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9-way Intel P35 motherboard round-up

Published August 22, 2007
By Steven Walton

Gigabyte P35-S3L – Design

Despite being priced at just $90 the P35-S3L actually looks quite respectable and could easily pass as a $150 motherboard. Gigabyte has kept their traditional styling loading the P35-S3L with a wide range of color coded connectors to help make the installation process a little bit easier. The P35-S3L does not give the impression that it is a cheap motherboard.

The northbridge chip features a gold aluminum heatsink. The southbridge is cooled via a small gold aluminum heatsink. There are no heatpipes on this motherboard and Gigabyte has not bothered to cool the MOSFET chips. The board layout is fairly good as everything is relatively easy to access due to excellent component placement. The board only features support for a 4-pin 12v power connector while it does support 24-pin ATX power connectors.

There are really no design flaws to be found on the P35-S3L as everything has been placed to avoid any (physical) compatibility issues. The I/O panel features four of the twelve USB 2.0 ports while there are two PS/2 ports, coaxial and optical audio ports, six audio jacks, a parallel port, serial port and one LAN port. Overall the I/O panel is fully stocked offering pretty much everything you could ask for from a $90 motherboard.

The Gigabyte P35-S3L is the last board we are testing today. Moving on to actual test results and comparisons.