Layout

The Gigabyte GA-7PESLX comes with a non coloured green PCB and black expansion slots. This time not like the GA-7PESH1 we got last time, Gigabyte chose to  not add stylish feature like the blue coloured PCB, they keep things simple for this one. Doesn't really matter as you won't see the motherboard anymore once you set it up in the server/workstation. The layout itself is also a bit different, the expansion slots are positioned differently and the sockets are not next to each others.

Gigabyte equipped his workstation motherboard so each CPU is powered by four digital power phases. Furthermore each set of six DIMM memory slots benefits form their own two digital power phases. With a total of 2x 2 digital power phases for the memory and 2x 4 for the processors a reasonable level of sability is being provided. Totally there are eight phases less than on the GA-7PESH1 which is normal given that you have only twelve memory slots vs sixteen and this motherboard is designed for Xeon E5-2400 series that need less power than the E5-2600 series ones. Furthermore Gigabyte went for high quality chokes from Coiltronics. The printing ontop of them reads 1007R3-R27. After checking the datasheets you find that these ferrite core chokes can cope with up to 61 amps.

Totally you'll find two sets of two times three DIMM-slots on the GA-7PESLX which means there are no less than twelve memory slots for an amount of total memory up to 96GB of normal memory and 384GB of Registered memory. Officially supported are the following clock speeds: 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz. Memory slots are quite close to the CPU socket so you won't be able to fit huge cooler on it but that's not a problem because this motherboard is designed for workstation use and worksation memory doesn't have high memory heatspreaders luckily.

Southbridge as well as current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via a passive cooling blocks. But not only, also the LSI chip has an heatsink on to feel more fresh.