A Closer Look at the Gigabyte X99-SOC Champion Motherboard

While there was not a whole lot of motherboard news to come out of CES this year, Gigabyte did have a brand new motherboard to show us. It was the X99-SOC Champion motherboard and it is specifically designed for overclockers.

Gigabyte X99-SOC Champion Motherboard

The first major thing about this motherboard is its redesigned LGA2011-3 CPU socket. It is much like the OC Socket that we have seen on ASUS motherboards. This socket will activate pins that Intel only uses in internal testing and are not enabled on commercial products. The socket on this motherboard will actually have 2083 pins rather than the typical 2011. These extra pins will allow for better voltage tweaking in the BIOS.

Gigabyte X99-SOC Champion Motherboard

Moving on to the memory the X99-SOC Champion only has four DDR4 DIMM slots rather than the typical eight that we see on most X99 motherboards. These slots have shorter trace paths which make communication with the CPU much faster and they are SMT mounted for improved signal quality.

The board will feature an all digital power design with an IR Digital PWM and IR PoweIRstage ICs and will as copper Bussmann server level chokes. Connectivity on the rear of the board includes PS/2 mouse and keyboard, four USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet and audio.

Gigabyte X99-SOC Champion Motherboard

When it comes to expansion you have four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots capable of 4-way SLI, and M.2 slot for solid state drives, a SATA Express port and 8 SATA 6GB/s ports.

Gigabyte X99-SOC Champion Motherboard

Just like other Gigabyte overclocking products this board will have many overclocking features and has the same black and orange color design. No word yet on pricing on the board.

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