# GIGABYTE EP45 Extreme Exclusive Shots



## malware (Apr 22, 2008)

GIGABYTE today answered to the Foxconn BLACKOPS board, with what they call the EP45 Extreme motherboard for overclockers. It may not offer you 4-in-1 cooling like the BLACKOPS does, but as you can see from the pictures there's plenty of copper all over the board's two main chips and the 12-phase PWM area, so this will do the work quite well too. The final board will also have onboard power and reset switches, but they are missing from this early sample. The Post 80 debug LED is also a new feature for this GIGABYTE board. Additionally GIGABYTE is planning to supply later a LN2 duct for the CPU and a watercooling module for the chipset. Finally the board has six SATA ports, single IDE port, dual Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel HD audio, three PCI slots, three x16 PCIe slots, GIGABYTE's Dual BIOS and a new revision of DES. 



 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## malware (Apr 22, 2008)

Thanks to tkpenalty for sending this news post to me.


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## spearman914 (Apr 22, 2008)

The NB cooler is extremely big. You probably can't fit anything on the 3rd PCI slot only if its 1 mm thick or something.


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## sinner33 (Apr 22, 2008)

It sure looks sick though


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## acperience7 (Apr 22, 2008)

Yep, that's pretty extreme. I bet the price is extreme as well.


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## ShadowFold (Apr 22, 2008)

So is P45 supost to be better than X38 or what?


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## [I.R.A]_FBi (Apr 22, 2008)

ShadowFold said:


> So is P45 supost to be better than X38 or what?



p45 = next in line after p35 ...


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## erocker (Apr 22, 2008)

So to make a P45 board, all you need to do is take a P35 chip and add a monstorous cooler!  Nice.


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## Darknova (Apr 22, 2008)

Holy S***! That's ridiculous....you don't need that much cooling...and if you do...my god, Intel's doing nutburt for chipsets!


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## wolf2009 (Apr 22, 2008)

erocker said:


> So to make a P45 board, all you need to do is take a P35 chip and add a monstorous cooler!  Nice.



and pci-e 2.0 support too . thats sure a lot of copper. wonder the difficulty with wire placements on that .


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## erocker (Apr 22, 2008)

P35 supports pci-e 2.0.


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## Darknova (Apr 22, 2008)

erocker said:


> I know X38 is PCI-E 2.0, not sure about P35.



P45 is PCI-E 2.0, P35 isn't. However, P45 uses 2 8x slots for Xfire, but as it's PCI-E 2.0 theoretically it has the same bandwidth as 2 16x PCI-E 1.0 slots


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## ginger (Apr 22, 2008)

wolf2009 said:


> and pci-e 2.0 support too . thats sure a lot of copper. wonder the difficulty with wire placements on that .



ICH10R....


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## Duffman (Apr 22, 2008)

wow, that makes the Thermalright Hr05 cooling my X38 look positively puny


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## erocker (Apr 22, 2008)

Darknova said:


> P45 is PCI-E 2.0, P35 isn't. However, P45 uses 2 8x slots for Xfire, but as it's PCI-E 2.0 theoretically it has the same bandwidth as 2 16x PCI-E 1.0 slots



Ah, the x38 brought in pci-e 2.0.  I remember before p35's launch that I read it would have it, but I guess not.


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## Jarman (Apr 22, 2008)

Those coolers will more than likely be aluminium, dont let the colour fool u


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## jbunch07 (Apr 22, 2008)

HOLY GOD!
i want that nb cooler for my board! not fair! 
that thing is huge!


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## erocker (Apr 22, 2008)

Jarman said:


> Those coolers will more than likely be aluminium, dont let the colour fool u



No, this one is deffiitely copper.  Anything with fins on it that looks like thier copper, probablly is.  Chuncks of machined parts that look like copper on the other hand may be aluminum.


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## Cybrnook2002 (Apr 22, 2008)

Wow time are changing! This is what im rocking and its more cooling that what i really need, over clocked. 

http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/1678_large_Top view.jpg

HAHAHA!!!!

If Intel is making chipsets that need that much cooling, whats the point. I must not have gotten the memo!


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## freaksavior (Apr 22, 2008)

Holy Heat Sink Batman!!


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## Dark_Webster (Apr 22, 2008)

Only Gigabyte to create this board. 

The Northbridge is freaking HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE!!!! Perhaps they want it super cool, then overclockers won't have heat problems overclocking this board .


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## HaZe303 (Apr 22, 2008)

erocker said:


> Ah, the x38 brought in pci-e 2.0.  I remember before p35's launch that I read it would have it, but I guess not.



P35 does support PCI-E 2.0a, only there are no mobo´s with P35 that have PCI-E 2.0. So you are right and wrong.

OT: Sure is a nice cooler, me want. Great that the pci slot has the cooler outside the case, this will help cooling even further. This might be my next mobo.


