Welcome to my unboxing and first look at Gigabyte. Actually, a really exciting
board from Gigabyte. This has a whole bunch of really cool stuff that I'm
super excited about. And I want to preface this whole unboxing video by
saying this looks like it might be the board for me. I'm uh I'm in the still in
the middle of doing my my personal rig upgrade and I'm super excited about this
board. Ultra durable five ultra cool, ultraefficient, ultra performance and
high current capability. So they have completely redesigned their VRM design.
So well VRM design, yes, redesigned their design. Industry-leading 60 amp
rated power stage with lower losses, higher efficiency, and excellent thermal
management. What this means to me is that in previous almost everyone's X79
boards because there's so little room to build the VRM, you have to use really
high quality components to deliver the kind of current those CPUs demand.
Almost all of them made like whining obnoxious noises. So, Gigabyte has just
revamped it completely to the point where they're saying, "Yep, this is
awesome. It's the best. We are going to put a five-year warranty on this in the
US and Canada." And uh you know they're
just basically like I wish I had sunglasses. Okay, cameraman tripped. I
wish I had sunglasses so I could like put them on like this and just be like
yeah. So that's pretty much what they're doing at this point. So let's uh let's
finish up with the rest of the box. So this is the X79S UP5. This is using the
Intel chipset C606. So they're using the officially Zeon supporting Xeon grade
chipset. Comes with you know what? Let's not talk too much about accessories. Includes their 3D power. So digital
power for the CPU and uh to for each of
the memory channels uh or not for each of the memory
channels for each of the sets of memory channels or whatever something like that. Um worldwide number one digital
desktop PWM provider. Okay. So they're actually giving you the brand of the
power components they're using. Very cool. Uh so the 3D BIOS, a UFI BIOS with
uh with backup like physical backup SAS on board ECC memory support. So, this is
more like a workstation board really than just a desktop board. This is not
like your grandpa's desktop board. Uh, cool power inside and out. So, single
package design, industryleading 60 amp rated power stage, high-side MOSFET, low
side MOSFET, all on a single package. So, check this out. So, they're saying
compared to traditional or even lower RDS on MOSFETs, which their competitors
are still talking about, the IR 355 power IR stage, power stage. Oh, wow.
That's hilarious. runs cooler and delivers more power. Same thing here,
cooler temps equals high and higher overclocks. And this is for a couple of
reasons. So, number one is that your VRM components will perform better when
they're running cooler. And number two is that when all these components down
here over here, when all these components around the outside of the CPU
socket are hot, it does inherently make your CPU run hotter. And I think that's
pretty much it. So, they still got their two times copper PCB, which basically
amounts to better cooling, better conduction, and let's get the board
open. I am just like super stoked to check this out. So, motherboard
itself opened up. Oh, I love what Gigabytes been doing
with their motherboard color schemes since pretty much P67. Matte black.
Okay, you know what? Hold on. Hold on. We got to do accessories first. We'll just blow through these because I really
want to check out the board. So, here's their uh PCI Express Wi-Fi Bluetooth
module. This is a great value ad because you can not only install it in your
Gigabyte board, but you can also just install it in some other computer if you
don't plan to use wireless in your gaming PC. So, um yes, they haven't
locked it down the way that ASUS does with a lot of their add-ons. And check that out. Matte black PCB on this, too.
Way to go, Gigabyte. Figuring out the details and getting it done. Same thing.
Flexible black Crossfire and SLI bridges. Perfect. black antennas for the
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Perfect. Um,
whatever this cable connects to, it's black and it's perfect. Uh, we've got
six SATA 36 GB per second connection,
uh, cables. We've got a front 3 and 1/2 in bay that you can use to hook up a
couple USB 3 ports if you don't have um,
if you don't have that functionality built into your case. You've got a
three-way SLI bridge included. So, this board is three-way SLI and Crossfire
compatible. Matte black, of course, gorgeous. I think this might be the best
overall package that Gigabytes ever done on a motherboard ever. And Gigabyte can
take that feedback right back to their HQ because I have unboxed almost every
Gigabyte motherboard in the last few years. IO shield, color coded, but not
too color coded. See, it's not overdone. Perfect. Manual was it's a driver disc.
Download the latest uh manual for the wireless thing or something.
multilingual place your guide book. Okay, accessories are done. We're done.
We're done. We're moving on to the good part. So, let's check out this board.
