Gigabyte's Limited Edition Z97X-SOC Force LN2 Motherboard Collects A World Record On Launch Day
You'll find all sorts of amenities on Gigabyte's newly launched and limited edition Z97X-SOC Force LN2 motherboard. It boasts a 2x copper printed circuit board (PCB), onboard buttons for various functions, four-way CrossFire support with an "OC Brace" to keeps those cards in place when using an open-air chassis (or none at all), and much more. But what you won't find on the board are CPU fan mounting holes, and with good reason.
This isn't a typical motherboard intended for the masses. Instead, this slice of silicon is meant to set overclocking records in dramatic fashion, and to do that, LN2 cooling is the name of the game. To prove that point, Gigabyte teamed up with overclocking guru "HiCookie" to launch the board at Computex with a live demonstration of its potential to break records. In doing so, HiCookie set the world's highest frequency memory overclock to date by hitting 4.5GHz (stable) by pairing Kingston KyberX Predator memory with the Z97X-SOC Force LN2.
Even though the board is primarily intended to set overclocking records using a steady feed of LN2 to keep cool under pressure, Gigabyte didn't spare any features that you'd typically find on an enthusiast-grade motherboard. It has half a dozen SATA 6Gbps connectors, a single SATA Express connector, various levels of RAID support, Killer E2200 gaming networking, six USB 3.0 ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, several display outputs (D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort), and other goodies.
While this particular model is intended for extreme overclocking using LN2, Gigabyte also offers a non-LN2 version of the same board, along with several other models based on Intel's Z97 Express chipset.
This isn't a typical motherboard intended for the masses. Instead, this slice of silicon is meant to set overclocking records in dramatic fashion, and to do that, LN2 cooling is the name of the game. To prove that point, Gigabyte teamed up with overclocking guru "HiCookie" to launch the board at Computex with a live demonstration of its potential to break records. In doing so, HiCookie set the world's highest frequency memory overclock to date by hitting 4.5GHz (stable) by pairing Kingston KyberX Predator memory with the Z97X-SOC Force LN2.
Even though the board is primarily intended to set overclocking records using a steady feed of LN2 to keep cool under pressure, Gigabyte didn't spare any features that you'd typically find on an enthusiast-grade motherboard. It has half a dozen SATA 6Gbps connectors, a single SATA Express connector, various levels of RAID support, Killer E2200 gaming networking, six USB 3.0 ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, several display outputs (D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort), and other goodies.
While this particular model is intended for extreme overclocking using LN2, Gigabyte also offers a non-LN2 version of the same board, along with several other models based on Intel's Z97 Express chipset.
