GIGABYTE’s Thin Mini-ITX boards make their first online appearance…

It’s been weeks since Intel’s IDF event, and the coverage is all but over. Then today while chatting to a friends I came across this coverage on semiaccurate.com of two Thin Mini-ITX boards that are planned for availability in Q1, 2013 to regional system integrator partners through GIGABYTE’s normal channel distribution system:

Read the full article here.

There is not much info available about these boards yet, and I’m sure we’ll be posting updates as we know more about the final spec and availability dates. In the meantime, if you are interested in them be sure to ask your local GIGABYTE supplier for more details.

87 Clockers Manga Chapter 2 Is Out!

We ran a story in the past about a really well known manga based on overclocking. It’s released in Japan and a few other South Eastern Asian countries. It’s called “87 Clockers”. Chapter 2 just came out recently.

You can check it out online at this website link!

Awesome …

iPhone 5 recharges from GIGABYTE On/Off Charge

One area where GIGABYTE has focused a lot of R&D is USB power because this has quickly become the de facto mobile device charging standard for anything from smart phones and devices to remote controlled helicopters. With this in mind, we have introduced features/technologies such as one fuse per USB port, 3x USB Power, Electrostatic Protection, reinforced the power traces in our PCBs, and of course On/Off Charge for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad series of products. Now as screen quality, size and battery technologies change with each new product launch, so too do the recharging requirements, and this is why some folks had trouble charging their new tablets from their previous generation chargers a while ago.

So in case you’re wondering if your existing PC can recharge your new iPhone 5, fear not, it appears to be all good! We tested an iPhone 5 charging from a GIGABYTE motherboard with On/Off Charge (see the onboard USB headers with the red background below) and found that the maximum charge it took was 0.76A.

GIGABYTE On/Off Charge

 

 

Some shots of the recharge:

 

GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 spotted in several Trinity review test beds

We officially launched our new GIGABYTE FM2 series of boards on Tuesday, with the Ultra Durable 5 toting F2A85X-UP4 board leading the pack. It’s also no surprise to see AMD Trinity reviews appearing left right and center throughout the week, and great to see that many of these reviews featured our flagship motherboard.

You can check out several of them here:

Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6332/amd-trinity-a10-5800k-a8-5600k-review-part-1

eTeknix: http://www.eteknix.com/reviews/processors/amd-a8-5600k-apu-processor-review/4/

LegitReviews: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2047/4/

Hexus: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/46005-amd-a10-5800k-trinity-apu/?page=2

HotHardware: http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-A10-and-A8-Trinity-APU-Virgo-CPU-Performance/?page=2

You can check out the GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 and the rest of the FM2 series on our website here.

Sin0822 posts his Z77X-UP7 review with some amazing close up shots!

Those of you who’ve read sin0822’s review will know that he is somewhat of a hardware guru. Nobody else pays as much attention to the onboard chips, VRM design, PCB tracing and other physical features in my opinion, and this makes his reviews unique. So he got his hands on a GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7 and has published yet another hardware porn extravaganza, only this time he is using his new high-def camera for extreme close up shots of the tiniest onboard components. Not much escapes Sin! Here are some shots to whet your appetite:

10 layer PCB indicator:

 

 

PWM design:

 

Close up of IR’s 60A-rated 3550 PowIRstage:

 

Headphone amp and audio subsystem design:

 

He even explains the PCIe slot layout and design that allows for 4-way SLI/CrossfireX and also includes a single card slot that bypasses the PLX bridge chip to avoid latency issues when not using multiple VGA cards. This is how Vivi recently got his awesome 3DMark 11 score.

Click on any of the pictures above to check out sin’s review on overclock.net. You can also check out sin’s extensive VRM list on his website. This list will tell you if your motherboards VRM is digital or analogue, as well as a bunch of other technical specs that you might be interested in.

Vivi from South Africa hits #2 single card 3DMARK11 with GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7

Hey guys,

I just noticed Vivi from South Africa put up a monster single card 3DMARK11 single card score (2nd fastest in the world) using GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7 and the GIGABYTE ODIN PSU.

Here is what Vivi had to say about the gear he benched with:

This board is awesome. and this Oding PSU doing well! haha. 2000mhz run passed too, but screenshot was invalid. This will have to do. R.I.P to this card :P. -130 on the card and 1.75v Thanks to sniperOz for the pots!

Well done mate!

Score Link

TeamAU creates a custom “Hotkey OC Control Tool” for GTL, get your copy now!

Hey guys,

James T (youngpro) from TeamAU created a handy little tool which allows overclockers to change the speed of their system on the fly with 4 separate profiles that ties into GTL (GIGABYTE Tweak Launcher) software. He calls it Hotkey Control Tool. EasyTune 6 used to have this function on previous chipset but it hasn’t been implemented yet on Z77 as software team is hard at work with a complete refresh of the ET tool.

In the meantime you can use this nifty tool to jump frequencies as simply as hitting function keys (F1, F2, F3 and F4). Keys are fully programmable and I’ve made a brief video explaining how to use it but for a full description make sure you jump to James’ blog AT THIS LINK.

Thanks for sharing James & Team.AU, this will no doubt make it a hell of a lot easier to bench GIGABYTE boards subzero!

Watch the video in 1080p and full screen!