Gigabyte has just launched their latest high-end motherboard in the form of the X170-Extreme ECC. This motherboard is designed as a workstation motherboard for the high-end desktop crowd. It is based off the Intel C236 chipset, and comes with support for Intel Xeon E3-1200 V5 processors in addition to 6th generation Core “Skylake” processors. It also has support for DDR4 ECC memory, which is of course why you see the “ECC” in the product name.
The board is built on the ATX form factor, it draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors. As far as expansion slots go you have two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (x8/x8 with both populated), a third PCI-Express 3.0 x16 (electrical gen 3.0 x4, wired to the PCH), and three other PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. One of the big features of the board is its Intel 2-port USB 3.1 controller which connects over PCI-Express 3.0 x4, compared to most controllers that connect over PCI-Express 3.0 x2. This will give you constant 10 Gb/s of bandwidth on each port without any bandwidth loss to overhead. As far as the two ports go you have Type-A and a Type-C.
You also have four USB 3.0 ports from the chipset and a Renesas-made hub chip. You also get a 40 Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 port, with DisplayPort 1.2 passthrough. As far as storage goes you have two 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, and four SATA-Express 16 Gb/s connectors, which break out as eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports. There are two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, one driven by an Intel I219-V controller, and another by a Killer E2400. The onboard audio solution is top-of-the-line from GIGABYTE’s parts bin, with a Creative SoundCore 3D processor, TI Burr Brown OPA2134 OPAMP (user-replaceable), ground-layer isolation, and Nichicon Muse electrolytic capacitors. The board is driven by GIGABYTE’s Dual-UEFI BIOS tech, with auto-switching redundant BIOS chips. No word yet on pricing.
Source: TechPowerUp! | News Archive
