 Welcome to my unboxing and first look at Gigabyte, actually a really exciting board from Gigabyte. This has a whole bunch of really cool stuff that I'm super excited about and I want to preface this whole unboxing video by saying this looks like it might be the board for me and I'm still in the middle of doing my personal rig upgrade and I'm super excited about this board. Ultra durable 5, ultra cool, ultra efficient, ultra performance and high current capabilities so they have completely redesigned their VRM design. Well, VRM design, yes, redesigned their design. Industry leading 60 amp rated power stage with lower losses, higher efficiency and excellent thermal management. What this means to me is that in previous almost everyone's X79 boards because there's so little room to build the VRM you have to use really high quality components to deliver the kind of current low CPU's demand, almost all of them made whining obnoxious noises so Gigabyte has just revamped it completely to the point where they're saying, yep, this is awesome, it's the best, we're going to put a 5 year warranty on this in the US and Canada and they're just basically like, I wish I had sunglasses, okay, cameraman trip, I wish I had sunglasses so I could put them on like this and just be like, yeah. That's pretty much what they're doing at this point. So let's finish up with the rest of the box. So this is the X79S UP5, this is using the Intel chipset C606 so they're using the officially Xeon supporting Xeon grade chipset. Comes with, you know what, let's not talk too much about accessories, includes their 3D power, so digital power for the CPU and for each of the memory channels, or not for each of the memory channels, for each of the sets of memory channels or whatever, something like that. Worldwide number one digital desktop TBL VRM provider. So they're actually giving you the brand of the power components they're using, very cool. So the 3D BIOS, UEFI BIOS with backup, like physical backup, SAS onboard, ECC memory support. So this is more like a workstation board really than just a desktop board. This is not like your grandpa's desktop board. Cool power inside and out. So single package design, industry leading 60 amp rated power stage, high side MOSFET, low side MOSFET, all on a single package. So check this out. So they're saying compared to traditional or even lower RDS on MOSFETs, which their competitors are still talking about, the IR355 power IR stage, power stage, oh wow that's hilarious, runs cooler and delivers more power. Same thing here, cooler temps equals higher and higher over clocks. And this is for a couple of reasons. So number one is that your VRM components will perform better when they're running cooler. Number two is that when all these components, down here, over here, when all these components around the outside of the CPU socket are hot, it does inherently make your CPU run hotter. And I think that's pretty much it. So they still got their two times copper PCB, which basically amounts to better cooling, better conduction. And let's get the board open. I am just super stoked to check this out. So motherboard itself, opened up. Oh, I love what Gigabyte's been doing with their motherboard color schemes since pretty much P67. Matt black, okay, you know what, hold on, hold on, we gotta do accessories first. We'll just blow through these because I really want to check out the board. So here's their PCI Express WiFi Bluetooth module. This is a great value add because you can not only install it in your Gigabyte board, but you can also just install it in some other computer if you don't plan to use wireless in your gaming PC. So yes, they haven't locked it down the way that Asus does with a lot of their add-ons and check that out. Matt black PCB on this too. Way to go Gigabyte, figuring out the details and getting it done. Same thing, flexible black Crossfire and SLI bridges, perfect. Black antennas for the Bluetooth and WiFi, perfect. Whatever this cable connects to, it's black and it's perfect. We've got six, say the three, six gigabit per second cables. We've got a front three and a half inch bay that you can use to hook up a couple USB 3 ports if you don't have that functionality built into your case. You've got a three way SLI bridge included, so this board is three way SLI and Crossfire compatible. Matt black, of course, gorgeous. I think this might be the best overall package that Gigabyte's ever done on a motherboard, ever. And Gigabyte can take that feedback right back to their HQ because I have unboxed almost every Gigabyte motherboard in the last few years. I.O. shield, color coded, but not too color coded. See, it's not overdone. Perfect. Manual, it's a driver disk, download the latest manual for the wireless thing or something. Multilingual and splashy guidebook. Okay, accessories are done. We're done, we're done. We're moving on to the good part. So let's check out this board. This is not quite an ATX board. This is an EATX board, but it's not quite EATX either. It's just a touch wider than ATX. So if you have an ATX case that's a little bit on the wide side, this should fit just fine. You've got the motherboard socket. This is an LGA 2011 socket supporting Intel Core i7 up to extreme edition processors with quad channel memory. You've got eight banks of memory on here, so that means you can, with eight gig DIMMs, you can install up to 64 gigs of memory. No problem, although, you know, ECC does start to become something you might want when you have that much RAM fully supported on this particular board. Your eight pin power connectors in its ideal location at the top of the board. I wouldn't have minded seeing it a little bit over here, but I understand why they've done this because it's right behind the PWM and then right next to the CPU socket. So they've gone for a very efficient layout in terms of not overdoing, you know, extra random traces that it takes to, you know, carry the power over here through here. So efficiency is what it's all about with this particular board. Onboard power switch is up here on the top right in its ideal location. 