News
News Categories

Gigabyte offers details of new features on Intel 100-series boards, including Z170 G1 Gaming

By Koh Wanzi - on 13 Jul 2015, 10:04am

Gigabyte offers details of new features on Intel 100-series boards, including Z170 G1 Gaming

Gigabyte Z170 G1 Gaming. (Image Source: Maximum PC)

Many motherboard manufacturers teased models of upcoming Intel 100-series motherboards at Computex 2015, although they were not all as forthcoming with details on board features. But with the launch of Skylake and Intel’s 100-series chipset looming, Gigabyte has now unveiled details on some of the features that consumers can expect on its new boards. Some of these – USB Type-C and USB 3.1 for example – are already found on existing boards, so we won’t be delving into them.

New and faster connectivity options

Select Gigabyte 100-series boards will boast the Thunderbolt 3 connector that was just announced at Computex. Thunderbolt 3 utilizes a USB Type-C port and offers up to 40Gb/s of bandwidth for a range of devices including storage drives, monitors, and even graphics cards. Like previous versions of Thunderbolt, it also allows you to daisy-chain monitors together, so you could run dual 4K displays over a single connector.

Gigabyte is also supposedly offering a board with three M.2 slots, each of which has access to four PCIe 3.0 lanes. Current-generation motherboards usually have just a single PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot, and Gigabyte’s triple configuration means that you could have up to 96GB/s of theoretical bandwidth for storage in RAID 0.

In addition, SATA Express ports will receive an upgrade to run over PCIe 3.0 x2 instead of last generation’s PCIe 2.0 x2, which translates into a bandwidth increase from 10Gb/s to 16Gb/s. Some of Gigabyte’s new motherboards will reportedly feature up to three of these connectors.

Image Source: Tom's Hardware

Finally, Gigabyte will be bundling an adapter to allow users to connect a mini-SAS device to one of its M.2 slots. This will let users hook up a 2.5-inch Intel 750-series NVMe SSD to their system, instead of taking up one of their PCIe slots with a PCIe version of the drive.

Overclocking features

IR/Infineon’s 20-phase digital power design, a 16+4-phase VRM design, is clearly targeted at overclockers. It’ll probably only be found on high-end boards, like Gigabyte’s Z170 G1 Gaming. You may not be planning some hardcore LN2 overclocking, but it’s a nice touch of excess that enthusiasts may appreciate.

Furthermore, the Turbo B-Clock Tuning IC chip will give overclockers finer control over clock speeds and performance. Users will be able to adjust their system’s base clock ranging from 90MHz to 200MHz. Previously, they were limited to just choosing from 100MHz, 125MHz, and 167MHz base clocks.

Design and aesthetics

Color LED trace paths on motherboards are nothing new, and we’re used to seeing these lighted trails delineate audio circuits on more gamer-oriented boards. However, LED trace paths that can be customized brings something new to the table, and select Gigabyte boards will have trace paths that let you choose from one of seven colors. It’s a small touch, but one that will help enthusiasts achieve better color coordination in their systems.

Image Source: Tom's Hardware

Finally, Gigabyte will reinforce its PCIe slots on some boards with a metal shielding. We’ve all been afraid that our board’s PCIe slot would prove unequal to supporting the heft of a powerful graphics card, so some structural reinforcement is definitely welcome.

Source: Tom’s Hardware

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.