During our stay at Computex we stopped by the Gigabyte suite and took a look at their motherboards.
GA-X99 Designare EX
The Designare series is a class of motherboards aimed at those looking for productivity, which is a very interesting step from Gigabyte. While very similar to their “Gaming” focused boards, this one has a focus on faster storage with dual SATA Express slots and support for U.2 and M.2 storage under the white shroud. It also supports the new Broadwell-E 10 core with a beefy 8+1 phase power design, which we would assume is from International Rectifier. Gigabyte boasts that with this board it won’t take a professional overclocker to get great overclocking results.
| Manufacturer | Gigabyte |
|---|---|
| Model | X99 Designare EX |
| Form Factor | ATX |
| Socket | LGA 2011-3 |
| Chipset | Intel X99 |
| Memory | 8X DDR4 DIMM Slots (Upto 128GB) EEC/NonEEC unbuffered, up to DDR4 3400+ |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1150 |
| LAN | Dual Intel GbE LAN with cFosSpeed support |
| Slots | 3 x PCI Express 3.0 |
| Storage | x10 SATA 6GB/s x2 M.2 PCI-E x1 Sata Express |
| USB | 2 x USB 3.1 ports (Type C, Type A) 9 x USB 3.0 ports x4 USB 2.0 |
| Price | $419 USD |
Designare GA-Z170X
Like the Gigabyte X99 Designare EX, the Gigabyte Z170X Designare is aimed at the content creator, graphic designer, and photographer except it supports the Intel’s LGA 1151 socket and utilizes Intel’s Z170 chipset. This motherboard also has a different color scheme with Black, Blue and White accent colors.
| Manufacturer | Gigabyte |
|---|---|
| Model | Z170X Designare |
| Form Factor | ATX |
| Socket | LGA 1151 |
| Chipset | Intel Z170 |
| Memory | 4X DDR4 DIMM Slots (Up to 64GB) up to DDR4 4000MHz+ |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1150 |
| LAN | Dual Intel GbE LAN with cFosSpeed support |
| Slots | 3 x PCI Express 3.0 (1X16 1×8 and 1X4) |
| Storage | 6 x SATA 6GB/s x1 M.2 PCI-E x1U.2 x2 SATA Express |
| USB | 2 x USB 3.1 ports (Type C) 6 x USB 3.0 ports 6 x USB 2.0 |
| Price | $230 USD |
GA-X99 Ultra Gaming
The Ultra Gaming model is one of Gigabytes more traditional G1 Gaming motherboards. We see support for U.2 and M.2 as well as triple graphics solutions.
| Manufacturer | Gigabyte |
|---|---|
| Model | X99 Ultra Gaming |
| Form Factor | ATX |
| Socket | LGA 2011-3 |
| Chipset | Intel X99 |
| Memory | 8X DDR4 DIMM Slots (up to 128GB) EEC/NonEEC unbuffered, up to DDR4 3400+ |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1150 |
| LAN | Intel i219V + Killer E2400 |
| Slots | 3 x PCI Express 3.0 |
| Storage | x10 SATA 6GB/s x2 M.2 PCI-E x1 SATA Express |
| USB | 2 x USB 3.1 ports (Type C, Type A) 10 x USB 3.0 ports x4 USB 2.0 |
| Price | $270 USD |
Z170X Ultra Gaming
Finally we have the Z170 variation of the G1 gaming, with a slightly different color scheme and has Gigabytes ambient RGB lighting as all the other boards. We see support for Dual and Triple graphics solutions and U.2 SSDs.
| Manufacturer | Gigabyte |
|---|---|
| Model | Z170 Ultra Gaming |
| Form Factor | ATX |
| Socket | LGA 1151 |
| Chipset | Intel Z170 |
| Memory | 4X DDR4 DIMM Slots (Up to 64GB) up to DDR4 3866MHz+ |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1150 |
| LAN | Intel i219V cFosSpeed support |
| Slots | 3 x PCI Express 3.0 (1X16 1×8 and 1X4) |
| Storage | 6 x SATA 6GB/s x1 M.2 PCI-E x1U.2 x2 Sara Express |
| USB | 2 x USB 3.1 ports (Type C) 6 x USB 3.0 ports 6 x USB 2.0 |
| Price | $170 USD |
