One very cool feature this board has and one which overclockers will adore is the OC-Touch panel. The large red button is the main power button. Next to this is a 4G button. When pressed this will allow the motherboard (upon re-boot) reset the BIOS to a preloaded 4GHz configuration. I will cover this later in the review but while useful for novice overclockers, is perhaps a little insulting to the extreme overclockers. Below the 4G button are +/- buttons which adjust the CPU multiplier on-the-fly. The Gear button is for adjusting baseclock frequency adjustments. Press this button and you can fine tune the baseclock in 0.3Mhz increments. In standard form the +/- buttons will adjust the baseclock in 1MHz steps. Ideal for getting the absolute maximum from your overclock!

All of the buttons light up with an amber backlight depending on the configuration used be it intermittently lit when the button is pressed or always on.



As the name suggests, this is where you can accurately measure the voltages of the mainboards output either by using the included cables or via the contact points. I will assess later in the review how accurate the board reads using a multimeter.



Dip Switches are somewhat a rarity on motherboards today thanks to the digital era. However for overclockers using extreme cooling Dip Switches can be a god send. Especially ones which can adjust the VRM switching frequency. The frequencies range from standard 400KHz through to 1MHz using a combination of switching modes.



GIGABYTE have seen fit to include a debug LED. While this is nothing truly innovative as we have seen this device many times before, it is certainly a useful device in deciphering where any boot issues may lay. A full rundown of the two digit codes are found in the motherboard manual.




Here we see the beautiful IOH heatsink. The unit is matt black but also has a plastic inserts which cover a strip of LED's (amber). These LEDs are continually on but are unnoticeable during daylight. At night the motherboard comes alive though so while the LEDs are purely for decoration they do make the board look just as menacing during darkness as it is during the day. The heatsink is aluminium but very heavy thanks to the thick finned design. Unusually for a high end motherboard, the IOH is not connected to the ICH chipset, The IOH is however connected to the VRM heatsink via a heatpipe.



The Southbridge heatsink at first glance appears to be much larger than what we are used to seeing. It is made of the same material as the IOH heatsink but the thick fins instead of pointing upwards, stretch across the mainboard to increase the surface area thereby enhancing cooling potential.



Here you can see the overhang of the ICH heatsink. The heatink is low enough that it won't interfere with graphics cards.



Both the IOH and ICH have surface mounted LEDs hidden beneath plastic inserts. This is purely for aesthetic value and thus has no other function other than to make the board look even more appealing during darkness.



As previously stated, the VRM is attached to the IOH via a single heatpipe. This ensures that the heatload is spread over a wider area and lessons the chance of one component overheating. Unlike the IOH/ICH sections, the VRM heatsink is not enriched with LEDs but it does have a plastic insert to match the colour scheme of the rest of the motherboard.

While the VRM/IOH heatsink assembly is quite tall with thick angled fins, you will see in our test setup that even large aircoolers such as the Prolimatech Super-Mega doesn't present any issues.



The IOH section has an aluminium baseplate and uses standard paste for thermal interface to the exposed core while both VRM and ICH heatsinks make do with thermal pads. GIGABYTE have also elected to cool the Entrontech USB 3.0 controller (far left) with a thermal pad for heat transfer to the VRM heatsink.

Let's take a look at the on-board IC's and of course the heart of the motherboard, the Voltage regulation circuitry...