Gigabyte has been catering to extreme overclocking with several recent motherboard releases, the most recent of which is the new X99-SOC Champion. Gigabyte made some interesting decisions for this design that focus on increasing overclocking capability over just about everything else.

First, you'll notice that the board features only 4 DIMM slots over the eight that are found on most other X99 boards. This lowers the amount of electrical noise, increases signal integrity and trace length can be reduced, all in an effort to increase stable memory clock rates. Gigabyte was proud to show off that they were able to reach DDR4 memory speeds of over 4100 MHz using some Corsair memory! SMT mounted DIMM slots also help with this.

The CPU socket is also different in that it has 2083 pins on it rather than the standard 2011 pins that the socket uses. These added pins increase the amount of power available to the processor, which is useful for extreme LN2 overclocking. Interestingly, Gigabyte has put a dip switch on the board that enables and disables those pins should you wish to disable them for safety or other reasons.

Pricing is still up in the air though the Gigabyte X99-SOC Force currently sells for $349 so I would expect the Champion to be above that. Availability starts this month.

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