Will this spell an end to L/C setups?? New Gigabyte Ultra Durable 3 mobos...

[sniperbob]

So i was browsing some manufacturers sites and came upon this interesting little tid-bit of information here

I came across some numbers that i could not help but question...

With twice the copper of convention motherboard PCB's resulting in a 2 oz layer, and with claims of up to 50 degrees Celcius cooler than conventional motherboards, will this ultimately spell the end for our ever popular "aftermarket" liquid cooled options for chipset cooling?

I have to admit that I like what i see coming from the next wave of motherboards soon to enter production, but with all this added "cooling capabilities" should the chipset block manufacturers be worried?

Also does anyone actually own one of these boards, such as the GA-EP45-UD3P? I would like to get some thoughts and opinions on the matter at hand...

[SoulsCollective]

Note that their 50C measurement comes from a graph with no numbers or scale on it. For all we know the difference could have been measured with 10A flowing through the NB, at which point yes, the board with more copper will probably be cooler, but both will be at otherwise unusable levels.

As long as people put more than the recommended amount of voltage and current through a chip, it will require more than the recommended amount of cooling.

[Gir92]

How can that be the end to liquid cooling?

The extra copper serves to cool the PCB only.

[SoulsCollective]

Does it? The post above seems to be implying that the graph refers to chipset temperatures.

[Gir92]

Does it? The post above seems to be implying that the graph refers to chipset temperatures.

Yea it's showing more copper within the PCB itself. I don't see how that can lower anything but the PCB temp itself.

[Hoboclese]

wouldn't having a pcb that can dissipate more heat help in some ways to cool everything that was attached to it?

[SoulsCollective]

Yea it's showing more copper within the PCB itself. I don't see how that can lower anything but the PCB temp itself.

One would think so, yes, but the OP's clearly implying that this is reducing chipset temp. I don't think it's possible either, but without more information it's hard to tell.

[joecop120]

Beats me. Probably just a marketing ploy. It could be possible that they are trying to use the whole pcb as a sink, by tying resistors and regulators to the board differently.

[RAW-Raptor22]

I love the way the gigabyte motherboards have all solid capacitors and very stable cooling systems.

[StAndrew]

Only judgment day will bring an end to watercooling. Not 2oz's of bs .

With that said, it looks decently promising, but nothing to the amount of 50C cooler (that would be 0C for me ).

[nysulli]

it'll help with the pcb, but the heat generated within the chips will be just the same, mostly marketing ploy

[bigslappy]

I got 0ne of these Thursday &
I'm cooling the cpu with a block on my testbed & as soon as I make sure the MoBo is a keeper
(if i can go over 500FSB with a Q9650 or my QX9770) )it's gonna be fully water cooled
END of story
& yes the n/b & s/b get warm just like every other MoBo BUT if the PCB can run cooler & I cool the chipsets & CPU with water O/C'in is Gonna be FUN agin ! .... HICookie has O'C'ed this mobo to over 600 FSB :p

I Will report back tomorrow as i'm right now trying the Bios out as we speak !!

[_G_]

I think it was a biostar or dfi advertisement that had a thermal immage of a Gigabyte board showing off all the hotspots. maybe this is there answer. lol

[tgm_of_xxl]

Below the story from www.hexus.net

ASRock picks fight with Gigabyte

Claws out

Yesterday, HEXUS was surprised to receive an email from ASRock - the budget motherboard arm of ASUS - alleging that fellow motherboard maker Gigabyte was being wasteful in the use of copper in its motherboards.

"Our copper supply is not endless, it is actually diminishing rapidly," lamented the email. "While the demand for copper keeps increasing and with that the price of this natural resource, why would manufacturers choose to use more copper without any valid reason?"

Why indeed? Surely only some kind of wanton environmental vandal would treat our precious copper with such callous disregard.

The email continued: "I [unidentified] am not talking about unnecessary heatpipes that most people do not need, but about Gigabyte's ‘2 oz Copper PCB'. Gigabyte is adding more copper to the PCB to reduce the heat that is produced by their motherboard, and to spread it across the motherboard so that the heat will dissipate more quickly."

The swine.

