Hardware First Look: Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6

exact same position. i've already bought a pretty Zalman 9500 cooler, but it needs back-plate should have bought a Arctic Cooler pro 7

lucky, i have also bought a Tt Extreme Sprite 2, i was going to buy a 680i motherboard. so i can use screws from that on the stock northbridge HS. (and waste a perfectly good NB cooler )

 

"Unfortunately though, there is no on-board clear CMOS button so you have to delve into the depths of your dark case in the middle of your board to short some pins."

I find using an old power switch and it's associated header with a little modding can work well for this. You just have to route the wires somewhere unobtrusive?

 

"owever they need a greater drive current as they have a lower gate capacitance " other way round... higher gate capacitance results in needing higher drive currents. Think about it greater capacitance means more charge has to be transfered in the same period of time and thus the curents are greater. For fast switching aplications they can be pretty big!

I'm building a PWM ADC at the moment and it took me a while to find mosfets with low enough gate capacitance to be used for the logic ttl level shifting. (ended up using low current mosfet which is completly different to the usual high power ones but has nice low gate capacitance (40pF) but high RDS (25ohm) and low maximum current (8A instantanius peak, 0.35A continious). Some high power mosfets have gate capacitances as high as 2uF!

 

Quick question for Tim... Perhaps it is because I have a headcold, but my spacial thinking just isn't up to snuff today. I can't tell from the pics why a cooler backplate can't fit. (Can one be modded to fit? )

Well, you could always do what this guy did... http://www.ultramobilegeek.com/2007/08/adding-internal-usb-and-internal.html

 

sorry mis read what you meant

 

Did I really read about the board's inability to accommodate the Tuniqs and Thermalrights of the world? Who the hell uses the plastic pins on a nice board like this? Thou shalt not V the board w/ that bs contraption!

 

"im just asking why has Gigabyte used so little cooling compared to Asus or Biostar (the external MOSFET cooler) for X38." mosfet cooling is not needed in low power switching aplications as they can run upto 150c with no problems and if over tempreturing they current limit lowering there tempreture and ensuring they don't go into thermal runaway. The boards with mosfet cooling are etheir poorly designed or using it as a gimmick.

the way this is going on i'm going to have to design my own motherboard with blackjack and hookers!...

 

Ok so....

After reading a healthy chunk of reviews, I have came to one major conclusion about my research for building a new gaming PC. And that is, I am way more confused than I was when I started. My goal was to build a gaming PC that I could stick with for hopefully 3-4 years without spending more than $500-600. I realize it will be more like 2-3 years with the budget that I have. Currently I'm still running an ASUS A7n8x deluxe Motherboard w/ AMD 2400+ followed by an ATI 9800 Pro Video card and 1.5gb ram. So basically, I'm currently way behind the curve. I figured my first step is to locate a video card that supports DX10. I was eying up a nVidia Geforce 8600 GTS. I have been a huge ATI fan in the past but so far the FPS on DX10 show that nVidia has the edge. Then I was checking out processors. AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ is what I came up with. Motherboards kind of confuse me. Hence with this review... wasn't sure what it all meant. ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe or ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe since I was looking at going AMD since the price is alot better than Intel Core 2. For RAM I was thinking G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800. This would be my first attempt at building a computer but I guess it would probably look like this. I believe its all compatible but I wouldn't be shocked if I was way off. Please give me some feed back.

Q 1. Does it make that much of a difference with 512mb as oppose to the 256mb Geforce 8600 GTS? I would think it would be noticeable.

Q 2. If I'm using those specs, what case is going to give me the best cooling for my buck with enough space for the G 8600 GTS cooling system thats build on?

Q 3. Help me please... =P I'm a little lost. Obviously....

Thanks so much,
Drandith

 

That copper plate on the back really is a shame!

Does anyone know which decent coolers actually fit the board?
Zalman CNPS 9500/9700 dont but what about Tuniq Tower and Scythe Infinity?

 

The Scythe Ninja does not use a back plate so should fit nicely

 

My thoughts exactly, re: the Artic Cooler Pro 7.

It's a shame as this Silentator really looks the business and the Coolink fan is whisper quiet apparently; I haven't got it in my system yet as I'm a motherboard and CPU away from finishing my PC build and I have all these demos I can't play on my existing 3GHz P4 w/ ATI X800XT PE calling me!

I guess we'll need to actually see how/if the boards heat pipes interfere with any non-back-plate coolers that fit. I understand from the previews that the heatpipes are less bulky than existing Gigabyte Mobos which is a good start.

 

couldnt say it better, this is a kickass mobo.

 

Drand...stretch yourself for the 8800GTS 640 if possible. Buy a cheap ass board, cpu, and memory. Then learn how to overclock. You'll thank me in the end, I promise you.

 

im good, 4 will do me

 

Sorry for the delayed responses to some of the questions - Rich is out in Shanghai at the moment and has limited access to the net. Hopefully my answers will be sufficient but if not, Rich will have to answer further questions when he returns.

yes it's backwards compatible - this board supports PCIe 2.0 and we used a PCIe 1.0 graphics card.

ICH9R only supports PCIe 1.1a (afaik), while X38 is PCIe 2.0

The CrazyCool 2 backplate on the rear of the board needs to be fitted (or you need to replace the screws holding the northbridge cooler down) at all times and that unfortunately covers the back of the CPU cooler too. I guess you could mod the CrazyCool 2 plate so that there's nothing behind the CPU socket.

 

Anything that has enough clearance to fit on the GA-965P-DQ6 / Blitz Extreme and doesn't require a backplate will fit on this board from just quickly looking at it and comparing to what else is sitting on the bench at the moment. The PWM heatsinks aren't as tall as a Striker Extreme's.

 

You want an 8800 if you want it to last a few years.

A 6000+ and M2N32 with 2GB of DDR2 800 memory should get you by, but most people would recommend a P35 and Core 2 Quad.

 

NO! NO! NO! I was very close to put my money in that board, but they just ruined it with the Crazy Cool heatsink in the back.

Now I won't be able to fit any decent CPU cooler in the back. And to answer the opinion about the Scythe Ninja cooler, the former revision use to have a backplate. The new revision B of the Ninja has a new mounting system, which consists on plastic bolts.

Yes, you won't need a backplate, but the problem is that there have been many complaints about the new revision of the Ninja not making enough contact with the CPU because of this new lousy system. Thus, the new revision of the Ninja has far worse cooling than the former and old revision with differences as much of 20C!!!

I'm saying this because I've owned 3 of them on many systems. Being the last one the infamous B revision.

In other words, you need a backplate period to make your cooler have good contact with the CPU.

I think my money will go to the Asus P5E3 Deluxe or the Maximus. Dissapointed with Gigabyte, what a bad decision!!

You need to diminish the size of that heatsink in the back!!

NO way in hell I'm going to buy this mobo to force to get lousy CPU coolers without backplate!

 

The CrazyCool can be removed, but if you do decide to remove it, the entire CrazyCool Silentpipe will have to go because it’s all “linked”.
You could somehow just remove the backplate, with a bit of modification.

The CrazyCool is mostly held by screws, including the backplate.

 

Bindi any comments on my post (#19)?