Gigabyte X99 Designare EX Motherboard Review

With all manufacturers releasing refreshed boards due to Broadwell-E launching we see a new contender from Gigabyte, their X99 Designare EX. Like me, I’m sure the first new feature you’ll notice about the Designare is the RGB lighting, but they have added plenty more than just lights. DIMM shielding, a PLX chip, dual U.2, and a few other features also add performance benefits. Pull up a seat, don your reading glasses, and we’ll dive in to this board!

Specifications and Features

What can I say… it’s loaded! Tons of storage connectivity, a PLX chip allowing x16/x16/x16 on a 28-lane CPU, and support for 256GB of DDR4 (RDIMM required). Also we see dual LAN, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, all packed into a standard ATX form factor; simply impressive.

All specifications in the table below are provided by Gigabyte.

The next table lists the high-level feature set of the X99 Designare EX. All images and descriptions provided by Gigabyte.

Gigabyte X99 Designare EX Features
	Ambient Surround LED Set the Color that Matches Your Style Now offering more LED customizations than ever, users can truly adapt their PC to represent their lifestyle. With full RGB support and a redesigned Ambient LED application, the user has complete control over the LEDs which surround the motherboard. Light Up Your Case to Match your Motherboard With an onboard Pin Header for aftermarket LED Strips, users now have the ability to sync the lighting in their computer case with the lighting on their motherboard. By using the Ambient LED Application, included in GIGABYTE APP Center, users are also able to specify the lighting modes available and ensure that everything is illuminating their system in harmony.
	Immersive VR Gaming Experience – VR requires 30% more performance than Full HD graphics for a steady 60FPS or greater. – Only Gaming PCs can provide the best VR experience. To create a seamless VR experience GIGABYTE Motherboards offer the best features to make your virtual reality feel like your actual reality. With technologies such as Thunderbolt™ 3 to transfer data and video, NVMe support via M.2 or U.2, and a one piece metal shielding to brace for heavier discrete graphics cards its obvious that GIGABYTE has the tools you need to start your journey in VR. To set the mood GIGABYTE Motherboards include Ambient Surround LED to put you in the center of action.
	NVIDIA® QUADRO® Professional Graphics Supports NVIDIA® QUADRO® 3D Workstation Professional Graphics Solutions designed and built specifically for artists, designers, and engineers, NVIDIA Quadro GPUs power more than 100 professional applications across a broad range of industries. Professionals trust them to enable their best work using applications such as Adobe® Creative Cloud, Avid Media Composer, Autodesk Suites, Dassault Systemes, CATIA and SOLIDWORKS, Siemens NX, PTC Creo, and many more.
	Premium 3-Way PCIe x16 Multi-Graphics Support Optimized support for 3-Way NVIDIA SLI™ or 3-Way AMD CrossFire™ On 28 lanes Processor
	2-Way SLI™ / CrossFire™ Multi-Graphics Multi-graphics configuration offers better graphics performance for gaming enthusiasts who demand the highest frame rates without compromising on resolution.
	PURE SPEED, MORE POWER Exclusively on GIGABYTE Powered Motherboards Intel® USB 3.1 + Power Delivery 2.0 The Intel® USB 3.1 controller utilizes four PCIe Gen3 Lanes, offering up to 32 Gb/s total bandwidth, for uncompromised transfer speeds of up to 10 Gb/s per USB 3.1. With twice the bandwidth compared to its previous generation, and backwards compatibility with USB 2.0 and 3.0, the much improved USB 3.1 protocol is available over the new reversible USB Type-C™ and the traditional USB Type-A connector for better compatibility over a wider range of devices.
	Dual U.2 Onboard (NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4) NVMe Performance for PCIe SSDs The new Intel 750 series SSDs offer an incredible increase in performance over SATA drives. Using the NVMe protocol which takes advantage of the fast bandwidth of PCIe Gen3 x4 lanes (32 Gb/s), the drives are a clear advantage for users looking to boot their OS faster, load their games in a flash and access large files without waiting. By implementing the U.2 port onboard to support the 2.5” Intel 750 Series drive, GIGABYTE ensures that the users can benefit from the best performance.
	36W USB Type-C™ Power and Charge From USB Type-C With Power Delivery 2.0 Support Redesigned to take full advantage of all the features that USB Type-C can support, GIGABYTE’s new X99 motherboards with Intel’s USB 3.1 controller not only supports USB 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1, but also completely supports Power Delivery 2.0. This means users are able to get up to 36 watts through your Intel powered USB Type-C port. This opens the door for users looking to clean up their cable cutter and power or recharge their devices through this universal connector, the Type-C Port.
