Gigabyte G1.Guerrilla X58 Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,664 words · ~8 min read
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ah the last member of the G1 series for me to unbox
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this is the G1 gorilla so we've already
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done the Assassin and the sniper this is
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the most value oriented of the G1 series
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boards although they're not really value boards these are performance gaming
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boards but this is the least expensive of the lot of them and let's get started
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it comes with a three-year warranty in the US and Canada it supports Intel core
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i7 processors on LGA 1366 so that is
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920s 930s 940s 950s 960s 970s 980 Xs and
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990 XS yes that includes extreme Edition
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okay it has the Intel x58 chipset it includes an X5 built-on sound card as
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well as a killer e2100 gaming networking
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card so those are pretty good values considering the fact that you do not
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have to now buy an add in network card or in theory an addin sound card because
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the add-in sound card not only has an X5 processor but also a built-in front
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audio headphone amp which is pretty sweet as well as high-end audio
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capacitor so this is pretty important because I've always been a huge advocate
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of better onboard features such as say
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for example sound and networking and it's good to see somebody moving in that
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direction all right so we got the Bigfoot networks uh killer game
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networking platform we have a front access control panel let's see SATA 3 6
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GB per second USB 3 locked and loaded heat pipe design which will'll have a
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closer look at later five smart F connectors which can be easily
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controlled with the easytune 6 software it includes Ultra durable 3 maximum CPU
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power and oh there we go dual BIOS with 3 plus terabyte hard drive
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support a super site what's a super
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sight with multiple GPU uh delivers maximum FPS allowing gamers to see more
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clearly aim faster and move more quickly okay oh okay basically they're just
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saying it has support for up to three-way SLI and three-way Crossfire X
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that's what they mean by super
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sight all right so when we open up the box we find some
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digicam then put the box there so it can
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pose there and look sweet and then we'll
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pull out the G1 gorilla
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itself okay see after all this I was expecting
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an AP themed board n I'm just kidding that's a
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different kind of gorilla okay here we go so we got a poster first thing this
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poster would look pretty sweet on my wall it's got a skull and some weaponize
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yourself stuff and on the back there's a target of a guy it's already
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conveniently got bullet holes in it so you won't have to bother shooting at the
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Target next we have some
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stickers G1 killer Bullet Hole stickers bullet stickers some more G1 killer
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stickers more bullets and more bullet holes all right we've got that
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convenient USB 3.0 front panel uh 3 and
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1/2 in guy that connects to an internal USB 3 header since most cases these days
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still don't have front USB 3 via a header that's an awesome feature here
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we've got a three-way SLI Bridge we have a two-way SLI
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Bridge as as well as uh four stated
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cables two straight and two right
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angle go ahead and put that there we also have a users manual with a drivers
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and utilities DVD download the latest off the Gigabyte website rather than
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using that we have a multilingual installation guide book as well as an IO
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Shield that looks pretty cool because it says G1 killer on the back it's not
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colorcoded but it's black so it looks better so you know you got to make your
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you got make a judgement call there do you prefer a good looking back panel or
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do you prefer a labeled one it all comes down to whether you can find out where
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things plug into without the color coding or whether looks are important to
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you and all that stuff personally I prefer the black one just because I have
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no problem finding my USB ports um I
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know what they look like and since the USB 3.0 On's are colorcoded blue inside
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the connector anyway that's not a big deal either so let's go ahead poose the
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box here and and let's have a look at
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the G1 gorilla itself so one of the
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first things I noticed about this board versus its bigger Brothers is that it
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doesn't have as many power phases so this is only looks like an 8 plus2 phase
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power design for the 1366 socket it's
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still a sweet looking board and it has a very similar looking cooling um system
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so why don't we do yeah let's do cooling first so you got your barrel of a pistol
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thing going on here then you've got uh all of these LEDs light up and look cool
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and this says gaming motherboard on it so this looks really good and then
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you've got your magazine right here with a bullet sticking out of it as well as a
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helpful warning not a weapon cannot be assembled
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as a firearm so please be aware of that you may not recycle this board once it's
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you know old and slow and make a gun out of it it doesn't work that way all right
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at the top left we've got an 8 Pin power connector moving over we've got our CPU
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fan connector we've got six DDR3 slots supporting triple Channel
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DDR3 our 24 pin power connectors in its ideal location along the right hand edge
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of the board moving down some more we've
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got our SATA connectors so there are six SATA 2 3 gbit per second connectors and
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two SATA 3 6 GB per second connectors
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here is our Southbridge heat sink which we've already looked at there's our
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North Bridge heat sink mosfet heat sink I don't think I ever said what they were cooling before front panel connectors
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are here we've also got three front USB headers we've got one front USB spe 3.0
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header another fan we've got our front audio connector in its ideal location
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along the bottom left not here where we used to often find them on Gigabyte
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motherboards our PCI slot layout is
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fairly ideal looking let me have a look
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at what these are okay so it looks like what we got here is 16x 16x 8X now the
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way I would probably use this board if I was to use it in my personal system is
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I'd throw one of my cards in here I'd throw my other one in here taking that
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bandwidth hit because actually doesn't affect performance and that would leave
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me with a 16x slot and a 1x slot for any additional expansion cards this is a
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standard siiz motherboard although it's a touch wider than standard ATX it
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should fit in most standard ATX cases but it doesn't have any additional
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length like the XL ATX G1 assassin does
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here is our builtin uh creative sound
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card so you can see here it's actually isolated where on the PCB all of those
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components are located so that's where you're going to have get better sound
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quality from we've got uh also the headphone amplifier is built into that
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particular part of the board here is our killer e2100 with its dedicated cash so
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that's going to take care of the Ethernet capabilities of this
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motherboard here on the back we will find two PS2 ports one for the keyboard
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one for the mouse optical audio as well as coaxial audio out an OC button which
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as you may or may not be able to figure out based on the name of it will OC your
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board that is overclock your board
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all right we've got wow looks like two USB eSATA combo ports I love those those
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are awesome we've got um four more just
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plain USB 2 ports two USB 3 ports this
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is a great mix actually of USB to e sat
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ports fantastic because you can do lots of external devices you can do lots of
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usb2 all that good stuff we' got a gigb Ethernet as well as 7.1 audio and uh
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nothing much to say about the back of the board except that it has a matte
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black PCB which every single motherboard
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in the world should have because it looks great just want to give Gigabyte kudos
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for this they've done such a good job of improving the overall look and feel of
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their boards versus their last generation stuff I mean I bought an uh
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ex58 extreme back when it first launched
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so this was their first x58 high-end board and I actually ended up getting
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rid of it to change out for something that had a very similar color scheme to
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this even though I knew it was an inferior board it was a DFI uh t388 or
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something along those lines so uh yeah if IID had one of these I definitely
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would have just kept it thanks for checking out this unboxing of the G1
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gorilla don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech tips for more unboxings
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reviews and other computer videos and
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never look directly down the barrel of a gun it's a really bad idea fortunately
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this isn't a gun it's just a heat
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sink so just relax