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The Gigabyte X170 Extreme ECC is one feature-packed workstation motherboard

By Koh Wanzi - on 30 Mar 2016, 4:49pm

The Gigabyte X170 Extreme ECC is one feature-packed workstation motherboard

Gigabyte X170 Extreme ECC

Gigabyte has announced that the X170 Extreme ECC, a top-end workstation motherboard based on Intel’s C236 chipset, is the first of its kind to officially support Thunderbolt 3. Starting with Skylake, Intel actually removed support for its Xeon CPUs from consumer chipsets like the Intel Z170 platform, opting to create two new chipsets – C232 and C236 – with additional features for its business customers.

The board is compatible with LGA 1151 Intel Xeon E3-1200 v5 processors and Intel Core i3 processors. LGA 1151 Xeon CPUs are aimed at enterprises, data centers, and embedded markets where reliability is paramount. As a result, Xeon processors are tested to last longer than their consumer-oriented Core chips. Having dedicated chipsets for the Xeon processors in the C232 and C236 chipsets will then also allow Intel to put them through similar tests for longevity and reliability.

At first glance, the Gigabyte X170 Extreme ECC looks almost like a gaming motherboard, with a digital camouflage print on its VRM and PCH heatsinks. However, it supports up to 64GB of DDR4 ECC memory, which clearly identifies it has a workstation board. ECC memory can eliminate small data discrepancies and prevent data corruption, thus increasing reliability and reducing system crashes. 

It features three physical PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and an additional three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. On the storage front, it has a total of eight SATA 6Gbps ports (including three SATA Express connectors) and two M.2 sockets.

The board is the latest addition to Gigabyte’s range of Thunderbolt 3-certified motherboards, enabling full support for the 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 protocol. It is available over the USB Type-C port at the rear I/O panel, and offers capabilities such as support for 4K displays at 60fps over DisplayPort 1.2, power delivery up to 36 watts, and the ability to daisy-chain up to six devices.

Thunderbolt 3 support is offered over the USB Type-C port on the rear. (Image Source: Gigabyte)

Gigabyte also says that Thunderbolt 3 can help professionals reduce the time of large file transfers, such as raw 4K video, to a matter of seconds, thus boosting efficiency.

Source: Gigabyte

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