Gigabyte X99 SOC Champion Overclocking Motherboard

We have come to expect certain things when we buy an overclocking motherboard and while a SATA cable and manual are all we really need we like getting a few extras to justify the additional cost.  Granted many of these go towards padding the parts bin but others are essential to our overclocking success.

Gigabyte has included everything you see below which includes four SATA6 cables (with locks), I/O shield, manuals, driver disk and several SLI bridges along with a single ribbon style Crossfire bridge.

Sadly the X99 SOC Champion doesn’t come with the famous OC Brace which seems strange given the overclocking nature of this motherboard.

The Gigabyte App Center includes traditional software packages like EasyTune for auto overclocking and Cloud Station which can allow your desktop to share resources with a smart phone or tablet.  We generally don’t use any of the included software during our motherboard testing but did get a chance to check out V-Tuner, @BIOS and Ambient LED.

@Bios is an application that will allow you to flash your system BIOS from Windows.  It has options to pull down a BIOS image from the internet however, we have found it quicker to simply hit http://www.gigabyte.com and pull down the image manually.

V-Tuner is an interesting app that allows you to overclock your video card and works much like Afterburner or PrecisionX  complete with profiles and monitoring.

The final app is called Ambient LED and will control what the LED lights that shine thru the motherboard.   Keep in mind that this app is for making changes from within windows.  If you need to make a permanent change to the Ambient LED you’ll need to do so in the BIOS.