This corner of the Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5 motherboard is busy. Here we find the front panel IO connections, (8) SATAII headers, IDE and passively cooled Intel ICH9R southbridge chipsets. The orange colour coded SATAII ports are handled by Intel's ICH9R southbridge, while the purple ports are run by Gigabyte's own storage controller.

Four DDR2 DIMMs support up to 8GB of 667/800/1066/1200 MHz memory. The board requires a 24pin power connector as well as 8-pin auxiliary power. Just to the right of the DIMMs are the row of LEDs lights which indicate how many CPU power phases are in use.

Gigabyte Silentpipe is a passive heatpipe chipset thermal solution which connects the southbridge to northbridge to MOSFET chips that surround the socket 775 Intel CPU. There is enough space around the LGA775 socket for large after market coolers. This form of passive cooling makes use of exhaust air flow from the CPU heatsink, so if you go watercooling be sure to point a fan in this direction. Also not the use of solid state capacitors throughout the GA-X48-DS5 motherboard.

Gigabyte's all-solid state capacitor design extends to the MOFSETs as well. These power phases can be powered dynamically to better manage system power draw through the Dynamic Energy Saver software.

Next PCSTATS will dive into the benchmarks, but first let's overclock!