Gigabyte X48-DQ6 (Intel X48)
Gigabyte X48-DQ6 Layout and Features
The board is of the classical design with conveniently positioned main and additional power supply 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.
Although the PCB design of X48-DQ6 is in many ways similar to the design of X38-DQ6, we can conclude that engineers at Gigabyte have modified the power supply subsystem. In particular, the additional 4-pin Molex power connector has been removed. That may seem a trifle at first glance, we should not forget that as per the PCI-E v2.0 specifications, a modern video card may consume 150W, which is twice as much than a video card in the PCI-E v1.? specifications. Therefore, the load in the Crossfire mode may be as high as 300 W!
By the way, instead of the Molex connector the board X48-DQ6 uses a few bright enough Dynamic Energy Saver LEDs which display the CPU's power consumption level.
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 upper right 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 of the power supply module, there are massive 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 X48-DQ6 uses two more "regular" PCI slots as well as three PCI Express x1 slots.
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