Gigabyte has refreshed its mainstream motherboard offerings with a new B860M DS3H WIFI6E revision featuring an improved VRM cooling assembly and a built-in I/O shield. Marking the third iteration of this budget board, revision 2.2 keeps what makes the DS3H series appealing, and adds some small changes to better compete in this aggressive market segment.
The B860M DS3H WIFI6E Rev 2.2 is a MicroATX motherboard based on Intel’s mid-range B860 chipset. It offers a nice complement of specs and features, from Gen 5 PCIe to high-speed memory support. Like its predecessors, Rev 2.0 and Rev 1.x, this model is equipped with four full-size PCIe slots, the first of which runs at Gen 5 x16, while the others make do with Gen 4 x1 speed. For storage, you get one Gen 5 M.2 slot plus one Gen 4, alongside four SATA ports. Not bad for a compact design, though I would have preferred trading one PCI slot for another M.2, even at Gen 3 speed.
The CPU is fed via a 5+1+2-phase VRM setup that is sufficient to power even the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K, according to Gigabyte. Note that the brand specifically mentions the 125W setting, which is only the 285K’s base power setting, so there is no confirmation whether the board can sustain the chip’s peak 250W. Not a big deal since you shouldn’t pair a £500 CPU with a budget board anyway. What it can, however, is handle up to DDR5-9066 memory and 256GB of total RAM capacity split into 4x64GB modules, if you can afford them.
Regardless, the VRMs should operate at lower temperatures courtesy of the improved fin-stack, which is only found on the Rev 2.x models. Thanks to its larger cooling surface area and built-in heatpipe, it should maintain better thermals compared to the extruded aluminium block found on Rev 1.x boards.
With the ready-to-go I/O shield, colour-matching fin-stack heatsink, and reinforced PCIe slot, you may even mistake it with a higher-range board – more so when factoring in the PCIe and M.2 EZ-Latch mechanisms, which allow you to effortlessly remove graphics cards and SSDs. Heck, even the Wi-Fi antenna gets the EZ-Plug treatment – generally found on expensive Aorus Elite models.
The only slightly disappointing part of this board is the I/O, which only houses three USB 3.2 plus three USB 2.0/1.1. No Type-C unfortunately, though at least we have the option of adding one via the case header. The rest of the connectivity includes one HDMI, two DisplayPort, a PS/2 port, 3.5mm audio, 2.5GbE LAN, WiFi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.3.
Regarding price, we don’t have an official figure yet, but we don’t expect this variant to stray away from its siblings. Considering the Rev 1.x ongoing $149/£140, we expect this updated design to be £150 or £155. More would push it too close to the Gaming X and Aorus lineups, which are better built.
