Gigabyte (as we have told you) is working on remaking their image. They want to be known as a company that builds components for the enthusiast. They are, and have been, working very hard to reach this goal. Their Ultra Durable series of boards have received numerous awards and accolades from review sites and from people who have bought these boards. We have been fortunate enough to review a couple of these and have given you our thoughts on the GA-890FXA-UD7 and are working on a revised impression of the GA-P55A-UD7 as well. For now we are going to move from the big to the small. This is the H55N-UBS3 a Mini-ITX board that features the Intel H55 Express chipset, USB 3.0 and a few Gigabyte special features. Follow along as we dive into this $104.99 board and see if size does not matter.
Overclocking -Our initial overclocking experience with the H55N-USB3 was with our trusty Core i5 661. This CPU has been up into the 4.4GHz range (stable) on multiple occasions this gives us a good idea of where we should be in terms of clock speed. Our first dive into kicking the 661 into high gear was at the upper end of the range we have come to expect we tried 170MHz BCLK but we did not have the options to get is stable. We began backing off until we finally were able get everything stable at 162MHz for a clock speed of 4.212GHz. This is not all that bad when you consider the small size and limited power phases.
You can see the validation for this OC hereOf course overclocking is a picky subject. I can buy to identical CPUs from the store and they will not always perform the same way under stress. This is the same with motherboards, RAM and GPUs. With Gigabyte they are sure to continue to improve the overclocking options on the H55N-USB3, especially as they are now pushing multiple contests around overclocking this motherboard with more advanced CPUs (like the Core i7 875K). However, while we have not been able to get our H55N-USB3 to overclock our Core i7 875K to overclock well, others have had more luck. So again it is important to keep in mind that our results represent a specific hardware configuration. Yours may be similar but will rarely be identical.
Overclocking ToolsGigabyte’s overclocking tool of choice is EasyTune6. I like EasyTune6 for its functionality and ease of use. However, I hate the look and feel of it. The tabbed style is not something I am over fond of. It is also annoying that EasyTune does not remember your choice of Tuner. Every time I entered the application I had to tell it I wanted to use the advanced mode (but that is just a personal issue with the software).
EasyTune6 also has two pages that are probably not needed in many cases. These are the CPU and Memory page. They provide a lot of information on these two items but they clutter up the UI and could be better served by links or additions to other pages. The Graphics tab is another one that could probably have been incorporated elsewhere and cleaned up (simplified) the UI.
Do not take this as an indication that I do not like EasyTune6; it offers more options for overclocking in one place than just about any other overclocking software out there (it even allows for memory speed adjustments). It is just that the UI and flow of the application needs to be adjusted a little to make it even better.
