| Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5 Motherboard Review |
|
|
| $ Check REAL-TIME pricing for ASUS P5N-E SLI (90-MBB5G0-G0EAY00Z) Motherboard Products $ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Introduction |
GA-M59SLI-S5 is the most high-end socket AM2 motherboard from Gigabyte based on the new nVidia nForce 590 SLI chipset and targeted to the new Athlon 64 CPUs supporting DDR2 memory. It features three PCI Express x16 slots (although the third one works only at 8x speed) and a copper heat-pipe cooler to cool down the chipset and the voltage regulator transistors. Let’s see how this new motherboard from Gigabyte performs.
 click to enlarge Figure 1: Gigabyte GA-M59SLI-S5 motherboard.
Two things immediately caught our attention when looking this motherboard for the first time. The first one was its passive cooling solution, using copper heatsinks with heatpipes to cool down its north bridge, south bridge and MOSFET transistors. It is impossible not to think that Gigabyte copied this idea from ASUS, as ASUS was the first manufacturer to launch this kind of solution some time ago. This also makes ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe the main competitor to GA-M59SLI-S5, as both feature this same design.
 click to enlarge Figure 2: Passive cooling solution using copper heatsinks and heatpipes.
 click to enlarge Figure 3: Passive cooling solution using copper heatsinks and heatpipes..
 click to enlarge Figure 4: Passive copper heatsink under the CPU.
The problem, in our opinion, is that this system produces a lot of heat. The whole idea behind passive coolers is to create a noiseless solution, the side effect, however, is that this solution increases the PC internal temperature.
On the other hand, this motherboard features three PCI Express x16 slots, feature not available on ASUS M2N32-SLI De Luxe. The third one works at x8 speed, as mentioned before, and only exists if you want to have more than four independent displays attached to your system. As nowadays each video card has two independent video outputs, with three video cards you can have up to six independent displays connected to your PC. It is also important to note that this third PCI Express slot isn’t SLI and should be used only to increase the number of independent displays attached to your system, as by installing a third card won’t improve your gaming performance.
 click to enlarge Figure 5: Three PCI Express x16 slots. The orange one works at x8 and isn’t SLI.
The two main (blue) PCI Express x16 slots truly run at x16 and this motherboard has also two x1 PCI Express slots and two regular PCI slots. |
| Pages (10): [1] 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 » ... Last » |
| Print Version | Send to Friend |
|
Bookmark Article
| Comments (0)
|
|
|
|
NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI Chipset, ATX, Socket LGA775, FSB: 1333 MHz, Max RAM: 8 GB, DMA/ATA-133 (Ultra) x 2, Serial ATA II x 4, Ethe... Read full description...
 Read 1 Epinions reviews
|
$128 - $141
|
|
|
ATX, Socket LGA775, Gigabit Ethernet, Compatible Processors: Intel Pentium Extreme Edition Read full description...
 Read 1 Epinions reviews
|
$224 - $260
|
|
|
ATX, Socket 939, FSB: 1600 MHz, Max RAM: 4 GB, DMA/ATA-133 (Ultra) x 2, Serial ATA x 4, Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, Fast Ethernet,... Read full description...
 Read 1 Epinions reviews
|
$134 - $134
|
|
|
NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Chipset, ATX, Socket 939, FSB: 1000 MHz, Max RAM: 4 GB, DMA/ATA-133 (Ultra) x 2, Serial ATA II x 4, ATI Rage XL... Read full description...
|
$216 - $216
|
|
|
Intel 945G Chipset, Micro ATX, Socket LGA775, FSB: 1066 MHz, Max RAM: 4 GB, DMA/ATA-100 (Ultra) x 1, Serial ATA II x 4, Intel Grap... Read full description...
|
$50 - $95
|
|
Latest News |
May 9, 2008 - 7:22 AM |
May 9, 2008 - 6:22 AM |
May 8, 2008 - 9:42 AM |
May 7, 2008 - 7:04 AM |
May 7, 2008 - 6:53 AM |
May 6, 2008 - 5:34 AM |
May 6, 2008 - 5:31 AM |
May 5, 2008 - 7:24 AM |
May 5, 2008 - 7:05 AM |
April 30, 2008 - 8:50 AM |
| .:: More News ::. |
|
Latest Content |
|
|
| Our Most Popular Articles |
668,689 views
|
424,308 views
|
389,476 views
|
387,437 views
|
378,549 views
|
314,724 views
|
291,478 views
|
275,043 views
|
263,025 views
|
251,821 views
|
|
| Latest Threads in Our Forums |
by reidy- |
by billybobbuddy |
by billybobbuddy |
by doc |
by doc |
by jackson |
by Gabriel Torres |
by Gabriel Torres |
by obso1337 |
by Hardware Secrets Team |
| .:: Visit Our Forums ::. |
|
|