welcome to a very exciting and very exclusive unboxing this is the Gigabyte
G1 snipers actually I think that's a two
the G1 Sniper 2 I actually have not only the Sniper 2 but also the sniper one so
we can compare them against each other but let's go over what is similar about
them before we even get started here so number one they're both made by Gigabyte
number two they both have three-year warranty in the US and Canada
number four I lost track okay they're
also both part of the G1 gaming series of motherboards from Gigabyte which
means these are decked out to the nines
with all the gear you need for gaming we also have XI extreme Fidelity sound on
both of these boards killer e2100 gaming
networking built into both of these boards and support for fast Intel
processors built into both of these boards however they are different the G1
sniper us the Intel x58 platform and 1366 CPUs the G1 Sniper 2 uses the z68
platform and Intel second generation core i7 Core i5 and core I3 CPUs so that
means it does support sandybridge processors and they have also built in
support for upcoming Intel 22 nanom
processors which are codenamed ivybridge so you are going to be buying a fairly
futureproof motherboard with the Sniper 2 last but not least it is ready for for
Native PCI Express gen 3 that is double
the bandwidth or quadruple the bandwidth of PCI Express 2.0 and 1.0 respectively
very cool so that means even if you're running 2-way SLI with dual 8X PCI
Express 3.0 graphics cards that will be the same bandwidth that used to be
available to motherboards that were running dual SLI in dual 16x PCIe 2.0
slots so there's something to consider because it does support sandybridge we
do have full support for Intel SRT
technology so that's where you take your SSD you use it as a cache for your hard
drive and you can run up to four times faster in a real world scenario uh
honestly it baffles me that more people aren't using SRT because it really does
work it's very very cool let's go ahead
and start taking this box apart here and
we'll do our typical unboxing and then I'm going to do a bit of a comparison
between the Sniper 2 and the sniper one I'll take that one out as well and we'll
have a we'll have a quick look at it so here's the Sniper 2 comes in a nice
matte black box to match that gorgeous matte black
PCB and let's look at what we've got in terms of accessories we have the
Gigabyte G1 series poster which I have
seen a couple of times included with G1 series boards with the original assassin
sniper and gorilla characters on the front as well as a target with pre-
bullet hold holes on it for you on the
back next we have some stickers including more bullet holes a skull some
bullets more bullets and bullet holes
excellent stuff finally we have a Gigabyte sticker not finally there's
still more actually this is a very rich accessory package users manual including
some notes uh PCI Express 16x slots are
compatible with Next Generation Intel 22 NM CPUs and support the PCI Express 3.0
standard very cool uh driver disc throw that away download latest from the
Gigabyte website smart response technology installation guide um
Gigabyte actually has a much better much smarter way to install this just
download the little utility off their website it's awesome it's so easy I
couldn't even believe it all right next we've got four SATA
cables remember those are going to be compatible with SATA 2 or SATA 3 doesn't
really matter and a DVI to HDMI adapter
remember those are signal compatible so it doesn't really matter if you use an
adapter there is no signal degradation we have an Shield a black flexible SLI
Bridge nice touch I hate seeing those ugly Brown SLI Bridges including on
included on high-end boards cuz it just
makes your build look terrible oh this is nice look at this okay so Gigabyte
includes quick boost so I'm guessing that's a OneTouch overclocking button
ESAT USB combo port and then two USB 3.0
ports in a 5 and 1/4 in Bay uh adapter piece very nice because a lot lot of
cases still don't support usb3 so you can add that to your
existing case while you wait to upgrade it or whatever the case may be very
nice and here it is the Sniper
2 their G1 series boards just look so
good like they just look so good
Gigabyte used to be kind of uh in my eyes a bit of a joke in terms of their
aesthetic but theyve just turned that completely around
with this with the G1 series boards they've got a very sharp overall look so
we're using a matte black PCB we have certain shiny components including the
vrms including the CPU socket we've got a little bullet sticking out of I
believe you guys were telling me this is a MAG not a clip can't remember for the
life of me anymore uh We've also got the barrel of a pistol as part of the mosfet
cooling up here and uh green lights here