	Fast Onboard Storage with NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 110mm M.2 (Up to 32 Gb/s) GIGABYTE’s M.2 solution offers considerably faster storage performance and support for both PCIe and SATA interfaces for M.2 SSD devices.
	Dual Hybrid Fan Headers Precise PWM and Voltage Control for Water pumps or Fans Many of today’s modern computers feature water cooling to ensure that the CPU or graphics cards stay cool and quiet while they are put under heavy load. In order to provide the best support for water cooling solutions, GIGABYTE has equipped its X99/Z170 motherboards with an additional water pump power header. This allows the user to have full control over two water pumps or fans. An additional benefit of these headers with GIGABYTE’s motherboards is the option to choose between voltage calibration or PWM modes.
	Genuine All Digital Power Design GIGABYTE X99 series motherboards use an all digital CPU power design from International Rectifier® which includes both 4th Generation digital PWM Controllers and industry-leading 3rd Generation PowIRstage® controllers. These 100% digital controllers offer incredible precision in delivering power to the motherboard’s most power-hungry and energy-sensitive components, allowing enthusiasts to get the absolute maximum performance from their new Intel® Core™ i7 Extreme Edition CPUs. IR Digital PWM & IR PowIRstage® ICs This new generation of IR® digital power controllers and PowIRstage® ICs feature Isense technology, which provide more precise current sensing accuracy. This helps evenly distribute the thermal loading between the PowIRstage® ICs, preventing the overheating of each individual PowIRstage®, resulting in longer lifespan and better reliability. Server Level Chokes GIGABYTE X99 series motherboards feature Server Level Chokes. • Server level reliability • High current capacity • New design reduces heat created by power loss and provides efficient power delivery to CPU VRM area. Long Lifespan Durable Black™ Solid Caps GIGABYTE X99 series motherboards integrate the absolute best quality solid state capacitors that are rated to perform at maximum efficiency for extended periods, even in extreme performance configurations. This provides peace of mind for end users who want to push their system hard, yet demand absolute reliability and stability, with ultra-low ESR no matter how high the CPU loading.
	Refreshed BIOS Easy, Smart, and Friendly The BIOS is essential for users during initial setup to allow for the most optimal settings. With a new GUI and easier to use functionalities, GIGABYTE has been able to reinvent the BIOS to give users a better experience will setting up their new system.
	Ultra Durable™ PCIe Armor Enhanced Strength PCIe Design, Support for Heavy Graphics Cards For Extreme / VR Gaming Station Dual Armor DIMM and PCIe Metal Shielding Never worry about your heavy graphics card damaging your motherboard again. GIGABYTE’s proprietary Ultra Durable PCIe Metal Shielding reinforces the PCIe connector to prevent slot damage due to heavy graphics card. The DIMM and PCIe metal shield also provides extra strength for when you forget to release the lock while replacing your component, adding a fool proof option which can save your PC’s life.
	Ultra Durable™ Memory Armor GIGABYTE’s exclusive one piece stainless steel shielding design prevents against PCB distortion and twist (Plate bending) in addition to preventing any possible ESD interference.
	Turbo B-Clock Built-in Advanced Performance Tuning IC Thanks to the onboard Turbo B-Clock Tuning IC, GIGABYTE motherboards enable overclockers to have the ability to change their BCLK frequency to a desired value of their choice. With the new linear range adjustment option of the Tuning IC, ranges from 90MHz to 500MHz are now possible, so that overclockers are not limited to the 5% ranges of traditional straps. *Turbo B-Clock overclocking range may vary according to CPU capabilities.
	High Definition Audio Design The Realtek ALC1150 is a high-performance multi-channel high definition audio codec that delivers an exceptional audio listening experience with up to 115dB SNR, ensuring users get the best possible audio quality from their PC. High Quality audio capacitors deliver the highest quality sound resolution and sound expansion to create the most realistic sound effects for professional gamers.
	Q-Flash Plus GIGABYTE Q-Flash Plus allows users to update to the latest BIOS using a thumb drive without the CPU or Memory needing to be installed. Updating your BIOS on your GIGABYTE motherboard can be done in a flash – even without memory or CPU onboard. Utilizing the EC Controller, the BIOS on your GIGABYTE Motherboard can now be updated through Q-Flash Plus even if your system is unable to boot. An LED next to the EC controller will notify you once the procedure is complete and you are ready to boot your system normally. * USB thumb drive not included.
	Easy to Install “G-Connector” Design The tiny cables of the front panel connectors can be hard to manipulate as space is restricted and indicators being tiny. With the G-Connector, you can connect all the FP cables at once, simplifying the process of building your next PC and saving you some frustrations.

