Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Gigabyte X99 Designare EX Motherboard Review”.
Hey, what’s up folks how’s it going! This is waj hope you guys are all doing. Well now the new lineup of intel broadwell e processors have now finally came out. We actually reviewed the 6800k last week and, if you’re thinking of building a high-end system based around these a new line of our processors, you probably want to get an awesome, a motherboard like this. This is the brand new gigabyte, ga x99 designer or designer lx motherboard. Now this pretty much has all the features and compatibilities that you would expect with a broadwell e, a based system, so we’re gon na talk about some of the key aspects of what makes this motherboard special and if it’s right for you.
So, let’s get right into this! The s99 designer lx is part of the flagship lineup of the ultra durable series of boards from gigabyte, and it highlights some of the key innovations that gigabyte is putting into all of their new lineup of motherboards, whether that be for the x99 platform or for the Z170 chipset now, as you can see over here, this mobo features four different, fully programmable rgb lighting areas, uh underneath the heatsinks and there’s actually a couple of different options for illumination, as well as 16.8 million different color combinations. In addition to that, there’s also a led, rgb strip, light header, so you can attach external led strip lighting to your case and have everything synchronized to the motherboard’s color scheme. Now, beyond that, i’m a big fan of the new black and white color scheme that we have going on over here really looks kind of clean and modern at the same time. Furthermore, because this is an ultra durable board, all of the pci express slots, as well as the ram dimms, are shielded in a stainless steel covering and all the slots have extra anchoring points a to the pcb.
So everything is extremely strong and ultra durable, which is definitely important if you’re going to be installing some graphics cards with some heavy water cooling blocks or aftermarket coolers that have some a definite heft to them. Now, speaking of installing multiple gpus, one thing that you’ll notice is that there’s a considerable amount of spacing between the first and second pcie port is because this is designed for larger graphics cards that need up to two and a half slots of clearance. And this is going to be perfect to accommodate the new gtx 1080s that have those beefy aftermarket coolers. One of the big highlights for me specifically because i have a 6800k processor that i’m going to be using with this thing and since that technically only has 28 lanes of pci express supported, because this board has a built-in plx chip. We can actually use a three gpus running at full 16x speeds, giving me up to a 78 lanes of a pci express, even with my 6800k, which technically should only support 28 lanes. So if you want to do some high-end, multiple graphics card configurations on over here you’re definitely not going to be limited with your cpu.
Thankfully, now, let’s finally talk about connectivity on the back of the main io plate, we can see on the left hand side. We have two usb a 3.0 connections as well as a ps2, uh, keyboard and mouse port for legacy support. We have a displayport connection, which is actually a displayport 1.2 in so you can reroute your graphics card, display port into the board and then output it through the usb type-c or thunderbolt 3 connection. So if you have a thunderbolt monitor, you could actually use that connectivity.
If you so desire – and that’s a big thing about this board, because it has usb 3.0 and type c support – you can do a number of different things with this single connections, whether that be supplying up to 36 watts of power. Transferring data up to a 32 gigabits per second or, of course, outputting video at 4k resolution at 60, hertz refresh rate moving forward. We also have antenna connections, because this does have a 802.11 ac, a dual band: wireless connectivity as well as bluetooth.
4.2. Beyond that, we have a couple more usb 3 type, a connectors, a dual gigabit ethernet, as well as hd, a digital audio connections, and this has a pretty decent uh sound card built in it’s using the realtek alc 1150 chip, and we have a signal to noise Ratio of about 115 decibels now, of course, being an x99 motherboard. We have eight dimms for ddr4 memory and you can clock your memory up to 3 400 megahertz.
Furthermore, when it comes to storage, a connectivity apart from having a plethora of sata 3 connections, we also have m.2 and u2 support for up to 32 gigabits per second data. Transferring speeds using pcie gen 3 at 4x speeds uh. Talking about the m.2 support.
You can actually fit a variety of different sizes of a devices, whether that be the smaller 42 millimeter up to 110 millimeters. So you can use those large m.2 drives. That’S going to be really good in the long run, and, of course, if you want to use the 2.5 inch ssds that have support for u.2 interface, like on the new intel 750 series ssd drives, you can do so and get 32 gigabits per second throughput by Using the nvme pcie gen 3 at 4x speeds, apart from some of those features.
This motherboard is also highly optimized for either air cool or water cooling configuration since it’s using dual hybrid fan, headers, which gives you precise, pwm and voltage control for either water pumps or fans. Furthermore, the entire power design of this motherboard is completely digital, as you would expect. From a high-end motherboard from gigabyte, you have a long lifespan, a durable black, solid state capacitors, as well as server grade chokes. The bios is really nicely configured and it’s refreshed.
So everything is really easy to access, especially if you’re going to do a little bit of overclocking. And lastly, if the blink factor wasn’t enough for you, if you take a closer look at the cpu socket pins, each of those pins have a 15 micron thick gold plating, which in turn should ensure a better overall longevity and reliability without having any major concerns of Having bad pins or contact points, the last thing i want to mention about this board is that it comes with this g-connector, which makes the job of building a pc a lot easier. One of the biggest hassles is connecting the little front panel connectors and with this little adapter, the process has made a lot more simple and less of a headache, but really on that guys, there’s actually a ton of more features of what this board has to offer. But hopefully this video gave you a little bit of insight of what the x99 designer lx board from gigabyte kind of offers in terms of its main key highlight points.
But if you have any specific questions, let me know in the comment section down below also we’re going to be doing an epic build guide with this board with a couple of exciting components. So definitely stay tuned for that video, if you’re not subscribed to the website. Already but other than that, thanks so much for your support, thanks for watching and we’ll see, you later take care. .