that look just great if you throw in something like a g TX 590 which also has
glowing lights on the side looks just amazing in a gaming build
um oh that's interesting okay getting
getting to that later so why don't we look at the overall layout of the board
first so first of all we start with the CPU socket in the middle that is an LGA
1155 socket supporting Intel Sandy bridge and even Ivy Bridge CPUs so be
ready for that we've got our power delivery up here in the top left exactly
where it belongs that's an 8 Pin uh eight pin SL slot next we have our CPU
fan connector here which is a four pin pwm CPU fan connector you can clearly
see the vrm cooling is using a sort of a
gun metal themed gun appearance themed
look it's got heat pipes that are carrying from the uh well from the
chipset up to this side and then it just has a dedicated uh non-heat piped uh
mosfit heat sink up at the top moving over to the right hand side we have four
DDR3 slots supporting dual Channel
operation next we have our 24 pin power connector along the right hand Edge and
this is something that I just don't see enough of USB 3 header on the right hand
edge of the board this is the smartest place for it I am just tired of running
front panel connectors way down here to the bottom when you don't have to they
should be right here because that's where they're going to be the closest to the front of your case love it great
designs decision next we've got two SATA
3 connectors running off of a thirdparty chipset we have two SATA 3 connectors
running off of the Intel chipset and then we have three SATA 2 connectors
also running off the Intel chipset your last Intel sata2 connector is likely
running off the back as an EA connector
all right next we've got some more you know what I'll do a summary of The Fan
headers at the end so that you guys can see where they all are here is the
custom header for the OC button that was on that front panel next we've got our
front panel headers we've got a clear seimos jumper we've got
uh ah front USB so you see the one with the red background that means that it
supports uh higher current so you can actually charge things like tablets with
the utility from the Gigabyte website off of those particular ports so make
sure you've plug those ones in first you've got a couple more front USB 2s
front panel audio and in terms of PCIe slot layout we've got two PCIe 16x slots
two PCIe 1X slots and two PCI slots so
that's pretty good mix if you install two dual Slot Cards you're going to be
covering these guys those two and those
two so that'll leave you with one PCI e1x and one PCI slot now having fewer
expansion slots on a board like this is far less of a concern because you
already have a very high-end hardware sound card check that out and a very
high-end Hardware Nick those are already built into the board so you pretty much
don't need to replace them with with anything very very cool all right
actually okay yeah I promised I'd do you guys the summary of all of the CPU
connectors so our fan connectors rather we've got one two uh stay further back
so I can just point out where they are three
4 5 five yep fan five fan connectors it's
a very respectable amount and they are all pwm so you don't have to fuss with
any sort of uh linear voltage adjustments for changing the RPM of your
fans on the back here we will find 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 USB 2.0 ports that guy is a
combo USB 2 ESAT Port love these ports so handy everything should be this
flexible and then two USB 3.0 ports
personally I believe that's enough especially if you already have two in the front since most things that I'm
using USB 3 for these days are just storage anyway which I'm plugging and
unplugging fairly frequently we've got our OC button on the back all right that
should be pretty self-explanatory it OC's next we have a PS2 USB U PS2
keyboard mouse combo Port an HDMI output
more on that in just a second and then we have gigabit Ethernet and finally 7.1
audio with optical audio out so this is
a feature that I didn't mention before this is Intel Quicks sync so what you
can do is you can use that HDMI port you can use your HDMI to DVI adapter put it
in like that and you can actually take advantage of the onboard graphics card
built into the Intel CPU to transcode video even when you're running a
dedicated graphics card there is a slight performance decrease but I would
say for the incredible boost you get in transcoding performance especially if
you have a tablet or a smartphone you want to switch your videos over to a
compatible format it is an enormous advantage to the Intel z68 platform so
thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Gigabyte G1 Sniper 2 don't forget
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