This is one of the some fourteen motherboards that seem to fall within the P45 Chipset series intended for something other than extreme overclocking. It seems that Gigabyte has three performance levels within this series. There seems to be a budget, performance, and extreme series within the series. This board seems to fall within the performance spectrum. Here, you can see just a couple of the most comparable boards and their features. I'd have to say that the EP45-DS3R may be well suited for avid and power users.

First, let's get a feel for the layout of the motherboard. Looking over the board, there's a change of pace from the heat and silent pipes typically seen on the performance model motherboards. While heat pipes are great for show, they don't always tell what's really happening underneath. Given the goal of this particular platform, there's no need for the extra extravagance.

Here we have a continuance of the blue PCB with gold heat sinks, yellow SATA II ports, as well as yellow and red DIMM DDR2 sockets. The board's layout is actually quite clean and easy to understand. In this particular version, the storage and expansion ports are all located in areas that won't be crowded by the graphics cards. Even a large HD4870 will fit comfortably.

Since this is a more budget oriented platform, there aren't quite as many extra onboard USB headers or Firewire. However, the board does support two eSATA drives via the bundled eSATA PCI Bracket. By simply plugging in the two SATA wires, you can now access two eSATA drives. It may turn out to be a handy tool later on as you graduate to the need for more accessible storage.

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