Retail Packaging

The immediate thought in my head once I opened the shipping package was color. Gigabyte designed some bold packaging for the X99 Designare EX, but it absolutely catches the eye. The front displays an open cockpit racecar in an RGB gradient, a few high level features, and the brand/model. This front panel also flips open. The rear has in depth features and specifications, along with a picture of the motherboard itself.

Opening the outer box, we find an inner box holding the motherboard safely in a foam shell. One of the safest ways to package a motherboard I’ve ever seen. Digging further down is a box holding all the non-cable accessories (manual, CD, etc), with the cables kept in a separate divider under the motherboard.

Accessories

Here we see part of the accessories in the box; the manuals, CD’s, case badges, and G-Connector.

The rest of the accessories from the box; I/O shield, 3-way solid SLI bridge, HDD/SSD cable labels, and Velcro cable ties. There are some non-typical accessories here, it’s a nice touch to see cable management being thought of by Gigabyte with the sheer number of drive connections on the X99 Designare EX.

These are all the accessories not in the box; DisplayPort cable, RGB LED strip cable, Wi-Fi antenna, 2x SLI bridges, 6x braided SATA cables, and a one to three ATX 12V cable. You may be wondering, as I am, what a DisplayPort cable is doing as an accessory for a motherboard without graphics support. Gigabyte states this about the DisplayPort Input connection “DisplayPort feature is currently limited. Visit GIGABYTE website for future updates.”

The X99 Designare EX

As typical, we take a look at the front of the motherboard first. Immediately we see a slew of heatsinks and shrouds in a white with blue/silver trim. The board itself is black with some silver accents. Turning the board over to its back we see all heatsinks and shrouds are attached with screws. This is highly preferred over pins. We can also see the separation of the audio section from the rest of the motherboard. PCIe slots 1, 3, and 5 are soldered in at x16, slot 6 is soldered as x8, slot 4 is soldered as x4, and slot 2 is soldered as x1.

A Closer Look

Zooming in on the lower portion of the board we can see the metal support/shielding which Gigabyte uses to protect the PCIe slots on the X99 Designare EX. The spacing between the upper most x16 slots is very good, this will help with multi-GPU solutions utilizing large heatsinks. Again, you can run x16/x16/x16 on a 28-lane CPU due to the inclusion of a PLX chip. Across the bottom we see what appears to be an endless supply of connectivity. There are two USB 3.0 headers, two USB 2.0 headers, the front audio header, an S/PDIF output connector, a PWM system fan header, an RGB LED strip connection point, and a TPM connection. Also nestled between the upper PCIe slots, under the shroud, is a 110mm M.2 connection which utilizes PCIe 3.0 x4. Your typical M.2 device is 80mm, so supporting 110mm allows for larger than standard devices.

