Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P Motherboard Review

One of the unqiue features found on Champion Series motherboards is the OC socket.  This special CPU socket allows the motherboard to control the voltage sent to the Uncore giving overclockers the ability to tweak memory performance independent of CPU frequency.

A simple switch allows the user to enable or disable the OC Socket features both on a hardware level and from the UEFI where the voltage changes can be made.

When attempting to run more than two video cards you may encounter stability issues due to the cards pulling power from the PCI Express slots themselves.  To counter this you simply need to give the motherboard some more power and the Molex connection seen in this photo is how you do it.  You may run into clearance issues with this Molex given the proximity to bottom mounted PSUs.

We have come to expect more goodies from our high-end motherboards.  The extras help to justify the additional cost and sometimes help pad the parts bin for when you need replacement cables and video card bridges.  Gigabyte has included everything you see below which includes six SATA6 cables (with locks), manuals, I/O shield, driver disk and Crossfire bridge and four SLI bridges for 2-way, 3-way(1) and 3-way(2) and 4-way card configurations.

Unlike on other Gigabyte G1 motherboards we didn't get a WiFi card or USB breakout panel.  This is a little disappointing but makes sense considering that just about every modern chassis has front mounted USB 3.0 ports.  The missing WiFi card is a bit of a mystery given the onboard M.2 dedicated to WiFi and the antennae mounts on the I/O panel.

An interesting thing to note is the power lead found on the I/O shield.  This connects to a header on the motherboard near the OP-AMP module.