Lately there were reports circulating in the internet that Gigabyte B85M-HD3 has changes made to it’s original rev 1.0 board. Based on the press photos posted, The rev 2.0 board looks quite different from the rev 1.0 board. There are accusations about Gigabyte trying to cut costs and selling the “lower” specification board at the same price as the Rev 1.0. We downloaded the images from Gigabyte’s website and discovered that the two revisions are slightly different. Some components seemed to be missing. Could that be a redesign to cater to bigger heatsinks ? (Pictures on page 2 and 3).
We also went a bit further to check on another model B85-DS3H and there are also 3 revisions to this motherboard. The latest revision revision 3 added High Quality Audio capacitors and a dedicated audio path. These were missing from earlier revisions of B85-DS3H.
If I am the manufacturer, I wouldn’t take the risk of RMA issues by cutting down components. I am sure there must be reasons for doing that. Due to the year end holiday season, Gigabyte has not officially replied to our query. Nevertheless, Gigabyte’s labs should have tested the new revisions and have passed the tests before it is sold in the retail channels.
High Quality Audio Capacitors on 3rd revision of B85-DS3H
When you are out to purchase a new motherboard, you would go out to read review of the motherboard. Sometimes, you will just rush out to buy the reviewed model. While we have been reviewing boards for over 15 years, we do get very early samples from various manufacturers. Some of them are REV 0.5, REV 0.9 or even first generation REV 1.0 boards.
As for performance wise, we hardly see any major differences between the models because they are based on the same chipset. In fact, the surrounding component might be changed over revisions due to customers or regional distributor needs. Technical specifications are subjected to changes without prior notice is a familiar clause when you buy any electronic products. So, it is best that you should look out for changes in different revisions in the future. If there are drastic changes made, it might be good to change the model name or add a code behind to avoid confusion. e.g. B85-Z9-TB would mean it has Thunderbolt on board.