(After staring at this board for a few hours, as I do every board, I try to analyze what type of design this board is trying to model. I have a feeling this board is supposed to have heatsinks that resemble a car, and a fast one at that, but I felt as though this ICH (Southbridge) heatsink looks like a flag waving in the air.)
Today I have my first close encounter with this masterpiece of a motherboard. Like no other motherboard its sole purpose is to fulfill the needs of overclockers, and overclockers only. Yes it is true, every motherboard is overclockable, yet not all motherboards are overclocking friendly. This isn’t the first motherboard to be tuned to overclock, and it’s not the first to hold world records, but it is the first motherboard to be targeted solely at overclockers, and extreme overclockers at that. Not everyone may agree with that statement, but it is true. While many motherboards feature overclocking as their main feature, they still are marketed towards gamers as well. As we saw earlier the G1 series is targeted towards gamers, and hardcore gamers at that, this board is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum in terms of features. While the G1 Assassin might have a creative 20K2 audio processor and a Bigfoot NIC, the X58A-OC has a revamped voltage regulator module and direct hardware controlled multiplier, BLCK, and even switching frequency adjustments. This board is similar to a few other boards in terms of its features, but this board is without any features that overclockers do not need. With this board you don’t pay a premium for ICs(chips) you will never use (extra USB, dual NIC, eSATA, IEEE, or even 6 channel audio), instead GIGABYTE took the money that was saved and invested it in custom order parts for the voltage regulator module, and some nifty overclocking features.
By far the most interesting part of this board is GIGABYTE’s take at miniaturizing their 24phase voltage regulator module (VRM), following that are the OC buttons, and then small things (4GHZ easy button, PWM switches, BIOS switch, 4 way CF/3 way SLI, triple slot spacing, etc….). Today I will begin by going over the parts of the board, and then I will explain how the new VRM compares to the old one. Following the explanation of how everything works with the VRM, I will go on to explain every chip, one by one. For you to get a real sense of what this board has to offer you will need to see what makes it tick, and then how it performs. Of course that is a huge venture so just as usual I split my reviews into two parts, with this one being all about the physical stuff.
