Gigabyte X58A-OC Overclocking Motherboard Review

One thing that immediately stands out when looking at the X58A-OC is the color scheme.  Traditionally Gigabyte motherboards have all shared a blue and white color theme.  However with the new segmentation all high-end boards will feature matte black PCBs with specific color themes designed to visually differentiate the boards by their intended use. 

The X58A-OC is following an orange and black color scheme once made famous by DFI indicating an Intel based motherboard.  The color combination is quite striking and currently unique in the marketplace.   Flipping the board over you will find the PCB is devoid of major surface components which is important when dealing with humidity and subzero cooling.

Large PWMs are quite common on high end motherboards and this board features a monster 12 phase hybrid PWM using driver MOSFETs and supported by unique POScaps and MPFC Chokes.  The entire PWM can support up to 1500w of total input power and output 1200w directly to the CPU.

There are a total of two 8 pin 12v power connectors for the CPU.  Under normal operation you'll only need to use one of these but, as CPU clocks rise having the extra power is almost required especially under extreme overclocking.  Standard 24 pin power is located near the memory sockets and right below the Debug LED.  

On the X58A-OC the PWM frequency can be overclocked to support cleaner power for better stability.  Settings include 400k (the default setting) 600k, 800k and 1000k.  Gigabyte recommends only using 800k/1000k under LN2 or other extreme overclocking situations.  Having these switches onboard allows the frequency to be set dynamically when needed since excess heat is a common byproduct.

Triple channel memory comes standard with the Nehalem architecture.  The X58A-OC supports up to 24GB of DDR3 at speeds up to 2200Mhz.