Test System

Initial Setup

OH MY GERD!!! Since this is still an SKT2011-3 board and CPU, putting stuff together was no big deal, although I was a bit intimidated by having to toss in this CAD$2250 CPU. Please don't break it, PUH-LEEEZE!!! Once I had calmed down a bit and had made sure I had plugged everything in (or so I thought), I fired the system up. There was a flash of white that came out of the case and my heart skipped a beat. Then, this bright red laser shot out the window and melted my face off. Um...

I had to wait a few moments for the BIOS screen to show up, madly pressing delete to see what options I had. The BIOS was slow. Like molasses. I checked the monitoring page and saw 75°C in the BIOS. If you visit our forums, you've likely seen the pic I posted of the "X" of paste I had put on the CPU, which was more than ample. Fans? Check! Waterpump? Uh... Oops.

So, yeah, make sure you plug in ALL THE CABLES!!!


Speaking of plugging in cables, the SATA ports are nicely labeled by the way of prints on the PCB's surface close to each set of ports. That makes connecting all your drives to the controllers you want very simple indeed. I like stuff like this, and when combined with the provided cable labels, that hidden spaghetti of wiring behind the case's right (or left) door is easily dealt with should you need to swap out a drive or something similar.


The lighting on this board is NOT understated. It is a face-melting laser. Memory slots, CPU VRM cooler, backplate cover, audio cover, PCH cooler - they all have lights. The strips between the DIMM slots are definitely different. Adding in some memory with LEDs attached to them as well seems like the perfect idea.


The Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming first fires up with a brief flash of "white-ish" LEDs. These quickly turn red, bathing the insides of your case in color. If you have a dark room and a windowed case, your room will be glowing red. Change the light to green using the provided software and you just might end up with a Haz-Mat team breaking your doors down. I think it's awesome.


If you thought that is all there is for lights, you'd be wrong! There are even more here, enabled when you turn XMP on in the BIOS. The LEDS shown above light up and shine through the board, showing you that XMP is turned on.


The Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming has the CPU running at high speed while "idle" in the OS. That might explain why I found idle power consumption a bit higher than expected. I chose to use eight Crucial 2400 MHz DIMMs since 2400 MHz is supported by Intel's i7-6950X and filling all slots just feels good. Almost as good as seeing all those cores in Task Manager! Although Crucial 2400 MHz Ballistix Sport Elite sticks come with an XMP profile, it was not required since the DIMMs default at 2400 MHz anyway. I did try using some 3200 MHz G.Skill DIMMs with XMP enabled while overclock testing, and the profile worked without any issues at all.