24 pin power connectors on the right hand edge in its ideal location. I wouldn't have minded seeing this USB 3 front panel header on a right angle, but other than that not bad, not bad. Now check this out. Look at all these connectors. Holy smokes. So you've got two Intel powered, say to three, six gigabit per second connectors. You've got four Intel powered, say to two, three gigabit per second connectors and eight SAS six gigabit per second connectors. So that is a total of 14 SATA ports on this board. So you can fill up pretty much any case that you can put this board in with hard drives without worrying about a darn thing. Dual bios right here. So you have two physical bios. Here's your onboard reset switch. Wouldn't have minded seeing that sort of up here with the power switch, but not the end of the world. Front panel connectors. That's your super charging, you know, high powered USB 2.0 front panel header. So that'll allow you to charge your iPad off of it. Extra current. You have two regular USB 2.0 front panel headers, your trusted platform module, front firewire, front audio, and moving right along, you got your PCI Express layout. So even though this is an EATX board, usually X79 boards go for an XLATX longer form factor if they're going to try and squeeze in seven slots. A gigabyte has gone with six slots for this board, but you're still going to have full three-way video card compatibility. One, two, three. So that'll run in probably 16, eight. You know what? Let me find out in a sec. So I nubbed out, because they're using that C606 chipset rather than a regular desktop chipset, that's where all your SAS connectivity is coming from. So those are actually powered off the Intel chipset. And remember guys, you do need a Xeon if you want to run ECC, registered DIMMs or anything like that. So bear that in mind. Aha. Okay. So back to the PCI Express slot layout, you're going to be running at 16, eight X, eight X. So they have not opted for a PLX chip. And there's actually a good reason for that. So these are PCIe 3.0 ports, which means they've got lots of bandwidth, even if you're throwing a few GTX 680s in here. What it also means is there's less latency. Running through switches, even if they're switches that increase the overall bandwidth being delivered to the slot, can increase the latency and can actually reduce performance in isolated cases. So as long as you're delivering at least eight X to the card, eight X PCIe 3 is equivalent to 16 X PCIe 2, then you're not concerned about not having enough bandwidth and it's better to not have the additional latency. So there you go. So oh yeah, okay. So what do I think of the overall layout? So once you install one 16 X card here, you're going to be left with three PCIe 16 X physical slots, eight X, eight X. This one is actually wired for four X and a PCI slot. This gives you a pretty darn good mix. You know, you want to throw in like your legacy sound card. Maybe you got an older like Auzintek X Meridian or whatever, you know, really good sound card. And then you got a few more PCIe expansion slots. Sounds good. I'm really showing the back of the board using all metal screws. I'm glad we've gotten completely away from plastic pushpins. More cooling on the back. So pairing this up with a case like an 1100 or something like that would be great because you'll get a little bit of additional cooling with that fan built into the back of that case and your back IO. One, two, three, four, five, six. Yes, five, six USB 2.0 ports, PS2 port, clear CMOS, OC button as well as BIOS changer. Okay. This is a USB eSATA combo port. This is an eSATA port. This is Firewire, two gigabit Ethernet, one running off the Intel chipset and one running off a Realtek third party chipset. Optical audio out, 7.1 audio. And I think that pretty much covers it. So I'm just going to do a little spiel on why this is perfect for me. It has the absolutely perfect color scheme. I really don't like the powder blue that one of Gigabyte's competitors is using for accents. I also really love the overall subdued matte, just, oh, performance look that they've got with these boards. Great cooling solution. So this right here actually isn't really attached to anything. This is just additional cooling for the chipset as well as due to the connection by heat pipes, the VRM up here. So they've gone with sort of a traditional layout where normally on most motherboards you'd find additional VRM components and cooling here, but they've just put the cooling over here and they've connected everything with heat pipes to move it around. I love the, just the size of it. It's not XLATX, which means that you've got compatibility with almost every case out there with the exception of very, very narrow, very cramped cases where you won't have that extra room. And it's Gigabyte quality. I mean, honestly, is there really anything else to say, whether it's Gigabyte or whether it's, you know, any other of the big three, you know, the real guys who are actually designing and building these things from the ground up, manufacturing them and testing them. Yeah, you can pretty much trust it. I think that is pretty much it, guys. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the X79S UP5 WiFi. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.