Biostar Announces Hi-Fi H170S3H Motherboard

Biostar has added a new micro-atx motherboard to its Hi-Fi line. The manufacturer puts forward the audio capabilities as properties with which the budget board with Intel H170 chipset should distinguish itself.

The micro-ATX board offers space for Intel’s Skylake processors and four DDR3L memory bars for a maximum of 32GB. There is no support for ddr4. There are also four SATA600 connections, two of which are in a SATA Express configuration. There is also an interface for SSDs in m2 form factor and there are two PCI-E x16 interfaces and two PCI-E x1 variants. There are also four USB 3.0 ports on the back panel and there are also two USB 2.0 ports here. These can be supplemented via the headers on the motherboard with two more USB 3.0 and four USB 2.0 versions.

Biostar explicitly mentions the audio capabilities of the board: among other things, a specific power supply for the audio, high-quality capacitors and a built-in amplifier would be used. However, as Tom’s Hardware points out, the RealTek ALC887 audio codec used is a fairly average chip that is also a few years old.

The Hi-Fi H170S3H motherboard has a suggested retail price of $84.90. Converted including VAT, that is about 95.50 euros. Biostar has not disclosed a suggested euro retail price.