Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 Motherboard Review

A Closer Look at the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6

Our initial impression of the layout was very positive. The ATX power connector, the floppy connector, and the SATA ports are all intelligently located at the edge of the motherboard, which is both convenient and functional. There is a huge gap between the two physical PCI-E x16 slots, which should allow the use of just about any aftermarket VGA cooling solution. The 8-pin CPU power connector is in a decent location, but we would have liked to see it placed even closer to the motherboard’s edge. As it is now, the connector can be somewhat difficult to remove as your fingers are jammed in between MOSFET cooler and the back of an I/O module. Due to its position near the northbridge cooler, the PCI-E x1 slot cannot accept longer cards, but that is a non-issue for the vast majority of consumers. Overall though, Gigabyte has done a great job with the EP45-DQ6’s layout. However, let’s take a closer look at the individual sections:


As you can, the general CPU socket area on this motherboard is quite clean. Although surrounded by the low-profile northbridge and mosfet cooler, and a number of solid capacitors, there should be no clearance issues with even the largest CPU coolers. As you can see, the EP45-DQ6 comes with a (virtual) twelve-phase power design, courtesy of the high-quality low power loss ferrite core chokes.


The red and yellow memory slots are well spaced, and also benefit from a two-phase power design ensuring stable voltage to your DDR2 modules. We also have the CPU fan header at the top edge of the motherboard. The floppy connector and 24-pin ATX power connector are right at the edge of the motherboard which is great to see. Lastly, we have the sweet-looking ACPI LED display, which varies according to how many power phases are in use.


Here we have one of the most densely occupied parts of the whole motherboard, no square inch of PCB space has been left bare by Gigabyte’s engineers. At the top right, you see the two phase power design for the memory slots. To the right of that, we have the EP45-DQ6’s impressive Serial ATA connectivity. The six yellow ports come from the ICH10R southbridge, and support RAID 0/1/5/10. The other two are controlled by two Silicon Image Sil5723 storage processors, and can be used for RAID 1 in coordination with the Smart Backup feature. In the middle we have the southbridge, which is cooled by a small push-pin heatsink, and which shares a heat pipe with the other coolers. To the left of the southbridge is the PCI-E Bridge chip, which is manufactured by IDT and supplies both of the PCI-E x4 slots as well the four Gigabit LAN controllers. At the bottom, we have the IDE connector, as well as the onboard USB and FireWire headers.


And we have another very densely occupied area. Starting from the right edge we see the onboard Power/Reset/CLR CMOS buttons. At the bottom right, we have the iTE IT8720 chip I/O controller, which is responsible for hardware monitoring and the system voltage detection. To the left of it, we have the Realtek ALC889A high definition audio codec, and then two of the four Realtek 8111C Gigabit LAN controller chips. In the middle, we have all the expansion slots, a PCI-E 1x slot, a PCI-E x16 slot, two PCI-E x4 slots supplied by the PCI-E Bridge, the second PCI-E x16 slot, and then two PCI-E slots. If you are wondering how graphics cards fit in the PCI-E x4 slots, you can see that Gigabyte has left them open-ended.


The rear I/O panel is where you can see the unprecedented four Gigabit LAN ports, eight USB ports, audio connectors, optical and coaxial S/PDIF connectors, and lastly the PS2 keyboard and mouse ports. Let’s not forget that Gigabyte has packed more ports onto the three PCI expansion brackets.


The back of the board is pretty standard, aside from the army of push-pins holding the numerous coolers in place. You may also notice that Gigabyte has placed bare MOSFETs on the underside of the motherboard, clearly they don’t actually need cooling.