To be fair I have to say that even this not ideally designed cooling system still does its job right. We haven’t detected any system instability caused by overheating not in nominal mode or in overclocked mode. So, we are only trying to say that a better designed cooling system could work more efficiently and the high temperature of the main heatsinks wouldn’t give us any causes for concern.

As we continue talking about Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 mainboard design, we would like to draw your attention to the processor voltage regulator circuitry that is built with high-quality components and is split into 12 virtual phases, although this number may vary dynamically depending on the operational workload. As a result, we see faster switching of operational modes, lower heating, longer life span and higher power-efficiency especially with 45nm CPUs. By the way, the chipset North Bridge and memory use two-phase voltage regulators.

Power connectors as well as FDD connector are very conveniently located. There is enough free space around the processor socket, although it may be challenging to install some large processor coolers into a spot surrounded by heatsinks and heatpipes from three sides.

The upper part of the PCB has pretty light-weight layout. Now let’s move over to the lower part of the PCB with maximum components density. Gigabyte engineers used all available and at first glance even unavailable space:

As you know, Intel P45 Express chipset provided PCI Express 2.0 support. Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 has two PCI Express x16 slots. If there is only one graphics card installed into the system, it will work at full speed. In case both slots are taken, they switch to PCI Express x8 mode. Note that the second slot only looks like a fully-fledged PCI Express x16. In fact, half of the pins are not used, i.e. it is a PCI Express x8 slot designed in the PCI Express x16 form-factor. It is a pretty logical solution considering that the second slot can work at x8 speed at the fastest. However, they used the free space right below the slot, closer to the clip, for an additional IEEE1394 controller – Texas Instruments TSB43AB23. I think you can see it much better on the schematic components layout:

You can see another example of how originally the developers solved the problem with finding space for extra components: one of the four Realtek 8111C controllers is located beneath the battery! We can only admire Gigabyte engineers’ skill and professionalism that allowed them to fit in not only two PCI Express x16 slots, but also one PCI Express x1 slot, two PCI Express x4 slots, two PCI slots and a bunch of additional controllers.

Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 has 10 Serial ATA ports that are also very originally located. Connectors of six SATA ports provided by ICH10R South Bridge are yellow. Four SATA connectors implemented via two additional Silicon Image Sil5723 controllers are purple. Both chips are topped with a single heatsink that is why it is long and narrow in shape. They are also responsible for Smart Backup technology that we are going to talk about later on.

There is a square heatsink on top of Gigabyte SATA2 chip that provides support for two Parallel ATA channels that is no longer available in Intel chipsets. Like on a few other mainboards, the IDE connector is located in the lower right corner, although it is not the best spot for it.

As for the definite advantages, we have to point out the color-coded front panel connectors and the markings right inside the USB, IEEE1394 and COM ports. There are Power On, Clear CMOS and Reset buttons along the lower side of the PCB. The buttons are pretty big, they are spaced out quite significantly and are highlighted blue when the system is on, so you will never mix them up unlike the same buttons on other manufacturers’ mainboards.

Since we mentioned the lighting, we have to say that Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 mainboard has a lot of LED indicators. However, they are not annoying at all, because they do not blink and do not stay on all together at the same time. We have already mentioned the buttons: only the markings on them light up blue. Moreover, there is a string of 12 LEDs in the upper right corner of the board: they indicate the number of active phases in the processor voltage regulator circuitry. You can disable this indication if you wish. There are four multi-color ACPI LED diodes a little lower next to the 24x power connector. They light up one by one and indicate the mainboard operational mode: if the system is off but receives power, if the system is up and running, if it is in standby mode, etc.

I was very concerned when I heard about the diagnostic LEDs located near the CPU, memory, expansion slots, IDE and SATA ports. I imagined a mainboard shining like a Christmas tree, however, these LEDs turned out diagnostic indeed. They served as a POST indicator, but in a simpler and a more illustrative way. They are off if everything is fine. If there is a problem, the corresponding diode will light up and even without a manual you will understand what has happened.

So, what haven’t we mentioned yet? Drawbacks? Besides not the best location for the IDE connector we could also point out the availability of only four fan connectors instead of six that you would expect from a mainboard of this rank. We could also complain about the graphics card that will make it difficult to replace the memory modules. These drawbacks have most likely been caused by free space deficit. However, taking into account the complexity of the PCB layout and the creative approach to solving space shortage problem, we have to admit that Gigabyte engineers did a terrific job. Moreover, all the little things pointed out above, are in fact very insignificant drawbacks. True, the design of Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 is not ideal, but it definitely deserves an A+ from us. I doubt anyone could have done something better here.

In conclusion, we would like to sum up all the details on mainboard specifications and functionality in the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DQ6 spec table below: