Gigabyte X38-DQ6 (Intel X38)
Layout and Features
The board is of classical design with convenient enough layout of the main and additional power connectors. The only issue is in blocking the DIMM slots by the first PCI Express card.
By the way, there is an additional 8-pin connector, and it's possible to plug in a 4-wire cable. To facilitate plugging in, the unused pins are covered with a plastic lid.
We note an additional 4-pin Molex power connector onboard. It can be activated if two video cards in the Crossfire mode are used. Formerly, use of an additional connector was not mandatory. But according to the PCI-E v2.0 specifications the video card can consume twice as much power (to be more precise - up to 150 W!). Therefore, this Molex connector is necessary for cards of next generations.
Near the CPU socket, there is a 4-pin CPU_FAN connector for a matching cooler.
Besides it, there are three 3-pin connectors: PWR_FAN - near the DIMM slots, SYS_FAN1 - in the right-hand corner of the board, and NB_FAN near the north bridge, as well as the 4-pin SYS_FAN2 connector in the left-hand corner of the board.
Note that on the reverse side of the board there is a massive CrazyCool radiator which serves to reject heat off the CPU and the north bridge.
There is a small radiator under the south bridge.
The board offers a passive system for cooling the chipset and a power supply module. On the north and south bridges, as well as on the power components, there are massive copper radiators; they are all linked with heat pipes.
Under the north bridge, there are four 240-pin DIMM slots for DDR2 memory modules. They are partitioned into two groups, each having two slots. The first two slots refer to the first controller channel, with the other two to the second controller.
Note that due to an extended set of multipliers the board supports memory of both standard and non-standard frequencies; with overall capacity making up 8GB.
There are two PCI Express x16 v2.0 slots onboard (both with latches) which are meant for video cards.
As we already stated, 16 bus lanes are allocated to each of the slots. Besides the above listed slots, Gigabyte X38-DQ6 uses two more "regular" PCI slots as well as three PCI Express x1 slots.
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VGA Card:
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CPU & Memory:
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