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The GA-X38-DQ6 board supports 800/1066/1333/1600 MHz Intel Celeron D, Pentium 4/D/XE and Core 2 Duo/Quad processors. This platform comes equipped with DDR2 memory slots, and can be installed with a
maximum of 8GB of DDR2-1066 MHz memory.
87% Rating: 
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Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 |
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Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 Motherboard Highlights
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There are two PCI
Express x16 slots for videocards and the Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6
supports AMD CrossFire technology so you can use two AMD videocards
together. The videocard slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard. The three
PCI Express x1 slots will allow you to attach high bandwidth devices to
the motherboard and the two 32 bit PCI slots are good for old legacy
hardware you may have. Next to the CMOS battery are the two BIOS chips so
you never have to worry about bad flashes with this motherboard.
Notice the exclusive use of
Low ESR solid aluminum capacitors.
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The bottom right
hand corner of the Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard is very busy indeed.
There are eight Serial ATA II slots, a Parallel IDE channel, two USB headers
and the front panel I/O connector. We see that the small
Intel ICH9R Southbridge heatsink is connected by a heatpipe to the Intel
X38.
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Rumors had it that the Intel
X38 Express was a DDR3 only chipset but that's obviously not the case. The
GA-X38-DQ6 comes equipped with four DDR2 slots. The memory slots are
colour coordinated, install memory in the same coloured slots to enable
dual channel. There's a fan header next to the memory if you're running
Corsair's fancy DOMINATOR memory which uses a fan. Next to the main 24 pin
ATX power connector is a molex auxiliary power connector, remember to
connect that when using dual videocards.
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There is a lot of
space around the LGA775 CPU socket and it supports Intel's current generation of
Core 2 Duo/Quad processors along with its upcoming 45nm models. If you
install a passive style CPU cooler (like a waterblock) make sure you have
a fan pointed in the processor's direction, the Northbridge and MOSFET
heatsinks are designed to be cooled by forced
air.
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As you can see
there's plenty of space everywhere on the Gigabyte
GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard. That makes installation a breeze, team that up
with the well labelled PCB and the well written documentation and even novice
computer enthusiasts will not have a problem. The passive chipset
cooling system is shown here.
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More highlights of the X38-DQ6 right after the jump, and then it's on to
overclocking!
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