It has an 8-phase VRM and can hold up to 32 GB of DDR3-2400 RAM

Sep 19, 2012 06:37 GMT  ·  By

Among IT companies, Gigabyte is one of those that have a stake on more than the average number of market segments. This time, a motherboard is what it is preparing, though it has yet to launch it.

A photo gallery has been posted by OCWorkbench, which means that most of the hardware details can be determined from a visual inspection.

This is one of the stronger motherboards that will be paired with the up and coming Trinity accelerated processing units. As such, we suspect it will begin shipping early next month (October, 2012), for $150 to $200 / 115-150 Euro to 153-200 Euro.

The A85X FCH chipset offers the FM2 socket and it is wired to four DDR3-2400+ MHz memory slots. That is enough for 32 GB of top-quality RAM.

There are three PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots as well, electrically configured as x16/NC/NC, x8/x8/NC, or x8/x4/x4. The number of add-in cards and their type will determine the behavior. CrossFireX multi-GPU setups are supported.

There is a PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot on the motherboard as well, plus a legacy PCI slot.

Storage-wise, Gigabyte chose to include eight SATA 6.0 Gbps (SATA III) on the F2A85X-UP4, though one of them is configured as an eSATA connector.

What's more, the 8-phase VRM enables significant overclocking, while the Ultra Durable 5 components heighten board stability and endurance (2 oz copper PCB layers, solid-state capacitors, new high-current ferrite core chokes, PowIRstage IR3550 driver-MOSFETs, humidity-proof glass-fabric layers).

As for I/O and display support, the mainboard has D-Sub, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors, six USB 3.0 ports (two by internal headers), 8+2 channel HD audio, Gigabit Ethernet and a hybrid PS/2 port.

There is one final advantage that Gigabyte’s F2A85X-UP4 has over “normal” motherboards: dual-UEFI BIOS with a graphical 3D BIOS program. The secondary BIOS works as backup.

Photo Gallery (5 Images)

Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 FM2 motherboard
Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 FM2 motherboardGigabyte F2A85X-UP4 FM2 motherboard
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