Layout

Gigabyte provided the X58A-OC with an independant color scheme. Already at a first glance one can see that this board belongs to an own product category. The PCB itself has been covered with a matte black color and the expansion slot, three DIMM slots as well as parts of the heatpipe are orange. Altogether this really is one good looking board. Furthermore the black matte PCB also has a practical advantage for overclocking because one can see condensation water quite a bit better than on a glossy surface.

Naturally Gigabyte equipped it's absolute high-end overclocking motherboard with an digital power design which can rely on 20 phases. Right next to the CPU socket one will find only POS-Caps, which allow a very comfortable insulation of the socket area because of their low height. Below the heatpipe in this area there are even more capacitors which are able to withstand up to a whopping 50 Ampère of current per piece. Regarding the power design there is a buttons which makes it possible to change the clock frequency of the VRM in realtime. The only thing which looks a bit strange to us is the Clr_CMOS button that has been place quite close to the CPU socket. If you insulate the area around the CPU socket it's likely that you push it unintentionally.

Totally you'll find six DIMM-slots on the Gigabyte X58A-OC. Officially supported are DDR3 - 2200(OC) / 2133 (OC) / 1866 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 with up to 24 GByte capacity. Positioning of the DIMM-slots has been well thought which means they aren't too close to the CPU socket. Therefore there wont be incompatibilities between huge CPU coolers and big memory modules.

Northbridge as well as the current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via a passive heatpipe cooling solution. The southbridge got a passive cooling block which has not been integrated into the heatpipe loop of northbridge and VRM cooling. The fact that the cooling blocks around the CPU socket aren't too big makes it comfortable to install a big aircooler. We also noticed the very high manufacturing quality of the cooling blocks and their weight which is quite immense.