Layout
Starting at the top left and working our way across and down, join me in a look at the layout. The odd looking orange slot that we come across first is where you place Gigabyte's Dual Power System card, which increases the number of CPU power phases from three to six. Installed in the slot, its heatsink and heatpipe extend towards the CPU socket area and the northbridge. It doesn't impinge on the space set out for the socket when Intel created it, so you're safe if you stick to coolers that don't violate the spec in the other direction.
The CPU socket is next, flanked on the right by the sextuplet of memory slots and to the south the passively cooled, with a very bling gold-coloured heatsink I might add, MCH ASIC. The two power sockets are next, ATX12V to the left of the MCH near the I/O backplane, with main EATX 24-pin power on the right hand edge of the board in the 2nd best place for it.
The Marvell 88E8001 network controller sits just above a black PEG16X slot for your graphics card with a couple of fan headers sitting not too far away. Along with the PEG16X slot, the sole ATA connector and the floppy port sit horizontal, marking the north-south board split.
Broadcom's PCI Express 1X GigE network controller is over on the left in the column of board space usually reserved for peripheral ICs. The ALC880 CODEC sits underneath, providing the audio connectivity into and out of the bling-bling'd ICH6/R bridge. That bridge sits in between some crucial board components. The Texas Instruments IC pairing for FireWire800 is close by, the dual BIOS chips lie to the left of that, with three PCI Express 1X physical connectors further past that, hidden in the photograph by the DualBIOS sticker. The ICH6/R's SATA ports are to the right of it, with the very popular Sil3114 underneath.
Two PCI conventional slots, a SuperI/O LPC controller and the header groups for peripheral port connection are the last things to spot on a board with a very sane and organised layout. Hands in the air for the Bau Chiang Road design massive!
As for the board aesthetic, it's not to my taste. Blue PCB, black and white slots, orange DPS slot, red and yellow for memory, red for SATA, gold heatsinks, purple for the USB headers makes for a veritable vomitastrophe in my book.
Want to peek at the famous Gigabyte BIOS? Turn the page.