Thankfully, apparently, not everyone is so slap-dash in their copper usage... Somewhat coincidentally, ASRock reckons it can achieve better results with fewer demands on the copper market. "The design of our (ASRock) P45 motherboard results in a cooler motherboard than the P45's that Gigabyte is showing, with or without their extra ounce of copper on every board."
In case the evidence was not already compelling enough, the email also had the following slide attached. If the strange decision to write the hyperlinks in purple, on a purple background, makes them too difficult for you to read, you can see the link to the Gigabyte site here and the ASRock YouTube clip is embedded on the next page.



Gigabyte responds

We spoke to the head of Gigabyte's UK operations - John Hung - to get his take on this dissing missive and he didn't seem much impressed with ASRock. "We don't see ASRock as a competitor as we focus on quality and reliability," he riposted. Miao!

When we asked if there was any validity in ASRock's claims, Hung said: "We think it's necessary; a comparison shows the benefit. We don't think it's wasteful as it's all recyclable." No further verification of these claims was offered.

In the end, Mr. Hung seemed to wonder what ASRock's problem was. "People try to innovate - it's ultimately down to opinions and everyone's entitled to one," he said. "You're already seeing people following our lead and I'm sure you'll see other people using the copper design."

Ultimately this seems to be a bit of a storm in a teacup as people will still need to make up their own minds about the necessity of Gigabyte's extra copper usage and it will likely take more than a single email from another motherboard vendor to enable them to do that.

It goes without saying that environmental matters are a key concern, not least to the channel with WEEE and RoHS regualtions to adhere to. But while we all try to do our bit, few if any of us are free from reproach when it comes our relationship with the environment.

This public spat between ASUS and Gigabyte has been ongoing for some time now, but as far as we know this is the first time that ASUS' little sister has pulled out her claws and dug them in. In HEXUS' experience, for a company such as ASRock to publicly attack Gigabyte in this way is not the usual, reserved Taiwanese way of going about things; so maybe there's more than competitive business practice in all this than the meets the eye...

In any event, by doing so, ASRock has put its own environmental practices in the spotlight, not least from our own Nick Haywood, who has his own thoughts on the email that you can read on the next page.

http://www.youtube.com/v/AIDRHsDaCyE&hl=en&fs=1

Anything you can do

Last week ASRock, the value motherboard arm of ASUS, contacted HEXUS.channel in order to claim that its P45 motherboard runs cooler than the Gigabyte equivalent and furthermore doesn't require the larger quantities of copper used by Gigabyte.

This missive generated a fair bit of debate, both among HEXUS staff and in the HEXUS.community and prompted a further email from ASRock's technical support department, shown below:

Dear Scott,

This is Chris, from ASRock technical support department.

Regarding the "2 OZ copper issue", I think we have to explain more detail:

Actually, we did this test purely from technical point of view, so, we tested with the exactly same testing configuration, same CPU, same memory, and same VGA card... as gigabyte tested.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad QX 6850

Memory: DDR2 800 512MB x 2

VGA: NX73G-128D-RH

Test tool: Intel P4MaxPower @ 100% Power

ASRock P45 PCB board is using with 1OZ copper, in fact, Intel reference datasheet recommends 1 OZ copper for PCB design as well.

According to our test result, we found that ASRock P45 board's Vcore mosfet temperature (94.3 degrees Celsius) is much cooler than Gigabyte 2 OZ PCB design (125 degrees Celsius). It proves that the H/W design of ASRock P45 boards is much cooler when comparing to others.

Again, we don't want to criticize others, we just want to let users know: Since 1 OZ copper is enough, why 2 OZ? Say "No" to Waste!

Best Regards
Chris

Gigabyte's turn

In the mean time Gigabyte had been formulating its response, which took the form of an email from UK sales manager Rui Pereira, to HEXUS, entitled "BREAKING NEWS: Gigabyte broke current world record for hihest [sic] FSB & DDR2 frequency..."

The email proceeded as follows:

Hello,

Now that I have your attention, please take a look at the attached PPT.

I would like to share with you our latest performance for the GA-EP45-UD3P.

This is our new range of motherboards using the Ultra Durable 3.

So, does the extra 2oz of copper really work!
Is this just a marketing strategy!
Or is this for real!!! :-o
You be the judge...

Please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any further information.

Regards,

Rui Pereira

GIGABYTE (UK)

The email doesn't directly mention ASRock's claims but we think it's pretty clear what it's referring to.

PowerPoint slides

The attached PowerPoint presentation appeared to have been taken from a Gigabyte internal document. Again ASRock is not referred to, but ASUS is.

