Gigabyte Unleashes GA-Z97X-SOC Force LN2 Motherboard

Aside from the G-Power OC module, Gigabyte made two additional announcements over at Computex 2014. The company has unveiled their latest GA-Z97X-SOC Force LN2 motherboard and also set the memory ram frequency world record with the help of renowned overclocker, Hi Cookie.

Gigabyte’s GA-Z97X-SOC Force LN2 motherboard is aimed towards overclockers, not enthusiasts, not gamers but true overclockers who only want to achieve the fastest frequency records on their machines. The GA-Z97X-SOC Force LN2 is similar to the GA-Z97X-SOC Force motherboard we reviewed last month but as i mentioned, its not built for the casual audience nor the gaming community. You ask why? The motherboard doesn’t come with any cooler mounting holes which means its only built for the meanest clockers out there who want nothing but LN2 cooling rigged on their PCs 24/7. That’s the kind of product only the extreme PC community would want to have in their hands and I am glad that we are finally looking at some extreme products after such a long time.

LAB501 has managed to obtain some pictures from Gigabyte’s Computex booth over in Taipei 101 in Taiwan. The guys have some detailed shots of the board to give a technical overview of the product itself. The Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SOC Force is the top of the line overclocking motherboard built with the Z97 chipset and will feature the new and improved design scheme powered with a 8 Phase VRM powered by an 8-Pin plus 4-Pin connector configuration. The V-Check Point 2 and several OC switches can be found right next to the DDR3 DIMMs. Surprisingly, there are only two DDR3 DIMM slots on the board which means its also geared towards achieving some high memory overclocks and is more optimized towards that scheme.
Expansion slots include four PCI-e 3.0 x16 (x16/x8/x8/x8), a single PCI-e 3.0 x1 slot and two PCI slots. The board has 4 SATA 6 GB/s ports and two SATA Express ports. Another 6-Pin power connector located near the top most PCI-e slot provides additional power and stability to the PCIe expansion slots while using multiple graphics cards. The motherboard features a nice Orange and black color scheme which looks great. The Killer E2200 LAN chip is also featured on the board for seamless online experience. The SOC name is derived from Gigabyte’s Super Overclock series products which include their top of the line graphics cards powered by their WindForce coolers. The same DNA of the SOC products has been infused in Gigabyte’s Z97 OC series motherboards to deliver the best performance to enthusiasts.

I/O includes the same four USB 3.0 (Blue colored) alongwith four USB 2.0 ports (Black colored). There’s HDMI, VGA, DVI-D and a full length Display connector providing display connectivity using Intel’s integrated graphics. An SPDIF port, PS/2 port and a Killer E2200 powered LAN port can also be found along with the 6 channel audio jack that is powered by the ALC 1150 audiophile codec. The original GA-Z97X-SOC Force retails at $209.99 US so we can expect a slightly optimized pricing for the LN2 product around $200 US.

Hi Cookie Sets DDR3 Memory 4.5 GHz Frequency Record At Computex

Aside from the motherboard launch, renowned overclocker Hi-Cookie has managed to break a new world record by setting the highest memory frequency of 4.5 GHz on Gigabyte’s GA-Z97X-SOC Force motherboard. Using Kingston memory sticks, Hi Cookie was able to achieve 2250.8 MHz DRAM frequency on each of the sticks which equate to a 4.5 GHz memory clock speed (Who needs DDR4?). You can check out a screenshot of the CPU-Z panel below:

Gigabyte Memory Frequency World Record 4.5 GHz Computex 2014