Gigabyte X99 SOC Force Motherboard Review

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Introduction

Gigabyte X99 SOC Force motherboard - Heck yeah - the Force is Strong !

In this review we check out the Gigabyte X99 SOC Force, will the force be strong with this one ? We certainly can tell you that is is one of the most impressive X99 motherboards we have had our hands on. It has a massive feature set like SLI/Crossfire support, heaps of SATA3 connectors, M.2., VERY sweet overclock features, a near audiophile audio solution, and yeah the means to tweak. Join us in another X99 motherboard review, a product that is bound to shock and awe.

The Intel Core i7-5960X and other Haswell-E chips are released on the market September 2014 and based on a new socket LGA2011-V3 infrastructure and DDR4 quad channel memory. The new Haswell-E series being released feature three models, two 6-core and 1 8 core processor series intended for the most high-end desktops anno 2014. For Intel is is the first 8 core desktop CPU for consumers. However Intel has been offering 8 and even 12 core processors in their Xeon server line for quite some time now to the business channel.

With the new haswell-E processor comes a new chipset and slightly revised processor socket. Intel still uses Socket 2011, but its a revision 3 socket meaning that the older Socket 2011 will not work on the new X99 chipset motherboards. That of course goes both ways, you can not use Haswell-E on say an X79 motherboard.  

Interesting is a first introduction towards DDR4 memory. The new memory allows for lower voltage memory modules, this memory defaults towards 2133 MHz at 1.2 Volts. However the memory controller is quad-channel compatible. As a result with overclocked memory at roughly 3 GHz, you can reach 70 maybe 80 GB/sec on your memory bandwidth, which are insane numbers. In this article we'll have a chat about a X99 motherboard in terms of the chipset and then will throw a decent photo-shoot and a benchmark suite at the products and get an indication what performance is like with the Intel Core i7-5960X and X99 Platform.

Gigabyte offers 4 motherboards starting at launch, and one the most high-end boards out there is the X99 SOC Force with the looks and means to perform. This uber-overdosed motherboard will house your Haswell-E processor and can do seriously nasty things with is. Of course there is an abundance of features as well like a double bandwidth 20 Gbps M.2. PCIe slot, 10 SATA3 connectors, Sata Express, a temp sensor port, 8 DIMM DDR4 slots, a plethora of OC buttons and then wicked amounts of USB ports, we'll show it all in the next pages of course. but first have a peek as to what Gigabyte offers with the X99 SOC Force motherboard, a product that is bound to tease and please.


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