Here are all ten slides from the "PPT":

[tgm_of_xxl]

My personal oppinion is that they could not manage a decent overclocking board without those 2 oz of copper, as improvig layout and bios and power delivery cound not get them to the target. my 2 cents.

[Gir92]

I personally would never buy a gigabyte board. Not saying they aren't good performers, but good God, they are ugly as hell (imo of course). And I have a tech station where everything is out in the open, so I'm not gonna have a lego puke board be the centerpiece.

[Six]

With twice the copper of convention motherboard PCB's resulting in a 2 oz layer, and with claims of up to 50 degrees Celcius cooler than conventional motherboards, will this ultimately spell the end for our ever popular "aftermarket" liquid cooled options for chipset cooling?

This won´t be the point to end aftermarket production.
The point is that the motherboards will come in the future with watercooled Chipset plus little radiator and little pump together and all at low cost.
Then the end has come for the aftermaket chipset cooling design.

[link1896]

Moving to thicker pcb traces, or planes, reduces losses due to copper resistance. This does nothing to reduce heat output of a MCH (Northbridge), eg the 22 watts (TDP, not max, thanks intel) from a p45 mch thats sitting ontop of its own substrate that does a pretty good job of isolating it from the main pcb.

for those interested, intel's thermal and mechanical design guidelines

[GoodToGo]

I got 0ne of these Thursday &
I'm cooling the cpu with a block on my testbed & as soon as I make sure the MoBo is a keeper
(if i can go over 500FSB with a Q9650 or my QX9770) )it's gonna be fully water cooled
END of story
& yes the n/b & s/b get warm just like every other MoBo BUT if the PCB can run cooler & I cool the chipsets & CPU with water O/C'in is Gonna be FUN agin ! .... HICookie has O'C'ed this mobo to over 600 FSB :p

I Will report back tomorrow as i'm right now trying the Bios out as we speak !!

Woah awesome results Thought you would be posting those in the Q9650 thread...

[Bobly]

"For internal use only"

[Lloyd]

There was me thinking they had stuck an(other) "alien" head on their mobo

[T_Flight]

I personally would never buy a gigabyte board. Not saying they aren't good performers, but good God, they are ugly as hell (imo of course). And I have a tech station where everything is out in the open, so I'm not gonna have a lego puke board be the centerpiece.

Me too. The colors clash, and they hurt my eyes. Plus, Asus is just a better board...so far.

Back on topic though, more copper don;t have anything to do with the cooling. You still have to cool the CPU, GPU, and possibly some other chips depending on temps. More copper means it can carry more amperage, which basically means more heat if you push it.

It's just a way around a current handling problem they had with the board. If there is not a problem these board manufacturers don't come out witha fix, becasue there is nothing to fix.

[Martinm210]

Moving to thicker pcb traces, or planes, reduces losses due to copper resistance. This does nothing to reduce heat output of a MCH (Northbridge), eg the 22 watts (TDP, not max, thanks intel) from a p45 mch thats sitting ontop of its own substrate that does a pretty good job of isolating it from the main pcb.

for those interested, intel's thermal and mechanical design guidelines

QFT

I'd still encourage it, if nothing else, to gain some rigidity and durability in the motherboard.

[systemviper]

I got this mobo the GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P and love it....
For a 106.00 how can you go wrong..... It's good looking board,
i like the UD brand, my second board and this one seems to like to play.

I got my board yesterday and popped in my QX6850 and zipped it up to 500fsb with just a few settings,.
I think this is going to be a fun board. QX6850 - 4Ghz @ 503fsb @ 1.4v after a few tweaks, i can't wait till i get some time
plus my Q9650. It might even [push me to gt a E8600 when prices drop in mid november....

CPUz

[sniperbob]

but the OP's clearly implying that this is reducing chipset temp.

After reviewing my OP i realize that this is what it sounds like. I am not saying that this 2oz of copper is affecting chipset temps by 50C, but was wondering if the design itself would actually warrant such a massive advantage as Gigabyte is advertising, whether it be PCB temps or Chipset temps. I also find their information hard to believe as there is no real scaling on their graph and not much for solid facts and validation of the numbers being presented. I was looking simply for everyone's opinion on the matter at hand.

With the use of solid caps and such, should we expect these boards to have a long and prosperous bench life?

So, do you guys think that these UD3 boards will overclock better? Who has more numbers to show? With the previous PPT slides it seems like (for the price) a Gigabyte UD3 board would be a no-brainer.