GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R Motherboard Review

The EP45-DS3R arrives in a sturdy box with a green theme, that extends from the front to the rear of the box.

The green color scheme denotes the energy conserving features this board is built around. 

The back of the box lists the majority of the features that were showcased in the features and specifications section.

The board accessories come packed on top of the board, with a cardboard subdivision separating them from the board itself.

With the cardboard divider out of the way, you will find the board packed securely at the bottom of the box.

The EP45-DS3R comes with a decent accessory bundle for a mainstream board. Along with the standard I/O shield, floppy & IDE cables. GIGABYTE also packs in two SATA cables, three case badges (for a little GIGA bling), manuals, and driver disk.

The bundle offers up a interesting expansion bracket package consisting of one eSATA bracket, with two eSATA connectors and a Molex power outlet, one Molex/SATA power adapter and a one eSATA cable.

GIGABYTE packs in the utility software with this board as well. Since the board is one of the designated “E” series,  GIGABYTE’S energy conservation software dubbed ”Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced” comes packaged with the board. The software utility even has a power saving meter, to gauge how much energy  your saving by utilizing the software. Animated gears are displayed as a means of indicating how much the software is toning down the system for greater energy conservation. Since undervolting and underclocking the CPU are its main means of energy conservation, as soon as you overvolt and overclock the CPU the software becomes somewhat counterproductive, although it still can be used in that scenario.

Beyond the DES utility GIGABYTE includes their latest tweaking utility, designed to run under the windows environment. Easy Tune 6 features a clean layout, and proved effective in configuring the system. Looking at the picture you will notice the tabbed sections consisting of CPU, memory, tuner, graphics, smart fan and hardware monitoring. The CPU and memory screens read out just like a CPU-Z  menu, and the tuner section even allows for CPU ratio changes. All things considered, its one of the most polished windows overclocking utilities I have encountered.