If you take a look at Top Buy you’ll quickly realize that the Z690 motherboards are not cheap. As it is, you have to pay about 210 € for a first price card. However, the situation may change with Gigabyte and its Z690M DS3H DDR4. A card that does not use PCIe 5.0 and DDR5.
Z690M DS3H DDR4: a card without PCIe 5.0 or DDR5!
With this card, the brand offers a micro-ATX model with a Z690 chipset and a LGA-1700 socket. However, this card is distinguished by the absence of PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 memory. Here, you will have to deal with PCIe 4.0 and DDR4 RAM. Now the question is “does it really matter? Indeed, for the time being, no component exploits PCIe 5.0 and DDR5, to have some, it is complicated… Especially since things the problems are not getting any better.
Besides that, Gigabyte offers us a classic card. We find a PCIe 4.0 x16 for the graphics card and two PCIe x1 3.0. For the storage, two M.2 are included, one of which has a heatsink, and there are four SATA III.
At the back, we have two USB 2.0 and a PS2 combo for keyboard/mouse. The USB part is completed by three USB 3.2 Gen1 and one USB 3.2 Gen2 type C. We also have the right to some video outputs based on two DisplayPort, one HDMI and… A VGA… In 2021… Finally, the audio part benefits from a Realtek chip, without knowing the exact model. On the network side, we have Realtek in 2.5 GbE.
It only remains to know the final price of this model. Certainly, we expect a card that is less expensive than the competition. But the question is how much?
Here is the Gigabyte datasheet!
