Biostar's New Motherboard Has Dual Gigabit Ethernet
Biostar's targeting for this new motherboard might be curious, but the product does have some decent selling points.
Biostar announced the new Hi-Fi B85S2G motherboard, built to bring a good value to small businesses, but the company's targeting is a bit confusing.
The motherboard has an LGA 1150 socket, wired to two DDR3 memory slots and the B85 chipset from Intel. There are two PCI-Express x16 slots, one PCI-Express x1 slot, and three old-school PCI slots. Storage connectivity is provided by four SATA3 (6 Gb/s) ports and two SATA2 (3 Gb/s) ports.
The PCI-Express expansion is the confusing part. While the choice of two PCI-Express x16 slots on a basic desktop motherboard aimed at business use is questionable at best, Biostar's press release has this board aimed at crypto-currency miners. It's too late for this, and even so, two PCI-Express x16 slots aren't enough.
Despite this the motherboard comes with one interesting feature: dual Gigabit Ethernet, which supports aggregate teaming, meaning you can connect both network ports to one network. This isn't something we see on many budget-oriented boards, and makes it very interesting for building inexpensive home servers. You could use the PCI-Express expansion for second-hand SATA cards if you need more storage connectivity. The Intel B-series chipset will also give you the Intel SBA (Small-Business Advantage) feature set, which can provide features that might be interesting to home-server builders.
There is no clear word on what the motherboard would cost, but Biostar has clearly targeted a value price point.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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gsxrme I got no lag issue using my 8.02.11ac dual band card with my WRT1900AC router. My last wow ping was 22ms... Psh... Wires.Reply -
Haravikk I hate that dual gigabit is considered a business feature; I find it incredibly useful for several purposes. It's great if you do any kind of virtualisation, as you can give your virtual machine its own network interface. More useful though is to use the second port for sharing a network connection with another device, such a games console, without having to buy a switch or rely on wireless; I hate having unnecessary peripherals like switches, plus their external power adaptors.Reply -
colinstu almost all enthusiast motherboards had dual ethernet for the LONGEST time, only until the past few or so more years has it gone away. (well, started around AM1/2 P4 days)Reply -
Alec Mowat Replyalso. teaming is only feasible if you have a switch that supports 802.1ax or 802.3ad
If you had a dual port NIC on a NAS though, you could connect it directly to your file shares for some quick file transfers without impacting any other network traffic.
2 RAM slots and only 4 Sata3 ports seems like a waste. Seems like a motherboard that cuts corners to get 2 NICs at a reasonable price.