The crowning glory of GIGABYTE’s entire conference would be their motherboard showcase with a slew of activities going on in the showroom, there’s plenty of action going on. Remember that we’re nearing the launch of the new 10-series chipset from Intel for the 6th-generation Intel Core processors and this release will be a key launch for all motherboard vendors as we’re looking at a new socket and DDR4 support as well as USB3.1 Type-C support amongst other things.
Say hello to the new GIGABYTE G1 GAMING color scheme. Yup, from green/black to red/black we’re now going with red/black/white with silver highlights. The flagship motherboard for GIGABYTE’s high-end Z170 lineup is the GIGABYTE Z170X GAMING G1. This motherboard sports a lot of new stuff some weren’t even on display yet. The most stand-out characteristic of this motherboard is the new white and red shroud. This shroud is very mecha in theme and reminds us heavily of the Unicorn Gundam in NT-D mode. The motherboard will feature the support for the upcoming 6th-generation Intel Core processor for the LGA1151 package and DDR4 memory.
Continuing the legacy of the G1 series, GIGABYTE still places Creative SoundBlaster hardware chip on this board with new dual-OPAMP for each channel, both of which are user replaceable. New components are baked into the audio solution like new choice capacitors replacing the Nichicon green caps we’ve come to love in these GB Gaming boards.
The rear I/O is laiden with USB3.0 ports with the new USB3.1 Type C also present here. Over at the SATA side, we get a total of 8 SATAIII ports with three serving as SATA Express ports should you have one of those. I doubt it though.
GIGABYTE doesn’t want you to know yet but over at the corner you can se the GAMING G1 logo, our rep says these are pass through for the illumination of the board but what’s really interesting is that these new board will feature RGB illumination.
Again, Intel will not be including an internal voltage regulator on the 6th-gen processors so that means motherboard makers have another playground to implement their insane VRM solutions reminiscent of the past products we’ve seen from GIGABYTE like the Z77X-UP7 sporting an insane 32-phase VRM. The Z170X GAMING G1 will sport a 20-phase VRM and cooling these bad boys will be a heatsink fused to a water channel with GIGABYTE installing G1/4 threads for your fittings in this board.
Another thing to look out for are these metal braces adorning the PCI-express slots on the GAMING G1 board. Dual M.2 slots are also present on this board for those looking to get more storage in a smaller form.
Joining the Z170X GAMING G1 motherboard will be a ton of new motherboards for the GAMING and UD series from GIGABYTE.
On another section of the motherboard displays, GIGABYTE is showing off its Intel NVME support for Intel’s Data Centre SSDs for PCI-e. Powered off a daughter card that plugs into an M.2 slot, these new storage solutions from Intel promises excellent transfer speeds for professional and advanced use.
This modest little rig features a Core i7-5960X and three TITAN X in tri-SLI configuration along with 4x2TB HDDs in RAID0 with an equally insane amount of RAM. Now they’re just showing off.
Another rig shown is a workstation system powered GIGABYTE’s X99 board sporting a QUADRO K6000. This thing muches 4K projects in After Effects like it was peanuts.
My favorite part of the showcase because I’m a complete narcissist is this new remote controlled smartphone dock that can turn 360* and tilt up to 40* or so. And its remote controlled. Imagine all the selfies you could take in really obscure angles. Ok I’m just forcing this thing as big deal. Sorry.