ASUS P8H77-I
The P8H77-I is a small ITX motherboard based on the H77 chipset. The board is from the same family as the previously tested P8Z77-I Deluxe, but comes with less bells and whistles (no WiFi and so on). It's the most expensive motherboard in this round-up with an average price of £78.
The board comes with a single PCI-Express x16 expansion slot. ASUS did include six full SATA connectors, useful for creating a Home Server. There are 8x USB 2.0 (6 external) and 4x USB 3.0 (2x external). For the onboard sound ASUS used the lower-quality VIA VT1708S chip. You also get every type of monitor connectors except DisplayPort.
We called the P8Z77-I Deluxe the ultimate motherboard for HTPCs and Home Servers. Since you won't be overclocking in any case, the cheaper H77 version could be an interesting option. Unfortunately, a couple things prevent it from being the perfect solution.
The audio quality of the VIA audio chip isn't great, with a signal-to-noise ratio of only 75 dB(A). The energy consumption is very high as well, the 37.2 watts is higher than even the high-end P8Z77-I Deluxe, not to mention the other H77 boards. It's unclear whether this is due to a BIOS that's not been optimised or poor hardware design.
