A lot of computer enthusiasts are very skeptical, even contemptuous, towards microATX mainboards. These solutions are considered to be de facto inferior to full-size ATX mainboards in their functionality, number of onboard controllers, fine tuning and overclocking options. Therefore, most microATX mainboards usually find their way into office workstations and at best the lowest end home systems. I have to say that this attitude appeared for a reason, but lately things started to change. New microATX mainboards appeared that allowed to put together a very powerful gaming or computational workstation even inside a small system case. And the perfect examples of this tendency are right here at the tip of your fingers: take, for instance, Asus Rampage II Gene and DFI LanParty JR X58-T3H6, which are barely yielding to their full-size ATX sisters.
Today we are going to talk about the features and performance of another small but fully-functional microATX mainboard that can easily compete even against some ATX solutions and proves superior to some of them in functionality. It is built around Intel P55 Express chipset, supports LGA1156 processors and is called Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD4.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mai...-p55m-ud4.html