GGF LAN view review of GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H, lots of info on new UEFI bios

Hi guys,

We’ve just come across a YouTube video from GGF LAN guys reviewing the new GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H. Stuart was particularly impressed with the UEFI bios and spent most of the review discussing it in detail. You should check it out!

GIGABYTE “Pi is Returned” competition brings out insane records out of HWBOT community

What an incredible weekend of overclocking we just had. If there ever was a need for some professional shoutcasting that can run over the weekend, this was the right time as this competition had more twists and turns than a hundred German pretzels! For those of you unaware of the competition let me first introduce it for you.

HWBOT hosted the competition based on AMD A & FX series platforms with up to $5000 cash prizes from GIGABYE & AMD. The main benchmark was a system benchmark, SuperPi, which calculates Pi to 1 million and 32 million digits. I’ve just grabbed all the math nerd attentions in one sentence right?!? Overclocking is very number/stat intensive. The benchmark has been around for a long time and is an interesting and reasonable reliable way to tell the performance of platforms apart. There is an element of tweaking involved which requires platform/system tuning and some OS tuning. It needs liquid nitrogen not only on CPU but also memory as it directly affects efficiency (how fast you can complete calculation with same system parameters).

The stages had SuperPi 1M & 32M on both platforms with $500 top prize with a bonus $500 if the overclocker takes the platform world record. Did world records get taken, oh yes. Are all bonus cash prizes reached including bonus rounds, YES. It gets crazier, on some categories even 10th spot could have won the extra $500 cash prize as world records kept tumbling from day 1 literally!

The whole month during this competition saw overclocking upping the new record mark until The Stilt from Finland dropped a bombshell on the last day taking out all 4 categories. It looked impossible to beat but beaten it did get in FM2 categories by an impressive overclock from DFORDOG from China reaching an incredible 7869MHz 1M SuperPi on A10-6800K and GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 and Wizerty from France edging out The Stilt in SuperPi round by the merest of margins taking home $1K each for their effort.

The Stilt was unbeaten with the 990FXA-UD7 and FX9370 clocking at a monster 8160MHz 1M and 7876MHz 32M to take out $2K in prizes for those two scores with help of $500 bonus world records for each category win!

 

Congratulations to all!

Is it an Amplifier? Is it a PC? No. It’s an All-in-One Audio System

Our buddy and co-worker here at GIGABYTE HQ Janus had a pretty old school amplifier at home that he was thinking to upgrade. Despite being pretty long in the tooth, it was still in regular daily use, connected to a set-top box, DVD player, laptop and Wii outputting to a set of 5.1 speakers.

 

But instead of shipping the old amp off to the proverbial glue-farm, Janus had a deviously ingenious idea – how’s about modifying this amplifier to combine it with a PC, basically using the chassis to house the PC components while still retaining the original functionality of the AV amplifier. The image above shows the final build running Windows 7. Let's check out the steps involved in the project.

Tape? Blimey. We’re talking really, really old school.

So on the PC side of things, Janus opted to base the system around a GIGABYTE H87N-WiFi motherboard, sporting an Intel i5 4430 CPU. The H87N-WIFI is a Mini-ITX board measuring only 17cm x 17cm, considerably smaller than any ATX or even MicroATX board. When you consider the other components that will be installed inside the amplifier, it makes perfect sense to opt for the more compact Mini-ITX form factor board.
Step1: Modify CPU cooler and Insulate Motherboard
One of the first issues that Janus encountered was the fact that the Intel stock cooler was just too high, and impossible to accommodate in the amplifier’s chassis. The easiest solution was to first remove the fan on top of the heatsink and replace it with a shorter one. Sure, he could have looked at other compatible aftermarket solutions, but this seemed the cheaper and easiest solution – and as you can see the result is pretty simple and effective.

Modify CPU cooler.

Another potential issue was the motherboard (or indeed the PC) coming in contact with the amplifier components and causing electrical shorting. To eliminate any such issues, Janus used a plastic sheet to insulate the board, held in place with regular insulation tape. Again, a simple but effective way to help safely integrate the PC components into the amplifier.

Motherboard insulated

Step2: Attach Power and Hard Drive LEDs.
Interestingly the amplifier itself had two regular microphone jacks on the front panel - originally included to satisfy any karaoke urges one might have. Janus had the cool of removing the actual audio jack sockets and replacing them with power and hard drive LEDs for the PC. Pretty cool, no?

