Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra SLI Motherboard

MediaMan (MediaMan) Gigabyte brings a motherboard to market that will serve the needs of many users many times over and does it at a competitive price.

April 9, 2005 2:43 PM ET in News

Gigabyte brings a motherboard to market that will serve the needs of many users many times over and does it at a competitive price.

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15 Comments:

  1. Shorty
    9 Apr '05, 7:10 pm

    Looks like a nice board

    Im sure there will be more than one board out there with an obscured PCI-E port because of an oversized gpu

    Would be interested to see what it's like for SLI performance (in the future)

  2. MediaMan
    9 Apr '05, 8:28 pm

    Actually...the GPU heatsink is rather small. ANY video card in there with any sort of heatsink will block that port.

  3. Shorty
    9 Apr '05, 8:49 pm
    Quoting MediaMan

    Actually...the GPU heatsink is rather small. ANY video card in there with any sort of heatsink will block that port.

    True.. but then this is the ASUS SLI board... try fitting a full size PCI-E card of resonable size (there are two slots on that board) inbetween or near a PCI-E card.

    I think it's just in general for all SLI boards loaded with graphics cards. I saw one of these in at a retailers earlier (had to make a pitstop on the way into work today) and the gap isn't much!

  4. MediaMan
    10 Apr '05, 10:35 pm

    Well...let me clarify.

    There's a PCI-E slot between the two video card slots. It's a given that if two video cards are installed then that PCI-E slot between is toast. I noticed that even one video card in with a slim GPU heatsink blocks that PCI-E slot.

    /me goes for two falls outta three against Shorty.

  5. Shorty
    11 Apr '05, 5:05 am

    Your point is duly noted

    I still stand by it that all boards with PCI-E slots close to each other will lose one because of a GPU card. Just as I lose a PCI slot from my monster 6800GT

  6. moth (Guest)
    21 Apr '05, 6:54 pm

    nice board. only trouble is that it tends to overheat. a lot. the cpu is @35celsius while the chipset goes way over 60celsius. should this be a problem?

  7. MediaMan
    21 Apr '05, 9:31 pm

    There have been reports of the hot chipsets and there's evidence by way of the "hot" sticker. The review sample was not as hot as other sites have reported.

  8. Unregistered
    9 May '05, 10:15 pm

    I am a little worried about the heat generated by the passive heatsink of the nforce chipset. On my machine it varies between 60° Celsius (idle) and 80° + (burn)! Has anyone tried with any success to replace the heatsink with either a Zalman ZM-NB47J (or ZM-NB32J) or a combination of heatsink + fan... As space is limited (bumping into the graphics card in slot #1), this can be tricky. Any sugestions appreciated!

  9. TheLostSwede
    12 May '05, 7:17 am

    Shorty,

    The Asus is actually the board which uses the most space between the SLI slots. The bridge is 1/3 longer than on the Msi and Gigabyte for example. Much easier to work with but won't clock worth a damn instead. 1T issues at anything over 240.

    I had the Gigabyte for a short while here Doug, but it blew a cpu of the face of the earth for me, so i quickly sent that back with a not-so-kind note.

  10. MediaMan
    12 May '05, 5:50 pm

    I'm going to put a temperature probe on that chipset and run the poop out of the board and see what it hits. I don't ever remember the review sample being that hot but I'll verify what mine sits at.

  11. MediaMan
    13 May '05, 12:18 am

    mmm mmm toasty.

    Now we're cookin' 61.5 degrees Celsius on the surface (143 F). That's going to ignite a few things. EVEN the CPU is way on the warm side at 70 Degrees Celsius.

  12. Unregistered
    20 May '05, 2:45 pm

    My message dated 09 May (Unregistered) has triggered no answer yet... I'd really be curious to hear of anyone who has tried a fanless or fan-based cooling solution for this really hot chipset. On the other hand in a a well-cooled case, should we worry?
    signed: jojojr

  13. MediaMan
    20 May '05, 9:36 pm

    I spoke with Gigabyte and it is normal for the NF4 chipset to run that hot. I am going to be working with them to investigate active cooling (fan). As of this moment I have not experienced any NF4 based problems on that motherboard despite the rather "warm" surface temps on the NF4 heatsink.

  14. Tumbleweed
    28 Aug '05, 5:05 am

    I just purchased the non-SLI version of this board. I am having a problem connecting the 1394 from my Chenbro "Bomber II" PC61566 case. From what I have been able to find on the internet; it appears to have a "standard" pin/plug setup where this board has a "universal". I had a MSI board with the same nForce4 chipset that recently died, was replaced, and died on me again, but the 1394 connectors on it worked fine. They were the USB “standard” style that you just read what the wire was on the back of the plug in order to tell if it was USB or Firewire.

    I thought, no problem, I will Google for an adapter for a couple of bucks, but No Luck... I would rather send the board back than attempt to wire it. I am amazed that no one else, that I have been able to find in forums, has commented on this problem.

    What is the point of buying SATA II drives and running them at 150 speed? I did not realize that until I read your article. What MB or chipset does run at 300 and also does a Raid 5 with 5 drives???

    Or, can you run the Raid 5 off the Nvdia controller chipset. In any case how can one controller run at 150 and the other at 300 on the same array? I was unable to get Raid 5 to work on the previously mentioned MSI board because the controllers would not recognize each others drives. I tried it every way I could think of from boot and from windows.

    Toms Hardware has a article that covers Raid 5 from WinXP which I will play with once I get this new rig running.

    I really like the Zalman CHPS7700 CPU cooler because it’s fan throws air back down on the Northbridge heatsink and on the Ram. However, this board’s bracket makes the installation a little difficult as it uses some cheap plastic clips to secure the backplate. I got two 1 1/4inch bolts with nylon securing nuts to better lockdown the somewhat heavy cooler. Those plastic pins, in my mind, are sure to fatigue and fail with any weight on them. Again, the MSI MB did die, but it had a permanent metal backplate that you could screw the heatsink bracket into. That was much easier to install.

    Thanks for the education… Tumbleing Tumbleweed

  15. sergei
    8 Sep '05, 10:21 am

    Thanks MediaMan this is really useful info.

    Now how big a power supply I need for this MB?
    The Gigayte site says 350 Watts with 2 x 6600GT graphic boards (that's what I am planning to have) I beleive but this seems a bit low?
    I ordered 400Watts with 24 pin adapter - is this going to be OK?

    Quoting MediaMan

    I spoke with Gigabyte and it is normal for the NF4 chipset to run that hot. I am going to be working with them to investigate active cooling (fan). As of this moment I have not experienced any NF4 based problems on that motherboard despite the rather "warm" surface temps on the NF4 heatsink.

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