Gigabyte's X48T-DQ6
Remixed for X48

While the X48 Express may not offer a whole lot in terms of new features and capabilities, at least it's spawned a wave of exciting new motherboard designs, right? Well, not exactly. Because the X48 and X38 chipsets are so similar, motherboard makers have been able to dip into their existing product lines for more than just inspiration. Gigabyte's X48T-DQ6, for example, bears an uncanny resemblance to the company's X38-DQ6. There are a few minor differences here and there, such as the size of the north bridge heatsink and the placement of a few onboard components, but the overall design appears unchanged.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. We quite liked the X38-DQ6 and even gave it a TR Recommended award, so there's something to be said for not messing with the formula.

For Gigabyte, part of that formula includes "Ultra Durable 2" branding that denotes the use of higher quality electrical components, including solid-state capacitors, ferrite core chokes, and low-resistance MOSFETs. High quality components should be a given for motherboards in this price range, but that's sadly not always the case, which I suppose is why Gigabyte makes such a fuss over its Ultra Durable brand. Never mind that the same Ultra Durable components can be found on a number of the company's more affordable mid-range boards, as well.

Another element to Gigabyte's formula is a turquoisy blue board color that has persisted for as long as I can remember. As other manufacturers plunder every color in the rainbow, and even a few that aren't, Gigabyte has remained faithful to a single unique hue—one that neatly matches the company's graphics cards, too.

I have to admit that the combination of a blue board with copper heatsinks looks fantastic. Sure, the board will be hidden away in an enclosure and perhaps only occasionally observed through a case window, but if you're going to build up a high performance hot rod you might as well make sure the engine bay is easy on the eyes.

The engine, in this case, would be a processor to slide into the X48T's LGA775 socket. Gigabyte keeps the socket area relatively free of obstructions, using low profile capacitors in areas that might interfere with standard heatsink designs. Larger aftermarket coolers that fan out from the CPU socket might conflict with the board's beefy north bridge cooler, though.

Passive chipset and VRM cooling is provided by a set of copper heatsinks tied together by a modest (at least by today's motherboard standards) heatpipe network. This relatively simple arrangement puts surface area before flashy excess, and unlike some passively cooled motherboards, you don't need to strap on a noisy chipset fan to overclock the front-side bus.

The X48T's cooling apparatus extends to the underside of the board, as well. Here, we find finned metal back plates for the south bridge, north bridge, and the CPU socket itself. The socket back plate can also be removed if you want to use an aftermarket processor heatsink with a back plate of its own.

On the flip side, Gigabyte neatly arranges the X48T's storage-related ports in the bottom right-hand corner of the board. Here we find six orange SATA ports hanging off the ICH9R south bridge with an additional two purple ports making an appearance courtesy of a JMicron controller rebranded as a Gigabyte GSATA chip. This auxiliary storage controller is also responsible for the board's IDE port.

More interesting than the origins of the X48T's SATA ports is their placement. Gigabyte shows particular attention to detail here, ensuring that longer double-wide graphics cards won't block access to any of the onboard SATA ports. Longer expansion cards won't interfere with the board's low-profile south bridge heatsink, either.

Gigabyte's board designers deserve a gold star for the X48T's expansion slot layout, too. The board features a good mix of PCI Express x16, x1, and standard PCI slots. Even with a double-wide CrossFire config, you'll still have two PCIe x1s and a standard PCI slot to play with.

A year ago, we would have rather seen Gigabyte bias the slot X48T's configuration towards standard PCI slots. However, with sound cards like Asus' Xonar D2X making their way to PCI Express, we're running out of reasons to keep standard PCI slots around.

The X48T certainly packs plenty of expansion capacity without them. Just look at the port cluster, which houses eight USB ports and two flavors of Firewire. You get a pair of S/PDIF digital audio outputs, too: one TOS-Link and one coaxial. And because the board uses Realtek's swanky ALC889A codec chip, it's possible to encode multi-channel audio into a DTS Connect stream that can be passed through the board's digital output ports.

External Serial ATA connectivity is conspicuously missing from the X48T's backplane, but that's because Gigabyte has a more flexible solution bundled in the box. Rather than tying eSATA to port cluster connectors arbitrarily assigned to an onboard storage controller, Gigabyte lets you roll your own eSATA connections using any internal Serial ATA port. A PCI back plate provides the external Serial ATA interface, with additional cabling—including power if you want to quickly hook up a standard internal hard drive outside your system—to make it all work. This solution may not be as clean of an implementation as a backplane eSATA connector, but I'll gladly swallow a little cable clutter for the ability to pick and choose which SATA ports get routed to the outside world.