The Gigabyte M59SLI-S5 Layout and Features

The Foxconn C51XEM2AA motherboard was discussed in our AMD Socket AM2 Chipset Showdown. Benchmarks will still be provided in this roundup, but for pictures and details about the physical description of the motherboard, please visit the above linked article. In this roundup we will review the Gigabyte, ASUS and EPOX motherboards.

For 20 years Gigabyte has been providing the highest quality components including motherboards, graphics cards, chassis and various cooling products. Gigabyte began with motherboards and continues to deliver very stable and affordable products. The motherboard tested today was no different. The Gigabyte M59SLI-S5 motherboard is not available yet, but will be in stores very shortly. It has the cleanest, meaning best layout of all the motherboards featured in this roundup. It uses the standard blue PCB that most Gigabyte boards use.

The back panel is nothing special. The 8 channel audio jacks and dual Ethernet ports have become a standard, especially among premium enthusiast motherboards. The old legacy parallel and serial connections are also present. This is a nice touch, although many modern high end motherboards have been excluding them. There is also a 1394b connection.

We are all probably used to the 1394a connection being present on the back panel, but instead there are headers for that on the motherboard to the front of your case. There are four USB 2.0 ports on the back and headers for six (6) more on the motherboard.


The layout here is very clean and standard except for a few features. This motherboard has three PCI Express Graphics (PEG) slots. There is no stated cause for this but we predict that these will be for NVIDIA’s upcoming physics processors. ATI’s physics solution uses a video card in a PEG slot, and to maintain a dual graphics system with a physics card, the motherboard has three PEG slots. If you have a single video card configuration, we suggest fitting the card into the light blue PEG slot. Dual video configurations will utilize the light blue and black slots. We also see a Molex connector at the very bottom of the board. This is also present on the Foxconn board. The purpose for this connector is to provide extra juice to the motherboard when there is a dual graphics configuration. Unfortunately this is a very inconvenient place since some power supplies don’t have long enough cables to reach this spot.

On the right, we see the CPU socket, the area around it, and the memory slots. The dual channel configurations are clearly marked. The two red slots are one channel, while the yellow slots make up the other. To some enthusiasts this may be a bit of a problem because the memory sticks are very close together which may result in unwanted temperatures. Making the channels every other slot would have been a better decision from a thermal standpoint.

The Northbridge and MOSFETs are passively cooled using SilentPipe2™ technology. The 4 phase power management (PWM) area isn’t cooled, unlike many motherboards. This is a minor touch, but Gigabyte could have extended the copper heatsink over the PWM. Near the end of the passive cooling there is the 8pin connector with 4 of the pins blocked off in case your power supply only has a 4pin connector. The connector is located very conveniently, right below the power supply when the motherboard is in a case.