Six 975X Enthusiast Motherboards for Today and Tomorrow

Motherboard Components

The G1975X is dominated by a large air duct system that is designed to remove hot air from the system components.

The air duct system takes care of Northbridge cooling as well.

Although the CPU fan will not have to run at high speeds, and thus will work more quietly, the four small fans combined will in fact produce more noise. However, the CPU temperature was a bit lower than with the other motherboards in this roundup, which proves that the strategy works.

A port 80 diagnosis module is still essential for error analysis. Gigabyte provides an on-board debug system; you can look up the hexadecimal error codes in the motherboard manual.

Gigabyte cares for users with legacy devices. Thanks to the GigaATA chip (manufactured by ITE), two more UltraATA/133 channels are available, which allows you to attach four additional hard drives or optical drives. However, there are no extras to add to the four Serial ATA ports, two of which can be used externally.

If you feel like using up to eight displays, the G1975X will likely be your first choice, since it supports four graphics cards. Although the board offers only two mechanical x16 PCI Express slots, you may plug in two additional graphics cards into the remaining slots, because the ends of these slots are open.

If you take care to ensure proper system cooling and ventilation, four graphics cards can be installed.