Board layout (cont’d)

Before we discuss how we got around the Crazy Cool/aftermarket CPU cooler issue, let’s first discuss why Crazy Cool is on the motherboard in the first place.

As you’ve no doubt probably noticed by now, the motherboard has a number of hotspots on it that generate a disproportionate amount of heat in comparison to the rest of the motherboard. One of those hotspots is the area around the CPU. What Gigabyte and other motherboard manufacturers have come up with to combat this are a number of ways to dissipate this heat so that the motherboard (and ultimately the entire system) can run cooler. One method Gigabyte employs is their Crazy Cool cooler.

Gigabyte Crazy Cool cooling normally obstructs aftermarket fan brackets

Crazy Cool is basically a massive copper block that rests on the underside of the motherboard, directly underneath the LGA-775 socket and the North Bridge of the system chipset. The idea is that Crazy Cool will take some of the heat off these components and the motherboard, where it can then be distributed across the system case’s aluminum back plate. In practice, we’ve found the system works pretty well, the use of copper rather than aluminum helps to increase the effectiveness of the system.

But many aftermarket coolers require the use of a separate bracket that sits underneath the LGA-775 socket. This bracket provides the stability needed for these large aftermarket fans, which are often composed of copper rather than aluminum, making the cooler quite heavy: it just wouldn’t work without the bracket in place. Pundits would argue to just stick with the stock Intel fan provided with all retail CPUs, but as anyone who’s used the stock Intel CPU fan will tell you, it’s not a very good cooler. Aftermarket coolers are capable of not only cooling the CPU more effectively than the stock Intel cooler, but also while generating little noise. Any enthusiast who cares about their CPU and its lifespan is going to want to use an aftermarket cooler.

With longer screws in place though, we got it to work....barely

So what’s an enthusiast with the GA-965P-DQ6 supposed to do if they want to use an aftermarket cooler with this motherboard? Simple: find longer screws.

We happened to have a couple of very long screws that we were able to adapt for use with the GA-965P-DQ6 and our Zalman CNPS7700-Cu fan, otherwise the combo wouldn’t have worked. We suppose another option would be to remove the Crazy Cool cooler, but then that defeats the purpose of having it on there in the first place.

Now the Zalman can be used on the DQ6 board

Another shot of the Zalman CNPS7700 cooling

The rest of the board’s layout

Going over the rest of the GA-965P-DQ6 motherboard, you’ll notice two PCI Express graphics (PEG) slots. As we mentioned previously, the P965 chipset doesn’t support dual-GPU technologies like ATI’s CrossFire or NVIDIA’s SLI. Instead the second PEG slot is used for those who may want to hook up more than two monitors to their system. The idea is that you can have the primary (blue) graphics slot for your performance graphics card (like a GeForce 7600 GT or Radeon X1900 XT) with the secondary PEG slot being used to drive additional monitors. In this slot you could house a cheaper card, like the GeForce 6200 TurboCache or Radeon X300 SE HyperMemory. The primary graphics slot would run at full x16 speed, while the second orange PEG slot only utilizes four PCI Express lanes (x4).

In this screenshot you’ll see that we combined a Radeon X1900 XTX with a GeForce 7600 GT on Gigabyte’s DQ6 motherboard:

ATI and NVIDIA graphics in the same system? Blasphemy!

Confirmed in device manager

Another feature Gigabyte touts with the GA-965P-DQ6 is their all-solid capacitor design. Gigabyte is the first motherboard manufacturer to support this feature. Every capacitor on the GA-965P-DQ6 is an aluminum solid capacitor with conductive polymer. Typically motherboard manufacturers use a mixture of conductive polymer aluminum solid capacitors with more traditional electrolytic capacitors. In these configurations, typically the solid capacitors are used to power the CPU, while the electrolytic capacitors are used for powering less intensive areas of the motherboard. On Gigabyte’s DQ6 motherboard however, every capacitor is a solid capacitor. With all solid capacitors onboard, the idea is that the capacitors will last longer while also boosting system stability under extreme conditions.

All-solid capacitors

Powering the onboard 8-channel audio (although it’s actually capable of up to 10 channels) is Realtek’s ALC888DD HD-Audio CODEC. The ALC888DD is one of the most advanced integrated offerings out there supporting Dolby Digital Live and DTS. For networking duties, Gigabyte has employed Marvell’s 88E8053 GigE controller, while Firewire duties are handled by a chip from Texas Instruments.