GIGABYTE Question Time on Facebook: Form Factor Poll Results

Last week, in an attempt to better understand our Facebook followers and the systems they are building/using, we asked you to tell us which form factor motherboard you have installed in your current rig. The options were E-ATX, Standard ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX. Check out the results below:

It probably surprises nobody that standard ATX motherboards are the most popular choice. This totally makes sense. At GIGABYTE we offer more models in this form factor than any other, with the majority of our mainstream and upper mainstream product offerings coming in ATX. So no surprises that 62% of you are using a standard ATX form factor motherboard. For record, I also belong in this group.

So what about the larger E-ATX form factor? According to our poll, this form factor accounts for 9% of you. This is actually a little higher than I would have guessed, except perhaps when you take into account the audience being asked. Of course, our Motherboard Facebook page fans shouldn’t be taken as an accurate sample of your average user, because clearly if you are following us you have a strong interest in PC building, motherboard etc. So sure, this would make you more likely to go for a larger, enthusiast motherboard such as our G1.Sniper 5 or Z87X-OC Force, two of our most recent E-ATX model offerings. So, yeah, plenty of enthusiast level systems out there, being built by enthusiasts. 10% in total.

Then we come to the smaller end of things, which for me is perhaps the most interesting. The PC business has been evolving slowly over the last decade with technology getting more and more efficient, using less power generally so one obvious trend that is the rise of smaller system builds based on small form factor motherboards.

Micro-ATX in fact has a great deal of flexibility in terms of size, with plenty of variation available. But the one main difference is that you’re getting fewer add-in-card options with fewer PCIe and PCI slots than standard ATX implementations. Micro-ATX also tends to be mostly mainstream board offerings, less extreme configurations, so to see only 19% of participants using this form factor kind of tells me that our Facebook followers are more inclined towards the upper tier models, which echoes what we’ve seen so far.

Mini-ITX is a relatively new form factor, defined not by Intel like the other form factors, but by VIA Technologies – hence the ITX, not the ATX suffix. With fixed dimensions of 17cm by 17cm, recent years have seen the form factor mature considerably with more and more chassis available than previously. But despite the relative maturity of Mini-ITX I am still a little surprised to see 10% of those  polled using it. This is a significant chunk and points to growth in this segment. It also ties in with GIGABYTE now offering more in this form factor than before. One example is our recent F285XN-WIFI board which see the AMD FM2 platform on Mini-ITX for the first time. Then again, one could also conclude that if you are a Mini-ITX user then you may also find polls about form factors to be quite interesting…. ;)

One other interesting point is the little nugget of data that tells about the gender of all those polled. According to our Facebook Poll App 96% of you are male, 2% female with 2% not sure. So it seems that our Facebook fan page is a bit of a boys club. Are we really so surprised?

Lazy Bear from Overclock.net builds a stunning custom PC, check it out!

I often come across guys on forums building custom PCs and it always impresses me to see such great dedication to their hobby to spend countless hours (and $) planning and building works of art to say the least.

Here is another wonderful example of a custom watercooled PC built by an Overclock.net member Lazy Bear called “Project Green”. He’s sporting what looks to be the GIGABYTE Assassin2 motherboard in a sea of green. I love it!

Source

Win a AMD FX-9590 gaming featuring the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7

Of all the high-end rigs you could ever possibly dream of winning, this one must surely have your saliva glands pulsing. AMD has partnered with the Gaming Tribe and Luminosity to give away an AMD 9590-based Battlefield 4 gaming rig from MAINGEAR.

OF course this is a super high-end rig and as such features our top-o-the-line AM3+ motherboard, the GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7. Of course the other major spec is the 5GHz AMD-FX 9590 Bulldozer CPU from AMD, but hell, check the rest of the rig… our UD7 board is gonna feel quite at home.

