GIGABYTE GA-X58A-OC (rev. 1.0) Pro Reviews

Overall, the results of our today’s test session for the gaming Gigabyte G1.Sniper and overclocking Gigabyte GA-X58A-OC mainboards turned out pretty interesting. We were particularly surprised by the second board. I have to admit that I didn’t expect to see anything like that at all. In my understanding an overclocking mainboard is a board which allows fast and easy overclocking. I am aware that many won’t agree with me. For example, DFI mainboards with numerous complex and undocumented BIOS options also used to be considered overclocking-friendly. By putting a lot of time and effort into finding the optimal settings in constant trial and error you could in the end achieve slightly higher overclocking success than you would on a regular board without spending too much time on it. I was subconsciously expecting something like that from Gigabyte GA-X58A-OC, but it turned out totally different. Its BIOS was exactly the same as the BIOS of other Gigabyte mainboards. Its design was pretty surprising, as it had a minimal amount of onboard controllers and a very limited number of ports and connectors. It can certainly be used for a PC, but mostly for overclocking experiments in an open testbed. Especially, since it is loaded with all sorts of buttons and switches that allow changing the operational modes quickly and easily. There are also some drawbacks. Namely, we had some problems with the processor cooler installation, which means we may not be the only ones out there. It was a little unclear why they would have a 4G button for automatic overclocking, which will hardly ever be utilized by overclocking professionals. It would make much more sense on a gaming Gigabyte G1.Sniper, because its own O.C.Button is pretty useless.

Ultimately, it all comes down to whether this motherboard overclocks better than the next, and although our long-term experience was overwhelmingly positive and surpassed all our expectations, we are still just in the shallow waters when it comes to probing this motherboard’s overclocking capabilities. As such, we can’t truly give a definitive verdict on whether it is the 'best of the best' when it comes to elite level overclocking, but we do know that the X58A-OC is actively being used to break some tough world records.