Picking up where we left off, on the bottom edge connectivity, the lower right corner of the board has a PWM fan/pump header, front panel connectivity, and starting up the side we see the storage connectivity. Also in this corner is the X99 chipset, normally covered by a large heatsink. The storage connections on this board are seemingly limitless. We already covered the M.2 slot, but this corner of the board has 10x SATA III ports, a pair of which can be used for SATA Express, and two U.2 connectors. If you have more drives than this board supports, get an add-in card!

Taking a peek at the top of the board we see the eight phase VRM, eight DDR4 DIMM’s with shielding like the PCIe slots, the 8-pin CPU power connector, and three PWM headers of which one is pump/fan and two are for fans. Looking specifically at the top right we get a close look at the DIMM shielding and also see the 24-pin ATX power connector. This section is decidedly simple compared to the connectivity we saw along the bottom of the board.

For rear connections on the X99 Designare we see a blast from the past, a PS/2 connection! I’d prefer to see this used for space to add two more USB ports. The USB connections include five USB 3.0 ports, one USB 3.1 Type-A port (red), and one USB 3.1 Type-C. For network there are two Gigabit LAN ports and two Wi-Fi antenna connections, audio has five 3.5mm jacks and an S/PDIF port, and last there is a DisplayPort input on the back. Gigabyte says the DisplayPort connection is for “future feature upgrade”, not sure what they have up their sleeve here.

Stripping the X99 Designare EX

Looking at the VRM we see eight phases. The CPU power connector is incredibly close to the VRM, with a choke and four caps to filter it before hitting the phases. Each phase has its own IC, choke, and capacitor. Gigabyte is calling the chokes “server level”, the power delivery design is fully digital PWM, and all IC’s/controllers are from IR. Top notch.

The controller for the VRM is an International Rectifier 3580 which is an 8-phase fully digital, single output, PWM controller. This drives the entire CPU VRM by itself, it should be plenty for topping out any ambient cooling.

The heatsinks and shrouds on this board are plentiful, to say the least. All the thermal paste and thermal pads made great contact with their intended components. The two heatsinks are linked with a very long heat pipe to assist in cooling. The I/O cover has an RGB LED strip attached on the underside, the audio cover and M.2 cover have clear/slotted sections to allow SMD RGB LED’s from the motherboard to shine through. All heatsinks and covers are attached with screws, not push pins.

Digging into the audio section in detail, Gigabyte did a great job isolating it from the rest of the motherboard. The ever popular Realtek ALC1150 Codec is in use here and, in combination with Nichicon capacitors, produces a 115dB SNR.

The Ethernet controllers for the X99 Designare are both Intel based, one i218 and one i211. As mentioned earlier, these are each rated for Gigabit throughput.

Below are some thumbnails, click for a bigger view, of the other miscellaneous integrated circuit chips on the X99 Designare EX.

RGB Lighting

The slideshow below provides a few examples of the colors you can produce with the RGB LEDs on the X99 Designare. Every color I tried was very bright and true to the intended color. The BIOS and Gigabyte software (seen in the next section) allow you to choose to have the color be on/off, flash, sweep through colors, or even have a breathing effect. The board’s lighting is synchronized with the RGB LED strip connector we saw earlier as well.

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UEFI BIOS and Overclocking Software

In the first BIOS slideshow we find all the main screens of the BIOS. When you boot first the X99 Designare will go to the MIT tab in Advanced Mode. Moving the mouse to the right or bottom will bring out two toolbars. One contains links to the Easy Mode, Language, Q-Flash, and Smart Fan portions of the BIOS.

