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- Date:
- Sunday , October 26, 2008
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Gigabyte GA-EP45T-Extreme
Gigabyte sent over its enthusiast oriented EP45T-Extreme. It features the craziest chipset cooling setup we've ever seen and its' packed with features. Is it all show and no go, or does it walk the DDR3/P45 walk?
Introduction
Gigabyte Gigabyte is a name that most computer enthusiasts should be familiar with. Gigabyte has been in the motherboard business a long time and has brought a lot of good boards into the market and is often on an enthusiast’s short list of brands to purchase. Generally speaking Gigabyte has been producing excellent quality boards for the past couple of years and their current reputation is well deserved. Gigabyte is also remarkable as a manufacturer that provides excellent overclocking boards in all price points with a variety of chipsets. Other manufacturers try to do the same with limited success.
The Gigabyte EP45T-Extreme is designed around Intel's P45 northbridge and ICH10R south bridge. The chipset is essentially an improved P35 chipset which has been around for some time now. The P45 chipset offers support for 16GB of RAM instead of 8GB and it is usually paired with the ICH10/ICH10R south bridge instead of the older ICH9x series that the P35 chipset was coupled with. Aside from those differences the P45 offers one more compelling feature in that it officially supports Crossfire in an 8x8 configuration instead of 16x4 like most P35 chipset based boards do. Again the P45 chipset isn't new so I won't go into further details concerning its features and functionality. Suffice it to say the chipset is newer than last year's P35 chipset and has a couple of minor advantages.
This board is loaded with features. While it doesn't contain secondary drive controllers, four network interfaces, or features of that sort - it is loaded with a ton of other features that are probably more useful to the overclocker and computer enthusiasts in general. The first thing that should catch anyone's eye about this board (and it did ours) is the expansion card-sized chipset cooling hardware. The board deserves the name "Extreme" because of that alone. This feature is referred to as Gigabyte's Hybrid Silent-Pipe cooling solution. It is a hybrid solution as the name would imply. It is a mixture of heat pipe cooling and water block cooling technologies.
There are also a ton of LEDs found on the board near the memory slots. These are for Gigabyte's power saving feature called "Dynamic Energy Saver." This feature shows the current load of the processors power circuitry as well as for the memory. It shows via these LED's how many phases are currently active. At startup they are all active and when overclocking the system and running it under full load they'll all become active. However when the energy saving features are being used and the system is mostly idle, you'll see some of the lights corresponding to the power phases turn off. The board also supports Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 2 feature set. This means that the board features Lower RDS MOSFETs, Ferrite Core chokes, and Lower ESR solid state capacitors. There is also a hardware overvoltage control IC located on the motherboard. What this does is allow for a greater range of voltage control options and linear real time voltage control. It also allows for voltage increments as small as 20mv.
The Gigabyte GA-EP45T-Extreme supports the latest Intel ® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core / Intel® Celeron® processors. In the board specifications listed on their website Gigabyte makes mention of the fact that because the board is built around the VRD 11.1 specification that it is incompatible with certain Intel processors that are based on the VRD 10.0 design. Their CPU support list shows that there is no support for older Pentium 4 and Pentium D processors. In addition many Celerons are unsupported as well. As with most motherboards made today, few components are required to complete a working system. All that is needed are an LGA775 processor, DDR2 memory modules, power supply, video card, and drives to make a functional box. Gigabyte claims that the board is capable of DDR3 1900 speeds via overclocking.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
The Gigabyte EP45T-Extreme has the largest motherboard box I've ever seen. It has things like bullet holes and the word extreme plastered all over it. I have to admit that the packaging didn't wow me. I tend to roll my eyes when I see words like "Extreme" all over the place. Usually much of the fluff that gets written on the board boxes is something I can usually forget and discard until I've seen the results for myself. What is interesting is that the board claims 30% better cooling on the box along with VRD 11.1 support. The board and chipset cooler came in a plastic shell and all the accessories are in a smaller box which is how most manufacturers are doing things now. This packaging is alright as it gets the job done by protecting the board until it reaches the hands of the consumers or OEM's who will use it in their machines.
Board Layout
The board layout is fairly good. As always I have a couple of complaints. The first of which is the memory slots are way too close to the expansion slots. For the life of me I can't figure out why this is the case. I simply do not understand how board designers make this mistake. It makes installing memory a pain and there just isn't an excuse for it. I also hate the location of the IDE port. Its location would be more ideal for front panel connectors which Gigabyte has pushed underneath the last expansion slot. This is a very poor move as a large video card cooler could push into devices that are plugged in to those headers. Also in some larger cases the front panel connectors may not be long enough to reach these headers in their current position. This is something I am frankly getting tired of seeing on quite a few boards.
