The Board - Layout

The B75M-D3H itself presents a rather small package, fitting well within mATX size guidelines. Wrapped in Gigabyte's well-recognized blue, the B75-D3H appears to be fairly busy, although that's just an optical illusion due to its size. The back of the board is really basic, with nothing showing that might run afoul when installing it into a case.


The socket area does have a fair bit of VRM circuitry close by as well as no MOSFET cooling, something not really needed for this level of product. With those VRM components close by, the rear of the socket does have a few protruding pins close, but not within the spacing that most aftermarket backplates populate.


There are two full PCIe x16 slots on the B75-D3H, the uppermost with a PCIe 3.0 x16 electrical link, and the bottom slot communicates with the rest of the system using an electrical PCIe 2.0 x4 link. There are four DIMM slots, bringing memory support up to 32 GB (8 GB per slot), a nice surprise considering the board's intended market.


The bottom edge of the board carries pin headers that clearly indicate that Gigabyte intended this for business use, as we find audio, an LPT printer port, as well as a TPM port on the left side, while the right has a couple of USB headers and the front panel pin block. There are just two fan headers on the B75M-D3H, and both are a four-pin PWM and have separate controls within the BIOS.


Like the rest of the board, the rear I/O section is pretty sparse, holding a combo keyboard/mouse PS/2 port, four USB 2. 0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports, a LAN port, three analogue audio plugs, and three different video outputs, including VGA, DVI, and HDMI.