basics. Do not be deterred
however as there’s nothing on
the previous boards that I
would rather have in exchange
for what this motherboard can
do. All the gimmicks are gone
and it is for the better
because, it not only simplifies
the OC-Button area but I can
imagine makes the
motherboard cheaper to
design, in turn cheaper for us.
Some reviews may not say it
but for X99, Uncore and
memory matter a lot.
The CHAMPION is well and
truly the defining X99
motherboard precisely
because of these two
properties. As a trade, the
standard X99 board has eight
DIMMS slots but the SOC
CHAMPION has only four. This
isn’t a loss for the vast
majority of people as hardly
anyone overclocks with
memory capacities over
32GiB. As with the Z97X SOC
26 The OverClocker Issue 33 | 2015
LN2, the DIMMS slots are
mounted on the motherboard
in such a way as to make
sealing or insulating the
easier. The underside has no
protrusions and whatever
method you use for insulating
will benefit from this slight but
meaningful design decision.
With all the fuss that was
made about another vendor’s
custom socket that allowed
significantly better Uncore and
memory overclocking. One
would have thought GIGABYTE
would make a big deal about
their own socket design, which
has at least 2083
pins instead of the normal
2011. A socket alone isn’t
enough to make the SOC
Champion perform the way it
does and there’s far more to it,
but it does help immensely.
Whereas 3,500MHz Uncore
was around the limit on the
boards, frequencies above
5,000MHz are possible, (of
course when cooling the CPU
using LN2). In my own testing
using only liquid cooling,
I was able to reach above
4,500MHz with relative ease.
That’s 1GHz higher than what
the previous motherboards
could achieve using identical
cooling. In addition to that,
memory overclocking on the
CHAMPION is significantly
improved. Where previously,
frequencies of 3,000MHz and
above were a hit and miss
affair, 3,200MHz and higher
are almost guaranteed with
just about every semi descent
set of memory available on the
market. The combination of
the much higher uncore, much
improved memory
compatibility, overclocking, a
simpler board and a cheaper
price makes this an
unbeatable offering.
As often is the case there are