GIGABYTE X58A-OC (Intel X58 Express) Motherboard Review @ TweakTown
Ok I normally wouldn't post a review like this but I couldn't resist.
Below is their quote from the news release
Back at CES (during the G1-Killer launch) we were shown something pretty special; besides the G1 we mean. While Tim Handley was telling us about the virtues of the G1-Killer line-up, he flashed us a picture of a new board that was still under development. This was an early image of the X58A-OC. The concept was a streamlined product intended just for overclocking and performance.
You still get audio and LAN on the board, but for the most part the extras that are on many boards are gone. Of course, with the items removed other pieces have been dropped in to handle the extra voltage and current load from pushing the CPU and multiple GPUs to extremes. Despite the lack of all of the "extra" features, the price is still $380 from Newegg.com.
Now we all are aware that the X58OC is a board designed for overclocking and also designed for Multi GPU configurations. While it is unreasonable for a review site to subject a board to LN2 overclocking for the sake of the review I do find it rather offensive that they use a 980X and don't bother using a "good" cooling method while exploring the overclocking aspects of a motherboard, designed for overclocking.
-- snip --
In our test setup we ran into a few issues. Our top OC was only 4.375GHz (175x25). This is only a 1.1GHz boost from the stock clock speed. The reason we could not get higher? Our cooling and the RAM we were using. Whenever I tried to push beyond that 175MHz BCLK, the voltage needed was just too much. I could get into Windows, but I would quickly see the temperatures get saturated under any real load.
- TweakTown
Tisk Tisk, I only bring this up since I was able to net a 4.6Ghz OC on the R3E with a custom watercooler. Would I have used a watercooler in any other instance? no.. But, then again the R3E is an enthusiast level motherboard designed for enthusiast usage.
Much like the Gigabyte X58OC.
Related Web URL: http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4151/gigabyte_x58...
