Biostar NM70I-847 Motherboard Review: Integrated Dual Core CPU & Graphics

Simply put; the Biostar NM70I-847 Motherboard is superb. It's a fantastic motherboard for anyone looking to build a PC for the first time with ample space for expansion, lots of power and most importantly: very good value for money.

Biostar is by no means the most popular motherboard and component manufacturer out there. They are indeed based in East Asia, but now-a-days even the highest quality components from the likes of IBM, Intel and ASUS are manufactured in that part of the world too. To put you completely at rest, you should know the Biostar have been doing this since the 1980s so they are by no means cheap, inexperienced or unreliable.

The Biostar NM70I-847 Motherboard features almost everything you need to get started, all in one board. The only additional things you'll need to pick up is a hard drive, some RAM and a power supply.

Features:

• Integrated Intel Sandybridge Celeron 847 Dual Core 1.1GHz processor
• Integrated Intel HD 2000 graphics chip with up to 1.5GB shared memory
• 2x DDR3 memory slot (max 16GB total)
• 1x PCIe slot
• 1x SATA 3 connector, 3x SATA 2 connector
• 4x integrated USB 2.0 port, 2x USB 2.0 header
• Integrated Ethernet/LAN - 10/100/1000 controller
• Realtek 6 Channel HD Audio
• Windows 8 ready
• Integrated VGA and HDMI ports

The list above is not exhaustive but shows the raw capabilities of the motherboard. The Dual Core processor is built with Intel's Sandybridge technology and alongside the integrated graphics chip this motherboard can easily power through running Photoshop or Counterstrike in full HD at 24fps.

The BIOS is very easy to configure and easily allows you to overclock the components if needed. You can easily setup SATA drives, the PCIe slot and other settings to optimise the performance of the motherboard at boot up.

A total of four SATA connectors gives you plenty of space to add additional DVD and BlueRay drives as well as being able to support the full 6GB/s capabilities of a solid-state hard drive.

The motherboard itself is very compact and takes up the micro-ITX formfactor, but nevertheless it has space for two full size DDR3 DIMM memory slots which can host a maximum of 16GB of RAM. Impressive for what it is.

The best thing about this motherboard is that for well under £100 you are getting a fairly advanced board supporting some of the latest technologies as well as a mighty budget processor and HD graphics. It is perfect for anyone looking to do a budget build, or someone trying their hands on building a computer for the first time.

Question marks may fall on the Celeron processor's ability to actually handle day-to-day tasks. Rest assured that the 32nm Sandybridge technology within the 1.1GHz processor is more than enough to handle a good run with photoshop or some light gaming without any issues at all. You may want to consider adding an external graphics card to the PCIe slot instead, or just simply increase the memory (RAM) to take advantage of the integrated maximum of 1.5GB of shared memory.