Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6

[Rob Williams]

Building a new machine and want DDR3 support? Then the X48T-DQ6 should be up for consideration. It offers great performance, very stable high overclocks (500MHz) and lots of connectivity, including a full eight USB ports at the back. The layout is not ideal, but the board still proves good overall.

You can read the full review here and discuss it here.

[Merlin]

Gigabyte just loves color on the board which has turned me off every time. And I guess watermelon is in season, so why not?
And PCI 1.0 slots..... ( Let's not go there )
I'd like them to design a layout that has:
( 1 ) PCIe X16 for gpu ( forget Sli and Crossfire )
Just under that ( 1 ) PCI X 1.0 ( just in case ) In fact, lets put it just above the PCIe X16
( 3 ) PCI Slots
There, that's simple
And also...Do away with floppy and PATA connections ( another useless space hog on the mobo design )
Let's put the CPU closer to the ATX mounting studs for better support for those large coolers
Loose the colors, except for the mainboard...... I can tell the quality of a mainboard by it's color. Brown boards are the cheap bpards, it's the process that defines the color in most cases.
So, let's get the colors down to three at most, mainly for the memmory slots array, the board color and the PCIe slots....alll else could be black.
Put all the power connections in a quarter section of the board for easy routing of cables.
And finally, lets name the boards like we name cars, instead of all those number that throw us off. Maybe female names?....like victoria, Alice or Nicole.........that sounds sexy....lol

Merlin
A generation ahead

[Rob Williams]

Well, it has dual PCI slots because X38 demands there be two. The chipset supports Crossfire, so leaving only a single slot would somewhat hold back a feature. In that case, you'd probably just want a P35 board, of which there are many with a single slot.

I would have personally liked to see a slot layout like this:

PCI-E 16x
PCI-E 1x
PCI-E 16x
PCI-E 1x
PCI-E 1x
PCI
PCI

That would have allowed two ATI cards with dual-slot coolers along with a single PCI-E 1x (which is all most people would need), all while leaving the two PCI slots ready for the taking.

As for the colors, I agree. There are some times when I like them, but nothing beats a dark-colored board to me, which is why I tend to be drawn to ASUS' offerings. Intel's own boards are great-looking too, but their feature set usually holds me back from admiring them too much.

[Caitto]

Hey Rob how about the high-ends DFI motherboards? What you think of them?
You never done a review of a DFI motherboard have you?
How about a review of DFI Lanparty X48?

[THUMPer]

Gigabyte has always had tons of colors on their boards. I am in the market to get an x38/48 board soon. I just got some free DDR3 1600 RAM, and I would like to use it. The Last DQ6 was a Gigabyte P965, and it failed on me after 3 days. I am on the fence on what x48 board to get because my choices are limited.


"Unless for some reason you really need DDR3 (which you don't)."
I disagree.

[Rob Williams]

We used to deal with DFI quite a bit, but then their press department changed over and I gave up on trying to get through to them. So that's the main reason we haven't touched a DFI board in a while, as lame as it might sound.

They'll be at Computex in a few weeks though, so I'll touch base (and kick them) there, and make sure we get their board in. Thanks for the recommendation!

Originally Posted by THUMPer

I disagree.

Well since you put it that way... I'm almost forced to change my opinion now

[THUMPer]

Originally Posted by Rob Williams

Well since you put it that way... I'm almost forced to change my opinion now

You should. I'm right.

[Vaughane]

Hi all,

I must admit i'm gettin a bit peed off with this board. I had two duds delievered; 1 with a snapped capacitor (not me i assure you) and another that simply refused to boot. Anyway finally got one delievered that works (red and blue capacitors not just blue as on the other two).

I tried fitting my pci dvb-s card earlier but it appears the pci slot is too high as the bracket is about 10mm away from the case despite being firmly seated, and its the same with the other slot, anyone else have this problem???

Cheers Vaughane

[Vaughane]

ohh and i forgot to mention i'm getting loads of static over analog audio connectors.

I realise that my Gigabyte x48T-DQ6 motherboard have a backplate heatsink at its back. Do i need to take out that crazy cool heatsink to install a custom CPU cooler (Zalman 9700LED)?

Thanks

Evan

[THUMPer]

Originally Posted by Evan

I realise that my Gigabyte x48T-DQ6 motherboard have a backplate heatsink at its back. Do i need to take out that crazy cool heatsink to install a custom CPU cooler (Zalman 9700LED)?

Thanks

Evan

Yes...

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Evan

I realise that my Gigabyte x48T-DQ6 motherboard have a backplate heatsink at its back. Do i need to take out that crazy cool heatsink to install a custom CPU cooler (Zalman 9700LED)?

I don't even recall something like that on the board, but I do know I've had others with them. You'd have to take them off, no question, but it shouldn't be a problem. Since the majority of CPU coolers out there require a backplate, they wouldn't hold back the ability to use them.