GIGABYTE X79-UP4 Review

👤by Richard Weatherstone Comments 📅21-10-12
Closer Look



The VRM heatsink of the UP4 is a jagged aluminium affair which is staggered to cool the VRM while making most use of the area. The X79 heatsink is of a familiar design which again is oversized but not intrusively so. Both heatsinks have a gunmetal grey coating which contrasts against the Matt black PCB perfectly.



Removing the heatsinks was a little more involved than usual thanks to the spring loaded screws, normally only found on high-end motherboards. With the chipset heatsink removed we can see that the X79 chipset heatsink was perfectly mounted.



Here we can see the new VRM from GIGABYTE. There are 8 phases in total, 6+1 above (CPU and System Agent) and a further choke below the CPU socket controlling the VTT. There are also further 2 Power stages for the memory (40A each). All of the components come under the Ultra Durable 5 banner which also includes sold capacitors and a 2oz Copper PCB, twice as much copper as other leading manufacturers.

It is also interesting to note that the PCB is 'designed for overclocking use'. It would be easy to dismiss this as marketing babble to mean it is a performance motherboard but the motherboard features weaved 'humidity' protection which should offer better protecting against spillages than other mainboards. That isn't, of course, to say the usual precautions shouldn't be used when watercooling rather this mainboard offers a little more protection than usual should the worst happen and you get a leak.



The dual BIOS makes another appearance on this main board allowing users to flash their BIOS without fear of 'bricking' the board due to corruption as there is a back-up BIOS available to flashback to if required.



Finally we see that the on-board audio is controlled via the Realtek ALC892 controller, standard on most motherboard today.

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