Published: November 4, 2008 | Source: Gigabyte | Author: Rich Weatherstone

Gigabyte EP45-EXTREME

Packaging & Appearance

When the EP45-EXTREME first arrived at OC3D towers everyone was quite amazed at how big and heavy the package was. Being three times the width of a standard motherboard box and weighing perhaps three times we were very interested in what lay beneath the monolithic package.

The outer sleeve of the box is well designed with the main features displayed on the front of the package. To the rear the feature list is explored in greater depth. Thankfully, Gigabyte have opted to provide a sturdy carry handle making transportation easier although with the weight of the box, a fork lift truck wouldn’t seem over the top.

The outer sleeve has a flip over ‘page’ that, once again delves further into the massive array of features this board possesses. The other side of the box has a cutout showing th board itself behind a plastic cutout Taking the outer sleeve off we are presented with 2 further boxes. One containing the accessories and manuals, the other being the moulded plastic case holding the motherboard itself. All the accessories are there that you would expect from a high-end motherboard package complete with a colour coded I/O backplate.

Now we see why the package is so heavy! It appears Gigabyte have mined half the worlds copper mines to make the motherboard heatpipe cooler. In typical Gigabyte style the motherboard resembles an explosion in a kiddies crayon factory. I have made my feelings clear on Gigabytes choice of colour scheme in past reviews so IÂ will not dwell on the subject this time. The heatpipe however most certainly is lush. Being full copper throughout, it will certainly cool the Mosfets, Northbridge and southbridge chips very effectively and being a part push-pin/screw down type fixing the mount should be perfect.

The rear of the motherboard is a much more somber affair. Using Gigabytes trademark blue PCB there are perhaps two noticeable difference between the EXTREME and standard gigabyte P54 motherboards. Holding the Northbridge and South bridge heatsinks are a set of thin backplates to ensure the motherboard is not bent. Less obvious are the chips on the back of the mosfets. They are far enough away from the CPU HSF mounting holes not to interfere with any CPU backplate but care should be taken when mounting the board in the case as one slip could knock one of those chips off which will cause havoc with the motherboards power regulation.

The socket area is very busy with 12 phase power regulation. With the amount of chokes around the CPU socket it will not be long before manufacturers adopt the DFI method of power regulation with digital PWM. For now though, Gigabytes analogue 12 phase solution is more than adequate to ensure your CPU gets clean and stable power.

The DIMM area is anything but. Bright red and yellow memory sockets hint at which channel is which should you wish to run your memory sticks in dual channel. Up to 8GB of 1200MHz DDR2 is supported which is more than enough for todays applications and this isÂ provided with 3 phase analogue power delivery. Anyone paying Â£180 for a motherboard should have the funds available for a suitable 24+8 pins PSU which this motherboard demands.

There is plenty of connectivity provided in theÂ PCIÂ area with 1xPCIe, 3 x PCI and 3 x PCIe 16x (8+8+8). Being crossfire capable in 8+8 configuration it is doubtful the bottom port would be utilised with todays dual slot cards but it is a welcome gesture none the less. As with most modern top end motherboards, Gigabyte have elected to provide on board power and reset switches which illuminate blue when power is attached. This is a great feature as it allows the use of the motherboard outside of a case for either testing purposes or EXTREME benchmarking.

On board diagnostic LEDÂ is also provided which is a godsend when trying to decipher why any given overclock has failed or why the motherboard will not boot up. Worthy of note is that if you intend on using a dual slot GPU such as 260/280GTX then this will block all of the SATA ports bar the two sat at a 90 degree angle. This is a poor choice of SATA positioning by Gigabyte. The ports can still be used if you have 90 degree SATA cables but the card will be sat at a slight angle which is less than ideal.

If video editing floats your boat then you will be pleased with the EP45 Extreme as it has 3 on board firewire ports along with 2 USB ports to further the 8 USB ports already situated on the I/O panel. A nice addition to the I/O panel is the inclusion of a CMOS clear switch. As there is no CMOS clear jumper and with the battery situated under the heatpipe assembly this is your only viable option of resetting the BIOS to a stock state. P/S2 mouse and keyboards are still provided for along with SP/Diff outputs. 7.1 Dolby audio 3.5mm analogue ports are also catered for.