EVGA 520 paired with the i3 2100t really isn’t that bad. I can’t say for sure how well it performs on the latest games, but the one game I threw on for my brother, Batman Arkham Asylum, played full speed on 1280×720 with no AA, and no PhysX. In fact the i3 2100t (with built-in HD Graphics 2000) alone handled the game just as well on medium settings with no shadows etc. I do plan on building another itx box for htpc/gaming down the road, and I’m confident this mobo with it’s Sandy Bridge support will do quite nicely.
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|good board, but driver cd was useless…,
You can just toss the driver cd. It had empty folders where the drivers should have been. You have to go directly to biostar’s driver page for TH61 itx, to which I’m not allowed to link apparently.
After that, things should work fine.
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|Rock Solid for 3 Months,
So far I have had this for 3 months without a single issue.
Easy to setup, and easy to configure. For an HTPC setup it was perfect. No sense in paying for features you don’t need.
Configuration:
G530 – Cheap HTPC CPU
HD – Intel 80 GB SSD
Ram – 4GB Kingston HyperX 1600
Case – MI-008 (CPU Fan just barely fits)
FAN – Extra 120 MM silent Fan
Video Card – HD5570 (Though I ran the Intel HD graphics and had no issue)
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