Biostar Announces Hi-Fi B85Z5 Motherboard

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

A sound board for budget buyers

Is it time to start taking Biostar seriously in power user circles? We'll need to spend some more hands on time with the company's products to answer that question, but in the meantime, Biostar continues to release intriguing motherboards aimed at select groups, such as gamers, overclockers, Bitcoin miners, and even those worried about lightning strikes. Biostar's newest motherboard, the Hi-Fi B85Z5, is for budget buyers who want high-quality onboard audio.
Those two things haven't alwasy gone together, and while I personally still prefer a dedicated soundcard, today's onboard audio is world's apart from where it was several years ago. As for the Hi-Fi B85Z5, it's the first to embed "Double Hi-Fi" integrated amp circuitry. According to Biostar, that allows users to enjoy the same high quality sound whether the output is set to the front or rear of the PC.
It also supports Blu-ray audio and features 30uF gold plated audio connectors, a noise-blocking multi-layer PCB design to isolate analog audio signals from digital sources, and a 110dB SNR.
Moving on, the board uses 100 percent solid capacitors and offers "Super LAN" surge protection, which boils down to an integrated chip that strengthens electrical stablity and prevents damages from lightning strikes and electrical surges.
It's a socket LGA 1150 board with support for up to 32GB of DDR3-1600 memory, two PCI-E x16 slots (one 3.0, one 2.0), two PCI-E x1 2.0 slots, two standard PCI slots, four SATA 6Gbps connectors, two SATA 3Gbps connectors, GbE LAN, two USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, and various display outputs (HDMI, DVI, and VGA).
The Hi-Fi B85Z5 goes for $89 MSRP.
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