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## spearman914 (Apr 22, 2008)

Also if your going to buy something like a 9800 GX2 ( which is so thick) it will be impossible to fit it thanks to the poor locations of the IEEE1394 and USB Connectors.


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## NastyHabits (Apr 22, 2008)

As Vincent Gardenia said in _Moonstruck_, "and there's *copper*".  
Gotta love those coolers.


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## HaZe303 (Apr 22, 2008)

spearman914 said:


> Also if your going to buy something like a 9800 GX2 ( which is so thick) it will be impossible to fit it thanks to the poor locations of the IEEE1394 and USB Connectors.



Why would you put it in furthest down pci-e slot??


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## csendesmark (Apr 22, 2008)

erocker said:


> Ah, the x38 brought in pci-e 2.0.  I remember before p35's launch that I read it would have it, but I guess not.



P35 is PCIe 1.1 only
X38 was the first PCIe 2.0 from intel

BTW

This motherboard cooling system is big


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## WarEagleAU (Apr 23, 2008)

OMG Gigabyte is big pimpin right now with their boards. I hope they bring something sort of like this out for the AMD 790FX (or NEWER) chipset....


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## Darknova (Apr 23, 2008)

erocker said:


> Ah, the x38 brought in pci-e 2.0.  I remember before p35's launch that I read it would have it, but I guess not.



Everyone read that, but it doesn't support it.

And to whoever said it does, it DOESN'T, if it did they would have used PCI-E 2.0 instead of 1.1



> In June 2007 Intel released the specification of the P35 chipset which does not support PCIe 2.0 only PCIe 1.1.[8] Some people may be confused by the P35 block diagram[9] which states the Intel P35 has a PCIe x16 graphics link (8 GB/s) and 6 PCIe x1 links (500 MB/s each), for simple verification one can view the P965 block diagram which shows the same number of lanes and bandwidth but was released before PCIe 2.0 was finalized. Intel's first PCIe 2.0 capable chipset is the X38 and boards are already shipping from various vendors (Abit, Asus, Gigabyte) as of October 21, 2007.[10] AMD started supporting PCIe 2.0 with its RD700 chipset series. NVIDIA has revealed that the MCP72 will be their first PCIe 2.0 equipped chipset.


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## btarunr (Apr 23, 2008)

That's the most awesome chipset cooling I've seen in a long while.


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## D4S4 (Apr 23, 2008)

It sure looks kewl, but that cooler is gonna make it 20$ more expensive than other comparable mobos. I'd rather see an aluminum cooler.


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## TheLostSwede (Apr 23, 2008)

Ok, look, this is NOT a mainstream board, this is going to be a limited run and it has been designed for overclockers who wants to push their system to the max. Yes, it'll be expensive, but as Gigabyte will be handing out a few of these boards to the top overclockers, they're not going to care.


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## jbunch07 (Apr 23, 2008)

TheLostSwede said:


> Ok, look, this is NOT a mainstream board, this is going to be a limited run and it has been designed for overclockers who wants to push their system to the max. Yes, it'll be expensive, but as Gigabyte will be handing out a few of these boards to the top overclockers, they're not going to care.



i bet kingpin gets one


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## Jarman (Apr 23, 2008)

a swiftech mcw30 will own that passive aluminium (i still think its aluminium, look at the mosfet coolers, that shape would be hard to extrude in copper).  Nothing wrong with aluminium...both asus and DFI do it...i just dont like the way they try to trick u by making it look like copper.  It looks pretty, thats all. It will be connected to the board with thermal pads, or, at best, poorly applied cheap thermal compound.


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## spearman914 (Apr 23, 2008)

HaZe303 said:


> Why would you put it in furthest down pci-e slot??



What "if" you go quad sli 9800 gx2?


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## R_1 (Apr 23, 2008)

That's the most awesome mobo air cooling I've ever seen!


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## msgclb (Jul 3, 2008)

spearman914 said:


> Also if your going to buy something like a 9800 GX2 ( which is so thick) it will be impossible to fit it thanks to the poor locations of the IEEE1394 and USB Connectors.



You've got to be mistaken about where you would put the GX2. Look at this image.




The only place you'd put the GX2 is in the PCIEX16_1 slot, not in the PCIEX8_1 or PCIEX4_1 slots.

It's going on 3 months since this motherboard made an appearance but I can't find it in any of the online retailers. If the GA-EP45T-Extreme isn't overly expensive I'd sure like to start a DDR3 project. Several individuals in Europe and the East are testing this board but I haven't found it here in the US.


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## Deleted member 24505 (Jul 3, 2008)

Its hideous.

If the NB gets that hot,the heat radiating off that is going to rise and warm up the cpu cooler maybe.


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## cdawall (Jul 3, 2008)

see now there is cool and there is over the top this is under the latter....how is the chipset getting so hot? i mean WTF and the top end oc'rs will swap that huge thing out anyway its in the way for LN2/DICE pots


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