GA-X99 SOC Force Review

GA-X99 SOC Force detailed review

The X99 boards have started arriving and the first one in is the Gigabyte GA-X99-SOC Force. This board in particular happens to be one of its overclocking boards. The X99 platform brings a few changes compared to the X79. This includes a slightly modified socket which no longer supports the previous generation of 2011-pin processors physically. Native USB3.0 means that you no longer have to worry about which port to choose when sticking in USB bootable flash drives. The main improvement would be the adoption of the DDR4 memory standard. They might be expensive but allow for higher memory bandwidth.

The board has a whole section dedicated to overclocking. There is the OC-ignition button which allows you to keep your fans running in cold-bug conditions and the OC-tag button loads whatever setting was saved to the Tag profile in the BIOS so you can recover quickly in case you had to clear CMOS. Then there is the OC trigger which switches between two different frequencies and then there are plenty of buttons to increase or decrease the CPU ratio and Moreover, there are plenty of V-check points right next to these buttons so it’s a well organized section dedicated for the job.

The GA-X99-SOC Force has support for 4-way SLI and CrossFire with two slots running at x8 and two slots running at x16 which gives more bandwidth but whether that makes a difference is  something we need to investigate further. The board’s MRP is at Rs.38K which going by the  feature set that the board gives you is justified.

Specifications
Chipset: Intel X99
Memory support: 4x3000(OC)MHz upto 64GB
LAN: Intel Gigabit Ethernet
Audio: ALC1150 7.1
SATA: 10x SATA III
Expansion: 4x PCIe X16(x16+x8+x16+x8)
Dimensions (LxWxD): 305 mm x 264 mm
Warranty: 3 years.