The power and reset switches should be on the boards edge close to the front of the PCB. Also the LCD readout for trouble codes could be placed where it won't be blocked by a second video card. The case switch panel is well positioned though. Why the other headers aren't I couldn't say. Finally the SATA headers are well positioned and support latching SATA cables. I wish all six of them were angled like the top two are. I guess it doesn't matter that much given where the graphics cards would sit on the board.
The CPU area is a bit cramped. This is to be expected more and more on modern motherboards as they require more dramatic cooling and space on ATX PCBs becomes a premium. Something has to give and it looks like the CPU area typically has to give ground. The cooling on the MOSFETs is generally low enough for most CPU coolers but the chipset cooler is gargantuan and therefore could cause clearance issues depending on the orientation of your CPU cooler.
There are four DDR3 DIMM slots that are poorly placed. They are too close to the expansion slot area and that is something I cannot stand. They are color coded with a hideous green and even worse, the other channel is color coded in pink. The board wins no points with me for aesthetics.
Generally speaking when you've seen one board other boards with a similar chipset are largely the same as far as most people are concerned. However in regard to northbridge cooling this board is truly special. The board features a hybrid heat pipe/water block chipset cooler; however that's not where it ends. In fact there is an expansion card sized heatsink and heat pipe assembly that interfaces with the chipset cooler to provide extra surface area for dissipation of heat generated by the chipset cooler. Indeed a 30% cooling advantage is claimed on the boards' box but given the size the cooler my first impression says that 30% should be easily attainable by this massive beastly chipset cooler. The biggest problem with installing the extra cooling hardware is (as Kyle pointed out before in this video) that the screws are small and it is easy to strip their threads. Great care should be taken when installing the optional cooling hardware.
(Kyle’s Note: On my second go round with the “Extreme” heatpipe, I had better results than the first. But by then I had learned the “Extreme” portion of the name referred to being extremely careful when installing the screws. I suggest a very small screwdriver that will let you feel how the threads are catching and a very forgiving hand. Here is our video coverage that shows you the exact problem.)
Also worth mentioning is that I refer to the board as an EPoX board in the video, this is a mistake on my part. I have worked with motherboards for years and EPoX part numbers on the boards have always been "EPXX" and the part number on this board is "EP45." Gigabyte did not put the entire "GA-EP45..." part number on the board itself. When I was shooting the video I saw the particular part number screened on the board and I referred to the board as being an EPoX board just out of instinct. It took me a few days to even realize this, and at that point I did not see a point in going back and changing it.
And Gigabyte never did supply a working DDR2 board or a reason as to why ours was DOA.
Wow, It Works and Works Well!
Even without the water block portion of the heat sink being used the chipset cooler should be the best on the market. There is certainly enough surface area for this to be a reality. However design isn't always about brute force and size. When I put the cooler to the test during normal operations or even while overclocked way beyond normal operating frequencies I found that the chipset barely registered as lukewarm. It was only slightly warmer than room temperature. Gigabyte really impressed me with this chipset cooling solution. I've seen a ton of crazy designs that looked impressive and didn't offer anything over much simpler designs. That was not the case here. This is without a doubt the most effective chipset cooling solution I've ever seen.
The south bridge is in the usual place connected by heat pipes to the main chipset cooling attached to the north bridge. This part of the cooling solution is little more than a heat pipe running through a flat piece of copper with some additional fins on it. Next to the south bridge are the SATA ports and the diagnostic LED. Also in this area you will find a power button and a reset button that are very handy for testing purposes.
The Gigabyte EP45T-Extreme supports the PCI-Express 2.0 specification and supports ATI's Crossfire technology. The EP45T-Extreme also supports CrossfireX via two dual GPU cards such as the Radeon HD 3870 X2 and 4870 X2. There are a total of three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (x16, x8, x4 electrical) there is also one PCI-Express x1 slot and three legacy PCI slots. The slot placement is generally very good. In regard to video card installation but the PCI-Express x1 slot is placed so poorly behind the chipset cooler that it is virtually useless. I see this over sight more and more often with newer boards. As PCI-Express cards become more common this will become more and more of an issue.
The EP45T-Extreme has the following ports on the rear I/O Panel: PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, 8 USB ports, 2 RJ-45 ports, 1 S/PDIF port, six mini-stereo headphone jacks, and 1 optical-out jack. Also on the backplane is a Clear CMOS button. Now I've heard of some people in the forums complain about accidentally hitting this but the button is recessed enough and is actually quite difficult to accidentally trip. Also if you use the profile features for the BIOS this won't be that big of a deal even if you did push it. Really I wish all manufacturers would do this because as many of you know getting to the board often requires you to open your case or remove video cards and other hardware to get down to the board to mess with a button or a clear CMOS jumper. It really makes resetting your CMOS a hassle and this really is the solution for resolving those issues.