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There is no doubting that the Gigabyte G1 Assassin is an expensive product. Priced at £450 in the United Kingdom it will certainly prove to be only for those people with deep pockets. On first impressions there is no doubting that something very special lies within the gargantuan box.
To be fair, the price of this board is actually more reasonable that it might first appear. For a start the build quality and component selection is possibly the finest we have seen in our labs to date, no corners have been cut, nothing is missing.
The inclusion of professional grade audio capacitors and multi channel amplifiers ensures that the Gigabyte G1 Assassin will appeal to the audience who are unhappy with ‘run of the mill' onboard solutions. Including the Killer E2100 as a dedicated network processor is an informed choice and really does enhance the overall networking speeds and latencies.
The design of the motherboard is almost without fault, the military theme is perfectly executed and attention to detail throughout is exceptional. The heatsink construction is inspired and certainly helps to keep the thermal dynamics well within safe parameters, even when overclocking a flagship 12 core processor to over 5ghz.
While this is our first experience with the Intel Core i7 990x Extreme Edition processor, our overclocking results are much better than those we achieved with the 980x. We have had two of these chips and both were limited to around 4.8ghz, even with high end watercooling. The 990x happily sits just past 5ghz with a mainstream liquid cooler from Antec. Some of the credit has to go to the excellent Gigabyte G1 Assassin bios configuration and 16 phase power circuitry to ensure the most stable, dynamic overclocks.
Today we tried to test the board to reflect real world conditions of the target gaming audience. With multiple high end AMD and Nvidia graphics cards running in CrossfireX x2/3 and Sli configurations. It would be safe to say that performance is certainly not lacking.
When everything is considered, a system configuration like this will be out of reach for most people, even most of the enthusiast audience who read KitGuru. If however you can afford the Gigabyte G1 Assassin and the new Intel Core i7 990x then we can only feel envious. This is without question the ‘ultimate' high end enthusiast system of choice.
KitGuru says: Expensive products, but the performance available is incredible. Well worth the money. Both products earn our highest award, if you have the disposable budget then this should be your next system.
Dear god, I need a cold shower, shall read it more in depth later today! awesome
That motherboard is just insanely well designed. the heatsinks are incredible. the bullet showing through etc? wow asus might need to be worried!
I have been thinking of upgrading to this board now for a week, I have a 980x and want to ditch my current intel board as I can’t get past 4.2, even with a D14. its a lot of money, but hey we all need perks, right? 🙂
that is a crazy board design. crazy good, not crazy bad.
The cost is incredible however. I can under maybe £350, but £450? that would get a nice SLI setup.
Gigabyte just shot up in my books due to this. the other products in the range look slightly better value for money however :p
5ghz, thats a mega achievement for a standard cheap watercooler. look forward to the kuhler review zardon
good read, and what a great design from gigabyte. I wonder how much of hte heatsink design is just for show however.
990x is great, but not that exciting, just a clock bumped 980x. still nice oc too.
The audio side looks stunningly well done for a reference onboard option. did it sound good?
The last gigabyte board I had was alright, the bios was dodgy, but it might just have been an early revision. I sold it after a few weeks as I couldnt return it and I wanted something more stable.
Between asus, msi and gigabyte, they produce mega motherboards.
This product is really a showcase of their engineering skill, its hardly practical for 99% of the enthusiast market. Still I wouldnt mind it, if you are giving it away.
crank the nuts off it ! 5ghz is good, it should go higher but you are right, over 1.5volts is risky business.
Additional power connectors on the motherboard are of no importance if you are going with classic cooling (air or water) – excluding here some extreme experiments. Additional power is primarily designed to ensure stability with LN2 (just like with Asus R3E).
There is plenty of things which I like, but it is more interesting what I don’t like.
Price utterly prohibitive. With LGA 2011 around the corner, I simply don’t get it. Also they stuck with heat-pipe between NB and SB. It’s bloody mad to transport heat from red-hot north-bridge to south-bridge (OC!). For that kind of money I would expect at least 2 NICs, at least 10 SATA ports, 4 electrically x16 slots and some form of active cooling on north-bridge. Passive cooling of X58 that is pure madness. With big coolers you can run into problems because of that massive heatsink.
Hi Hakuren. some interesting points, but im not sure I agree with them all. Why would you need a dual Killer Nic configuration. Is this for a specific demand you need? Gamers will never need a dual setup. Also I dont follow your cooling theories on the NB and SB heatpipes. they shouldnt be transferring heat between components, more ‘evenly’ removing them across the whole area.
Absolutely brilliant, what a setup. I can only dream…
If anyone wants to donate this to someone, I can send my address? 🙂
450 quid for a motherboard. I thought they were taking the piss until I saw what it can do. Im sold, now I just need a new job!
My friend bought this and it’s brilliant. He is loaded, and now i guess he will be selling his 980x for an ‘upgrade’ 🙂
I have that set up now, I bought it a week ago. I am waiting on the watercooling get to arrive before I OC the board.
BUT as of fight now I am in shock at how good this computer set up is and works out of the box.
G1. Assassin
990X
12 GB 1600 DDR3
2 P128 Corsair SSD
Coolermaster HAF X
Was thinking of buying this board myself, and once I get the funds sorted im ordering one for my 980x. not sure what case to get. the HAF x looks good. might opt for a lian li.
Excellent review, loads of info. the ocing is great. im sick of crap x58 boards so i might bite the bullet and order this.
I dont know what some dude was saying earlier in this discussion, this gigabyte board is one of the best on the market, bar none. its an overclocking force.
Got no idea why you recommend this board over eg an UD5/7…
Are those gimmicks really worth the extra cash ?
Would loved to have seen the Killer NIC test and sound test. That’ is what makes this board special … Or a Bclock test… as 143 Bclock my grandma can do that…
There is a Killer nic test in the review Alby. Sound testing can be rather subjective. I think the board looks great. people who dont want the extras will buy a cheaper board, thats pretty obvious, right? Some people love all the high end capacitors and extras. I know I do, but not sure id pay for it.
My bad , overlooked that part :p