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Further exploring the MIT tab we get in to Advanced Frequency, Memory, and Voltage settings. There are also pages for PC Health and Miscellaneous Settings. In these screens are all the overclocking and tweaking controls you could want or need, to my knowledge.

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Bringing up the rear with the third and final slideshow of the BIOS we find the System, BIOS, Peripherals, Chipset, Power, and Save & Exit tabs. Things such as boot order, SATA settings, RGB LED controls, and more can be found here.

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Here’s a look at some of the software available with the X99 Designare. One gripe here, you have to download and install each piece of software individually, but only after installing App Center. It would be better to include it all in one install package, but allow the user to choose which pieces to install. EasyTune allows system tweaking, even with an “AutoTune” for automatic overclocking. It’s worth noting the AutoTune function did not properly overclock my system, it simply crashed part way through the stress test and didn’t save the settings.

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Test Setup, Benchmarks, and Overclocking

Listed below is the test system used for benchmarking.

We’ll perform our usual set of benchmarks which tests rendering, memory performance, and single/multi-threaded CPU performance. For 2D benchmarks we’ll use SuperPi 1M and 32M, wPrime, and Intel XTU. For rendering it’s Cinebench R11.5 and R15. Memory performance is checked against AIDA64. For encoding, we use x265 (HWBOT Version) and PoV Ray. A more real-world test is included in 7zip. Stock testing is performed with the BIOS as you get it out of the box, which will vary from motherboard to motherboard. When overclocking, a CPU speed of 4.5GHz will be used for testing purposes. Memory speed is unchanged.

Memory Bandwidth and Throughput Benchmark – AIDA64

CPU Rendering Benchmarks – Cinebench R11.5 and R15

Single Threaded CPU Benchmarks – Super Pi 1M and 32M

Multi-Threaded CPU Benchmarks – WPrime 32M and 1024M, x265 (HWBOT Version), PoV Ray R3.73, 7Zip, and Intel XTU

Comparison

Overall, the results seemed to be in line with the expected performance of a top-tier motherboard and results I’m seeing around the web. Currently there are no graphs to show, I normally would do so here, but later X99 motherboard reviews will include a more in-depth comparison.

Pushing the Limits

The X99 Designare EX hit 4.66GHz (46 x 101.5MHz) on the CPU. It seems to be fairly stable at this level, running Cinebench R15 without issue. Voltage is definitely outside my comfort for 24/7 usage, note. Booting 4.7GHz (47 x 100MHz) happened, but I couldn’t complete R15 at this speed.

Conclusion

As is typical, I’ll start with some cons in the conclusion. I was quite disappointed when, after hooking up the board, I found no debug display (forgot my 8-pin power it turned out) or power/reset switches (shouldn’t need to use a screwdriver on a motherboard of this caliber). The BIOS isn’t my favorite, but it works and has a ton of tweaking options, even if it isn’t the fastest I’ve used. Revisiting the bundled software, it would be great to have one download package which allows you to choose the components to install instead of multiple downloads.

On the positive side, the motherboard is a very attractive design. The features list is quite astounding, really, but I do wish we knew what the DisplayPort Input would add to the mix. Gigabyte’s design of the VRM is plenty to push a CPU to the limit of ambient cooling. Built in RGB lighting and the ability to control an RGB strip off of the same software is a nice addition we’re seeing on a few top-end motherboards. The PLX chip can save you a bit of cash by allowing multi-GPU arrangements while using cheaper CPU and not losing performance.

Now, on to the wallet-harming truth, the $418.99 MSRP of the X99 Designare isn’t going to win any awards for budget board of the year, but the $200 price jump of a higher lane CPU greatly offsets this for anyone who is going to utilize the PLX chip. Current market pricing on the board is MSRP at Newegg and Amazon. This board gets the Approved stamp, even though it isn’t the most convenient on an open bench (let’s be honest, how many people won’t put this board in a case anyway).

Click the stamp for an explanation of what this means.

-Austin (ATMINSIDE)