Limitations of Gigabyte GA-B250M-DS3H Intel B250

I'm upgrading to Kaby from my ancient Athlon II, going for a Pentium G4560. It's a fairly general use machine with some casual gaming but nothing to intensive. Would like it to last a similar length of time (5~6 years) before I need to upgrade again.

Still trying to narrow down which motherboard, I don't need tonnes of features but would like to be relatively futureproof without spending tonnes.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Gigabyte GA-B250M-DS3H Intel B250 (Socket 1151) DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard= £69.95

This looks to be a frontrunner to me, important to me are 4 ram slots for upgrading in future, and the possibility of using an m.2 SSD too, though again that will come later.

So what I wanted to know, is what can't this motherboard do, that might be useful to me, other than the following

1. Overclock (not sure the Pentium can OC anyway?)
2. SLI/Crossfire
3. USB-C
4. 7.1 etc. audio which I don't need

Obviously don't need every tiny detail and spec, just want a sense check that I'm not missing out on some current or future feature by buying low end.

Thanks

Memory speed on B250 boards is limited to 2133mhz or 2400mhz by overclocking but with a Pentium you don't really need fast ram anyway. No overclocking (not that you can with a Pentium), no crossfire/sli. To be honest I would spend a extra fiver for this board:-

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Gigabyte GA-B250M-D3H Intel B250 (Socket 1151) DDR4 Micro ATX Motherboard= £74.99

It has cooling for the vrm's, better connectivity, slightly better audio chip and it does do crossfire should you wish to go down that route in the future (probably not a good idea with a Pentium though). Ignore OCUK's description as it's wrong. It looks like somebody copy/pasted the description from the DS3H.

You can see the differences between the two board in a side by side comparison here.

Thanks very much mate, I will definitely go ahead with that board.

When referring to ram, do I have to buy 2133MHz? I can't put 2400MHz straight in?

The cheapest 2x4GB 2133MHz is £59.99 and the cheapest 2x4GB 2400MHz is £49.99, so I'd rather go for that even if it will be limited to 2133 once in the board.

Specifically I'm referring to this kit @ £49.99. Now I look closer, it says
'Tested Speed: DDR4-2400 MHz (PC4-19200)'
'SPD Speed: 2133 MHz'
I've googled what SPD means but not really sure what's going on. Essentially, will that ram work fine in the GA-B250M-D3H board?

Worst case is that it will just run at 2133mhz. Best case is that you can overclock the ram to it's full 2400mhz. Even if it's stuck at 2133mhz you should be able to tighten the timings up a bit which will make up for the speed difference. SPD speed is sort of the speed it defaults to without any tinkering or activating a XMP profile so 2133mhz at 1.2v. For 2400mhz the voltage increases to 1.35v by the looks of it. Regardless, it should work fine in that board.


***Edit*** At 2133mhz it looks like the timings are slightly tighter at 15-15-15-36 compared to 16-16-16-36 at 2400mhz so there won't be much of a performance loss even if you only get 2133mhz out of it. It will certainly be nothing that you would notice unless you run a memory specific benchmark.

Great thanks for your help, much appreciated