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.
Follow Niels Broekhuijsen @NBroekhuijsen. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
