11 Jan, 2015 Rakesh Sharma
Reviews .
Removing Heat sinks
Solid aluminum and copper heat-pipe type heatsink with thermal pad installed, giving great passive cooling to VRM MOSFETs and x99 chipset.
Perfectly designed heatsinks and board layout results in given a great socket room to install some big after market Air cooling solutions.
Components Layout
Let’s now see what all components Gigabyte have planned for this board.
1. 6-phase digital power, server level Cooper Bussmann chokes coils and Durable Black solid capacitors. IR3580 is IR (International Rectifier) 8-phase single output PWM Controller IC. IR3556M (Integrated PowIRstage) is a synchronous buck gate driver co-packed with a control MOSFET and a synchronous MOSFET with integrated Schottky diode with output current capability of 50A DC each.
2. 2-Phase digital memory power supply section. IR 3570A is IR (International Rectifier) Dual output 4+1 and 3+2 phase PWM Controllers. IR 3553M is a synchronous buck gate driver co-packed with a control MOSFET and a synchronous MOSFET with integrated Schottky diode with output current capability of 40A DC each and AS393m Dual precision voltage comparators IC
3. Renesas Electronics YET-D720210-0004 Usb 3.0 4-Port Hub Chip.
4. Intel i218v one Gigabit Ethernet controller chip.
5. Gigabyte AMP-UP Audio is powered by Realtek ALC1150 (under the EMI shield) is a high-performance multi-channel High Definition Audio Codec that delivers an exceptional audio listening experience with up to 115dB SNR, ensuring users get the best possible audio quality from their PC.
The ALC1150 provides ten DAC channels that simultaneously support 7.1-channel sound playback, plus 2 channels of independent stereo sound output (multiple streaming) through the front panel stereo outputs. Two stereo ADCs are integrated and can support a microphone array with Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC), Beam Forming (BF), and Noise Suppression (NS) technologies. The ALC1150 incorporates Realtek proprietary converter technology to achieve Front differential output 115dB Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) playback (DAC) quality and 104dB SNR recording (ADC) quality.
A semi-transparent line on motherboard separates the whole audio section from the rest of the board in order to minimize interference. Audio section is having premium Nichicon Gold Capacitors 100uf/6.3v for audio filtration. In addition Gigabyte used one N5532 Op-amp for rear audio amplification. So licensing under Stereo mode produces high audio quality with excellent dynamic range.
RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) suite is used for testing Gigabyte x99 AMP-UP High Definition audio against Asus Xonar DX Sound card. You can see clearly the difference between Noise level, dynamic rang and Total harmonic distortion percentage produced by AMP-UP Audio.
RMAA Asus Xonar DX
RMAA AMP-UP Audio
6. ITE's IT8951e is the motherboard built-in Q-Flash Plus controller, which allows a BIOS flash to take place even if no RAM or CPU is installed.
7. Gigabyte uses two SPI chip labeled MXIC MX 2SL12873F a capacity of 128 Mb for storing UEFI BIOS
8. Intel X99 Express Chipset
9. ITE IT8620e is SuperIO chip monitors temperatures, voltages and other key metrics for normal operation and overclocking.
10. Fan control and monitoring is performed via ITE IT8792E the system controller.
11. NXP L04083B . NXP Semiconductors a 4 differential channel, 2-to-1 multiplexer / demultiplexer switch for PCI Express Generation 3
12. IDT 6V49322NLG clock generator IC for SATA Express interface.