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Gigabyte N680SLI-DQ6 - A Mother Of A Motherboard
MojoKid writes "Motherboards manufacturers seem to get more exotic in their designs, with each new chipset release. HotHardware has an evaluation posted looking at the Gigabyte GA-N680SLI-DQ6; a product that seemingly out does every other current desktop motherboard in a number of key areas. The board features four Gigabit LAN controllers, 10 SATA ports, a 12-phase power array, 100% solid-state capacitors, and a unique wrap-around, passive, cooling apparatus that cools both the top and underside of the chipset and CPU socket area. And because the board is based on NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI chipset, it also has three full-length PCI Express x16 slots for multi-GPU support. It's a good overclocker and performed well throughout the benchmarks."
...does it go to Eleven?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Will it blend?
:)
That is the question
Why stick so many ports (4x LAN, 10x SATA) on the motherboard? Is there a performance benefit to putting those ports there, instead of providing lots of PCI slots so you can create your own optimal mix of ports?
This refers to the power regulator onboard - i.e. internal to the motherboard itself; it's nothing to do with the 240v PSU.
The onboard power regulator is the part of the motherboard which converts the standard 3.3v to the exact voltages the CPU, RAM, etc require. The theory goes that the more phases, the cooler running, more efficient and more reliable the motherboard will be (but it's mostly about e-penis, rather than any genuine advantage).
rather than any genuine advantage).
No need to turn this in to a Microsoft flame war! ^.^
Good bye, sweet Karma....
I have to take issue here. "n"-phase power supplies in motherboard parlance refer to different Buck-style switching regulator setups. A basic Buck regulator turns on a MOSFET (generally) to switch current into an inductor and capacitor, with a diode in parallel (you can google buck topology if you like). Thus, as the power drains out of the capacitor into the load, the switcher recharges it with little sips of current every couple of microseconds, resulting in a stable voltage from the point of view of the load. MOSFETs have a fairly hard limit on allowable pulse current and power dissipation that they can tolerate.
In order to switch more power, you can put a whole bunch of MOSFETs in parallel, or use a really big one, but then you're switching a huge amount of current all at once through your poor little inductor and capacitor, each of which also have ripple current ratings you should not exceed.
So, instead, you get a switcher IC capable of controlling multiple phases (for instance the 4-phase L6714 from ST Micro if you're interested in powering an AMD64 processor) and 4 different MOSFETs, and each time the load capacitor must be recharged (again, every 1-5 microseconds), the IC will switch on one MOSFET after the other in sequence, resulting in a more steady load voltage, and a lower ripple current on the inductors and capacitors. This has multiple advantages for voltage quality, heat dissipation, and component life.
The fact that it's subject to silly marketing does not mean they'd be stupid enough to buy 12 MOSFETs and expensive power controllers if they didn't need to for technical reasons.