Gigabyte EP45-Extreme Review

Closer Look:

There are four heatsinks total on this motherboard - one each on the Southbridge, Northbridge, PWM, and at the top of the motherboard for heat dissipation. The Northbridge is the most decorated heatsink, with two connections for a water cooling setup, as well as four screw holes for you to attach the heatsink that Gigabyte has included. The heatsink is about as long as a sound card, and takes up a full expansion slot by itself.

The motherboard supports Socket 775 CPUs, such as Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors. It’ll be interesting to see if this cooling setup will benefit the Gigabyte EP-45 Extreme, or if it still isn’t enough.

Now that we’ve thoroughly examined the motherboard, let’s take a look at some of the key software features of this motherboard.