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Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Motherboard
Layout
My real beef is that the floppy and IDE connectors are in the way of...something. I mean, if you needed them, and three PCI cards. The likelihood of that is really slim to none, but even the slightest adjustment of moving the IDE connector above the SATA connectors would be an improvement. There are two USB headers near the front panel header at the bottom edge of the board by the floppy connector, and no Firewire headers (again, not something that sees a lot of regular use). There are three fan headers, one PWM for the CPU and another for the chassis, and one 3-pin for the system fan by the back panel, right next to the front panel audio header. The BIOS battery is under the PCI-Express x16 slot, beneath the third PCI-Express x1 card, should one exist. The memory slots are a good distance above the PCI-Express x16 slot, and the latches in no way interfere with the video card slot. There isn't a PCI-Express x4 connector, so CrossFire is out. I might ache and groan about the layout, but the truth is that it's justifiable: realistically speaking, the arrangement of the connectors will never be a problem for anyone, but the possibility that the layout could be a problem, if all the slots and devices are connected to whatever, is high. Compared to other P31 boards, it's at least on par, if not better than the rest. Add to it that it's got all-aluminum capacitors and passes Ultra Durability standards, well, it's not that bad at all.           BIOS The BIOS is above-average in respects to, say, OEM BIOSes, but the functionality ends there. It's completely possible to tweak and overclock mildly, which is something that's realistically uncommon for this board's competitors.
Page 1: Introduction and First Looks
Page 2: Layout and BIOS Page 3: Testing Methodology, General Benchmarks & Graphics Benchmarks Page 4: Performance Summary, Power and Noise, and Overclocking Page 5: Conclusion 
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