Biostar's Hi-Fi H170S3H Shouldn't Be Called Hi-Fi

Biostar announced a new motherboard for the LGA 1151 platform, the Hi-Fi H170S3H. Although this board falls into Biostar's Hi-Fi series of motherboards, you shouldn't expect high-end audio here.

Power Design & Connectivity

The Hi-Fi H170S3H is a microATX motherboard, targeting mid-range budget PC builders. The motherboard has an adequate 7-phase power design with an ISL (Intersil) PWM controller, which shouldn't have any issue handling any of the currently available Skylake processors.

Biostar opted to use four DDR3L DIMM slots instead of the typical DDR4 slots used on Skylake motherboards, which makes the overall system build a little less expensive thanks to the lower price of DDR3L.

The motherboard has a total of four SATA 3 connectors, two of which are set up to be used in a SATA Express configuration. It also features an M.2 Key M connection. There are two PCI-E x16 interfaces; one is fed via the CPU's on-board PCI-E controller, whereas the other uses an x4 PCI-E lane configuration from the H170 chipset. In between the x16 slots are two PCI-E x1 ports.

For USB connectivity, there are four USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports on the back I/O panel, with an additional two USB 3.0 and four USB 2.0 connections available via use of internal headers.

HSIO Lanes

Unlike some high-end motherboards, like the ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Professional Gaming i7, there shouldn't be any serious connectivity issues on this motherboard with the HSIO lanes. The H170 chipset features a total of 22 HSIO lanes that can be used by the various connectivity devices across the motherboard. Between the PCI-E (6 lanes), USB 3.0 (6 lanes), M.2 (4 lanes), LAN (1 lane) and SATA connections (5 lanes), Biostar has utilized all 22 HSIO lanes, but none of the lanes are shared with other devices.

Hi-Fi Audio (JK)

Overall, the board looks to be well rounded, but it does have one issue: the audio. Biostar lists these motherboards as being Hi-Fi solutions, trying to attract users with the promise of an excellent audio experience. The problem is that Biostar is cutting corners in this area. The audio ALC887 codec is rather old, and although it is still commonly used on motherboards, it isn't what you would expect from a "Hi-Fi" solution.

Biostar reinforced the codec with four high quality capacitors and segmented the codec from the rest of the motherboard as indicated by the yellow trace line seen in the bottom right-hand corner, but the company doesn't use a shield to cover the audio chipset and further reduce electromagnetic interference.

On a budget motherboard, I typically would still consider this to be a sound and sensible audio solution, which should be better than some competing motherboards (at least by design), but Biostar made two more mistakes with its implementation.

First, it used only three 3.5 mm audio connections and excluded an SPDIF port, limiting users to at best a 4-channel audio solution and microphone. Second, it wrote "Hi-Fi" all over the place to describe a product that is clearly not Hi-Fi, using the term purely for marketing purposes without any real features to back it up.

Although the audio capabilities of the motherboard are being talked up too much and oversold, the board is still quite well rounded and should perform well as a mid-range budget solution. There is currently no word on pricing or availability.

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Michael Justin Allen Sexton (or MJ) is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. As a tech enthusiast, MJ enjoys studying and writing about all areas of tech, but specializes in the study of chipsets and microprocessors. In his personal life, MJ spends most of his time gaming, practicing martial arts, studying history, and tinkering with electronics.

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