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This video is brought to you by the Intel Core i7 4770K unlocked processor.

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If you're a speed freak, add an Intel 3500 series SSD to your Haswell system

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for a truly enthusiast class experience.

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Welcome to a much demanded unboxing.

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This is from Gigabytes G1 killer series of boards. This is the G1 Sniper 5

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gaming motherboard. Now, a lot of people

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ask me what what the heck is a gaming motherboard. And I think Gigabyte had it

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mostly right with the original G1 series board. So, that was the Assassin, the

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Sniper, and the Gorilla. But, there were a few things that they got wrong. At the

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time, it was a very strange platform to have a premium gaming board on LG 1366

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when there was a more updated platform on a different socket. And also, they

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were extremely expensive. Gigabyte has adjusted pricing down somewhat uh

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compared to the original Assassin, but keep kept the premium features coming.

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So, they've actually been improved over those older boards, even though the

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Sniper 5 is not as expensive as the Assassin was. That isn't to say that

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this is an inexpensive motherboard, because my friends, it is not. It is

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extremely expensive. Let's go ahead and run through the accessories. Like, look

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at this box of accessories. This is unbelievable. Four-way SLI bridge. 3-way

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SLI bridge. Two-way SLI bridge. No

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Crossfire bridge. That's okay. That should come with your uh your motherboard. USB cable for the I believe

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this is for the uh Bluetooth guy. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Sorry. Crossfire

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bridge. There you go. Nice black one. Matches your board. Next up, we've got

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antenna for wireless. Next up, we've got

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aha front three and a half inch USB 3 bay

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device op amp upgrade kit. I'll show you this later. Okay, a nice sexy black IO

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shield. One, two, three, six connectors. Cables, not connectors.

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A manual. Another more different guide book. A manual for the wireless. And

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finally, a Gigabyte sticker. Yes, one of

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the most complete accessory kits ever.

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And what I like about Gigabytes wireless implementation is it's just PCI Express.

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They don't use some proprietary module. So, if you happen to buy yourself a

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Sniper 5 and you don't want wireless on your gaming motherboard that has super

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advanced onboard wired networking, you grab this thing, you throw it in another

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machine like your Media Center PC, and boom, you've got Bluetooth and wireless

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on that machine instead. I think it's a great value ad and more manufacturers

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should move towards nonproprietary accessories with their boards as opposed

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to stuff that you can only use only with

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this board and and only this board. Okay. Anyway, uh so moving right along,

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we've got black solid caps rated at 10,000 hours at 105°, which is unlikely

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to happen in your computer. Please don't let your computer run at 105°. A

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goldplated CPU socket. This is one of the few scenarios where gold plating

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would actually matter because what's good about gold plating is that it's

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malleable, meaning that it will last for more insertions and removals, which is

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one of the problems with these LGA sockets. They're not actually rated for

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very many of them. It has a two times copper PCB, so this is part of their

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ultra durable five concept. Their glass fabric PCB that makes it more resistant

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to humidity, as well as all IR digital

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power phases. So, those are under there and unfortunately you can't really see

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them, but you'll have to trust me. They're really good and particularly on

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my Gigabyte board. So, I use an X79 UP5 on my personal system. No coil wine

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whatsoever, which is definitely thumbs up. Other physical sort of I consider I

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consider this a durable feature, but I don't think that's actually how they brand it. But some somewhere on here,

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there are two physical there they are. Two physical UEFI BIOS chips, meaning

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that you can switch between them. There's actually an LED indicator so you can see which one you're using. And I

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want to move right along to the cooling solution. So this is one of the things

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they were really talking about a lot at Computex. It uses I would consider this

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a three option cooling solution. So it can be either completely passive. There

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you go. See, you can see the heat pipe that connects it all the way down to the south bridge area here. Or you can run

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an active fan to cool it. Gigabyte claims it's silent. I call bollocks on

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that because all these little tiny fans have an irritating wine that drives me

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absolutely crazy. So, I would leave that off. Or you can use the integrated

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liquid cooling for maximum cooling. They

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use 3/8 inch barbs. And while I would have preferred a G1 quarter socket like

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ASUS has implemented on the Maximus 6 formula, the key difference between this

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and the Maximus 6 formula is this is actually available right from the launch

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of Haswell and well there that's this is

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actually available right now. Although that will be coming soon. I would have preferred that, but I use 38 in tubes

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anyway, so it wouldn't bother me personally that much. But if you prefer/

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inch or quarter inch or you want to use nice angled compressions, then you're

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pretty much out of luck on this one. It

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also has nine integrated fan connectors,

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of which seven of them are fully controllable, and one of them is kind of

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special. So, there's the CPU fan connector right up here, as well as the

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CPU optional one. This is optimized for things like hooking up a secondary pump

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that you want to run at 100% all the time, or some large heat sinks that

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actually have dual fans on them. You can plug that in and that's sort of an

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auxiliary CPU fan header. Other than that, we've got a couple more here. Only

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three pins, unfortunately. I'd like to see more manufacturers moving towards

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entirely four pin PWM fan header designs. You got 1 2 3 four along the

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bottom. Really like to see this because particularly with a lot of cases that

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have basements, whether it's hard drive cooling fans or radiators or whatever

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else down there, it's nice to have the option to plug everything into the

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bottom of the board as well. And then there's one here at the back which is