Components

• Chassis: Corsair Obsidian Series 900D Super Tower (Black)
• Processor: AMD FX-9590 Eight-Core Black Edition 5.0GHz Turbo Unlocked
• Liquid Cooling: Hydro Series H100i Extreme Performance CPU Cooler
• Graphics Cards: Two (2) PowerColor Radeon HD 7970 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI
• Express 3.0 x16 HDCP in CrossFireX
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD7 AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0
• Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz
• Power Supply: Corsair AX1200i Digital ATX 1200 Watt 80 PLUS Platinum PSU
• Drive 1: Corsair Neutron Series GTX 240GB SATA 3 6Gb/s SSD
• Drive 2: WD Velociraptor WD1000DHTZ 1TB 10,000 RPM 64MB Cache HDD
• External Drive: Corsair Voyager Air 1TB Wireless Mobile Storage
• Optical Drive: 24X Dual Format/Double Layer DVD-R/RW + CD-R/RW Drive
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate

Peripherals

• Keyboard: Corsair Vengeance K95 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard (Cherry Red)
• Mouse: Corsair Vengeance M65 Laser FPS Gaming Mouse
• Mat: Corsair Vengeance MM200 Gaming Mouse Mat
• Headset: Corsair Vengeance 2000 Wireless 7.1 Gaming Headset

MSRP: $4,500

Check out details about how to win this beast of beasts here.

More info on the 9990FXA-UD7 board.

Blunty3000 shows off goodies at GIGABYTE PAXAU booth on YouTube

You guys should check out this awesome video from PAX Australia with GIGABYTE booth having all sorts of crazy things going on including a liquid nitrogen show, watercooled gaming rigs and a lot of awesome gaming laptops about to be released. The liquid nitrogen rig got some sweet camera work but I loved the dramatic introduction to this video, hahah. It’s awesome!

Cool Time Lapse Video: GIGABYTE Z87X-D3H built into $1500 gaming rig

Our buddy Elric at Tech of Tomorrow assembled and (with the aim of giving away) a $1,500 gaming rig. Among the components used to for the rig he selected a GIGABYTE Z87X-D3H motherboard – an excellent choice sir. Check the Tech of Tomorrow site to find how you can win the beast.

Cool, no? Well what’s even cooler is that when they had engineer Anthony Reynolds assemble the machine, they installed a time lapse camera above. What you end up with this is a pretty nifty birds-eye view of how a real pro PC builder goes about his job. And having built maybe a hundred or so systems myself, I’d have to say that this guy really knows what he’s doing.

Check out the video below.

 

Learn more about the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H here.

Tech of Tomorrow

GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H claims Gold Award at TechPorn

Once again we’re very happy to see one of our new 8 series motherboards picking up the plaudits with a Gold Award from tech reviewers TechPorn. Here’s a taste of what reviewer Leo Bien Durana had to say about the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H.

  “…the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H is certainly not a cheap motherboard, but is competitively priced enough against its rivals, with well rounded features that caters not only the mainstream but also the higher end users. It’s a motherboard that doesn’t rely on sheer performance alone. Instead, GIGABYTE had the Z87X-UD3H rely on a carefully picked set of features that should leave everyone wanting it. Impressive.”

Admittedly the gadget and technology review site TechPorn.ph is new on my radar. As the name implies, the site aims to give readers a real eye-full of the very best looking tech out there – as I’m sure you’ll agree. They really do know how to take some tantalizing photos. Here’s a bunch more to get your pulses racing.

  

 

You can more info about the Z87X-UD3H motherboard on our website here.

Find the full review with more pics, benchmarks and data here.

GIGABYTE Question Time on Facebook: Question 1 - Form Factors

Our GIGABYTE Motherboard Facebook page has grown a lot since we first kicked it off several years ago, with almost 30,000 fans and followers at this point. That’s a lot of people for a relatively niche technology product like a DIY PC motherboard. In theory it means that we have access to a broad group of people who know about technology, DIY PC building, PC gaming and overclocking etc. That’s right…I’m talking about you!

From our perspective, you guys represent a pretty interesting group of people to have access to. At times however we’ve kind of scratched our heads about how try to leverage you all as a group? What can we learn from you all? And how do we do it?

Yesterday, I installed a ‘Poll’ app on our Facebook page. It offers an easy way to ask questions and conduct relatively simple polls and questionnaires. Seems like a reasonably simple way to interact with our fans, ask you all a question and give you the chance to educate us about specific technologies, products and platforms. Today we’re kicking off with a very simple question:

Question 1 - Which form factor motherboard are you currently using?

Please take a moment to click the ‘Poll’ link’ and then select one of four answers – E-ATX, ATX, Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX. It should be quite interesting for us to see the results, which we plan to share with you all after one week.

Click here to tell us which motherboard form factor you are using. Cheers!!