Add Power LED and HDD LED
Step3: Cut the amplifier for install MB I/O shell
Possibly the most difficult aspect of the build involved taking a drill to modify the amplifier case to make a hole large enough to fit the motherboard’s IO back panel. The edges were then filled down to make a smooth edge. BTW, I can personally attest to the fact that this was, without doubt the noisiest part of the build…

Cut the amplifier for install MB I/O shell
Step4: A minor hiccup.
All the drilling, hacking and filling meant that the amplifier front panel actually took a bit of a hiding, with several scratches and blemishes. The solution? Simply remove and spray paint the panel a nice even black.

Paint

Step5: Modifying the Power Cable
The idea was for both the amplifier and PC to use the same power cable. i.e. turn on the PC and the amplifier would also be on. The easy solution was to integrate a power splitter into the case that could be attached to the outside power button, thus powering both PC and amp.

Change power cable design.

Step6: Installing SSD, Power Supply and Motherboard
Finally we see some shots of the key components being installed into the amplifier chassis. These include the motherboard (inc. CPU and memory), a 60GB SSD, a compact 170 watt mini-ITX Power Supply plus all the cables needed to connect it all together including LED lights and the power button.

Install SSD, power, MB...
Step7: Final check...

So before sealing up the PC, Janus ran a quick system test, making sure the rig booted to Windows and all components were properly detected and installed. After that the final task is to close up the chassis, stand back and admire a job well done.
Nice work Janus…

Video: GIGABYTE introduce 8 series Thunderbolt and G1-Killer boards at IDF 2013

Colin and the gang from the US office headed to San Francisco earlier this week to attend IDF 2013. By the looks of things he ran into our buddies from TweakTown who were keen to get an early look at a few of the newer boards were showcasesing at the event, including the newly launched Z87X-UD5 TH board plus the forthcoming Z87X-UD7 TH – both featuring dual Thunderbolt ports.

Check out the video below and you’ll also get a sneak preview of our forthcoming G1-Killer G1. Assassin 3 motherboard which is based on the X79 platform and boasts a plethora of new audio features including USB DAC-UP and upgradable OP-Amps.

TweakTown

Impressive weekend of overclocking with various GIGABYTE platforms

I’ve noticed a whole bunch of different scores this weekend with some impressive overclocks and scores using GIGABYTE’s AMD and Intel based platforms.

One of the coolest records to come out of this weekend is I.nfraR.ed’s Fastest AMD SuperPI 1M Score Ever During GIGABYTE "Pi Is Returned" Contest as reported by HWBOT. This Bulgarian OC virtuoso has managed to clock this FX-8350 CPU to a cool 7907MHz 1M SuperPi using GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD3 motherboard.

For those of you keen to follow this contest, check it out over at HWBOT. i.nfraR.ed is currently leading the competition ahead of ivanov from Poland and Radi from France. Radi has put up a monster score with the F2A85X-UP4 and AMD A10-6800K running at 7.5GHz to lead that stage. He is also eligible for the world record $ prize with this score. Let’s see what the next week brings!

 

I’ve also noticed that Christian Ney and OCAHolic guys have been busy bees SMASHING the latest PCMARK7 world record by some margin on the GIGABYTE Z87X-OC board and GTX780OCv2 GPU. Well done there guys, very cool!

Last but not least is a pretty sweet overclock from TeamAU’s latest member, Jack (aka JJJC), who is currently preparing for MOA 2013 competition and testing his favourite benching board GIGABYTE Z87X-OC with a competition GPU and reaching #4 fastest global 3DMARK05 reaching a whopping 70,626points. Good luck at MOA Jack! You can check out all the scores from TeamAU guys on their facebook page.

Video: Extreme Overclocking Competition in Germany

A week or so ago our German team held an extreme overclocking competition at the University of Heilbronn. Focused heavily on the new Haswell platform, key movers and shakers from HWBOT that are based in Germany we in attendance. Check out the video below, there’s a good chance you’ll spot a few familiar faces having fun.

  GIGABYTE DE Facebook page

SniperOz from TeamAU jumps to #3 HWBOT OC league

SniperOz  from TeamAU moves into #3 spot in HWBOT OC League (i.e. non-sponsored extreme OC league that use retail hardware) with a some monster scores using a GIGABYTE Z87X-OC and GTX Titan. Most impressive scores were single card world records in Unigine Heaven DX11 Extreme Preset and 3DMARK03 achieved last week.

Awesome work there Sniper, keep pushing mate!