This is not quite an ATX board. This is an EATX board, but it's not quite EATX
either. It's just a touch wider than ATX. So, if you have an ATX case that's
a little bit on the wide side, this should fit just fine. You've got the
motherboard socket. This is an LG 2011 socket supporting Intel Core i7 up to
Extreme Edition processors with quad channel memory. You've got eight banks
of memory on here. So that means you can with 8 gig dims, you can install up to
64 gigs of memory, no problem. Although, you know, ECC does start to become
something you might want when you have that much RAM. Fully supported on this
particular board. Your eight pin power connectors in its ideal location at the
top of the board. I wouldn't have minded seeing it a little bit over here, but I
understand why they've done this because it's right behind the PWM and then right
next to the CPU socket. So they've gone for a very efficient layout in terms of
not overdoing, you know, extra random traces that it takes to, you know, carry
the power over here through here. So efficiency is what it's all about with
this particular board. Onboard power switch is up here on the top right in
its ideal location. 24 pin power connectors on the right hand edge in its
ideal location. I wouldn't have minded seeing this USB 3 front panel header on
a right angle, but other than that, not bad. Not bad. Now check this out. Look
at all these connectors. Holy smokes. So you've got two Intel powered SATA 3 6
Gbit per second connectors. You've got four Intel powered SATA 2 3 Gbit per
second connectors and eight SAS 6 Gbit
per second connectors. So that is a total of 14 SATA port uh SATA ports on
this board. So you can fill up pretty much any case that you can put this
board in with hard drives without worrying about a darn thing. Dual BIOS
right here. So you have two physical BIOSes. Here's your onboard reset
switch. Wouldn't have minded seeing that sort of up here with the power switch, but not the end of the world. Front
panel connectors. That's your supercharging, you know, high powered
USB uh 2.0 front panel header. So, that'll allow you to charge your iPad
off of it. Extra current. Two regular USB 2 front panel headers, your trusted
platform module, front FireWire, front audio, and moving right along, you got
your PCI Express layout. So, even though this is an EATX board, usually X79
boards go for an XLATX longer form factor if they're going to try and
squeeze in seven slots. A Gigabyte has gone with six slots for this board, but
you're still going to have full 3-way video card compatibility. 1 2 3. So,
that'll run in probably 168. You know what? Let me find out in just a sec. So,
I nubbed out because they're using that C606 chipset rather than a regular
desktop chipset. That's where all your SAS connectivity is coming from. So,
those are actually powered off the Intel chipset. And remember guys, you do need
a Zeon if you want to run ECC uh registered DIMs or anything like that.
So, bear that in mind. Aha. Okay. So, back to the PCI Express slot layout.
You're going to be running at 16 8X 8X. So, they have not opted for a PLX chip.
And there's actually a good reason for that. So, these are PCIe 3.0 ports,
which means they've got lots of bandwidth even if you're throwing a few GTX 680s in here. Um, what it also means
is there's less latency. Running through switches, even if they're switches that
increase the overall bandwidth being delivered to the slot, can increase the
latency and can actually reduce performance in isolated cases. So, as
long as you're delivering at least 8x to the card, 8x PCIe 3 is equivalent to uh
to 16x PCIe2, then you're not concerned
about not having enough bandwidth and uh it's better to not have the additional
latency. So, there you go. So, oh yeah.
Okay. So, what do I think of the overall layout? So, once you install one 16X
card here, you're going to be left with three PCIe 16X physical slots. 8X 8X.
This one is actually wired for 4X and a PCI slot. This gives you a pretty darn
good mix. You know, you want to throw in like your legacy sound card. Maybe you
got an older like Ozentech XM or whatever, you know, really good sound
card and then you got a few more PCIe expansion slots. Sounds good. I'm really
shown the back of the board using all metal screws. I'm glad we've gotten completely away from plastic push pins.
More cooling on the back. So, pairing this up with a case like an 1100 or
something like that would be great cuz you'll get a little bit of additional cooling with that fan built into the
back of that case and your back IO. 1 2
3 4 5 6 Yes, 56 USB 2.0 ports, PS2 port,
clear SIMOS, OC button, as well as BIOS changer. Okay, this is a USB ESATA combo
port. This is an ESATA port. This is
FireWire. 2 GB Ethernets, one running off the Intel chipset and one running
off a Realtech third party chipset. Um,
optical audio out, 7.1 audio, and I
think that pretty much covers it. So, I'm just going to do a little spiel on
why this is perfect for me. It has the absolutely perfect color scheme. I
really don't like the powder blue that one of Gigabytes competitors is using
for accents. I also really love the overall subdued matte um just oh
performance look that they've got with these boards. Great cooling solution. So
this right here actually isn't really attached to anything. This is just
additional cooling for the chipset as well as due to the connection by heat
pipes uh the VRM up here. So, they've gone with sort of a traditional layout
where normally on most motherboards you'd find additional VRM components and
cooling here, but they've just put the cooling over here and they've connected everything with heat pipes to move it
around. Um, I love the just the size of it. It's not XLATX, which means that
you've got compatibility with almost every case out there with the exception
of very, very narrow, very cramped cases where you won't have that extra room.
And it's Gigabyte quality. I mean, honestly, is there really anything else
to say? um whether it's Gigabyte or
whether it's you know any other of the big three you know the real guys who are
actually designing and building these things from the ground up manufacturing them and testing them um yeah you can
pretty much trust it. I think that is pretty much it guys. Thank you for
checking out my unboxing and first look at the X79S UP5 Wi-Fi. Don't forget to
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