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again nice to see. So they've really put a lot of thought into where those fan

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headers are as opposed to just uh you know putting them all up here as if

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we're all running front five and a

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quarter bay mounted fans. Like who does

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that? Nobody does that. Anyway, moving right along. Uh gaming oriented

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features. So, it supports 4-way Crossfire and 4-way SLI, which means

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that using PLX chips and PCI Express lane splitters and all that stuff,

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you're achieving at least PCIe 8X 2.0

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per slot when you install four cards. However, it should be noted that those

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splitters don't magically add more bandwidth to the platform and they can

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actually introduce latency. So, I don't necessarily like the implementation, but

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NVIDIA limits SLI compatible slots to

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ones that operate at 8x or more for their reported speed. So, in order to

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get four-way SLI working, that's what Gigabyte had to do. And to make it sort

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of as gaming balls to the walls as they could, they wanted four-way crossfire

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and four-way SLI support. You've also got three additional PCIe 1X slots.

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Other gaming features, this right here, actually, we'll move into audio later.

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So this right here, dual land implementation. So they've got a an

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Intel nick as well as a Bigfoot Network.

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So remember that is a Qualcomm solution now. Bigfoot Networks E2200, meaning

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that you've got on the-ly packet prioritization for your gaming traffic

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as well as a couple of other neat software implementation features that I

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really like. For example, you could limit the bandwidth available for to a

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particular application. So when I used to upload YouTube videos on my home

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connection that wasn't as strong, it would just kill the internet connections

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of everyone else in the house because it was completely saturating it. Then with

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an with a Bigfoot nick, I could actually limit it to no only upload at this

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speed. So everyone else was able to use the internet as well. So that's

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something that I really like to see. And remember guys, the SATA ports are

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colorcoordinated. So the six black ones are going to be off the Intel chipset

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and those four gray ones are off of the Marll chipset. In terms of other

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connectors on the board that are notable, we've got onboard power and

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reset connectors as well as onboard V checkpoints and a post indicator LED. A

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24 pin power connector I personally consider extremely handy. As well as

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onboard USB 3. You can tell from the red background that that supports their

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onoff charge feature which allows you to charge even high current draw Android or

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iOS devices even while the computer is off. You've got auxiliary power. I

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recommend using this if you're running three graphics cards or more. You've

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also got your front panel connectors, an additional front USB3 connector,

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although this one does not support onoff charge, as well as two USB 2 front panel

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connectors and front audio, which leads us to audio. So this right here, this

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little strip actually illuminates green when the board is powered on and

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represents a physical segregation

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between the rest of the board and the part of the PCB that handles audio. This

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is the first time we've seen this feature and it kind of smacks of a bit

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of a oh well they were doing it so we were doing it sort of thing especially with the LED illumination but it's a

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good feature and I'm glad to see it implemented on more boards. Gigabyte has

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taken their sort of their awesome onboard audio concept that they first

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introduced with the G1 series and they've really upped the ante. So check

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this out. They're using a Soundcore 3D quadcore processor for the sound

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processor. How meaningful is it that it's quad core? Not at all. But what you

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do get is you get Creative's software suite and you have hardware accelerating

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it. So it couldn't be that bad, even if quad core doesn't necessarily mean

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anything. You've also got audiograde capacitors here. And check that out.

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swappable op amp on a motherboard. So,

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that's what this little kit here was for. It actually includes uh a chip

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puller as well as a second op amp. So, you can try out which one you like more.

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What op amps do is they change the signature of the sound. They change the

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the sort of I don't want to say quality, but they do change the qu the subjective

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quality of the sound. So, you can not only try out the two that come with your

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board, but you can swap in pretty much whatever you want and really change the

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way that the sound operates. They've also got an amplifier that is capable of

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powering up to 600 ohm headphones. However, if you're running headphones

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like that, you shouldn't be using onboard audio, even if it's fantastic

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onboard audio. And all of the audio connectors, look at those. Those are

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sexy, are goldplated, which may actually matter for these connectors cuz you want

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to make sure you have a nice solid connection. It is an analog connector,

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particularly for digital connections like USB, it totally doesn't matter, but

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this it might actually help, especially if you unplug and plug things in

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repeatedly. And as far as convenience features go, they have their automated

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overclocking as well as their Q flash utility that makes BIOS flashes a

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breeze. And I think I've covered the other things that I wanted to say about

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that. Let's move right along to Onboard

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IO. Here we go. So, two USB 2.0 ports, a

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PS2 keyboard mouse combo port. I still like to see these. Coaxial uh digital

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audio out as well as optical digital audio out. Six USB 3.0 0 ports, dual

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HDMI, DisplayPort, and 7.1 audio out.

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The power connectors, including the 8 pin up here, as well as the 24 pin over

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on the right hand edge, are in their optimal locations. And it should be

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noted, this is a slightly wider board than normal. So, it's an EATX board, but

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not a fully EATX board. So, it only uses the standard ATX mounting holes. Thank

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you for checking out this unboxing. Don't forget to subscribe to Lance Tech

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Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. And leave a

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comment and let me know what you think, guys. Would you spend $400 on a

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motherboard at this point? Or would you buy a cheaper board, maybe $150 board?

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Gigabyte has some great $150 boards, throw a high-end sound card in it, throw

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a high-end Nick card in it, and call that a day. Which do you actually think

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is a better option?