Packaging and Contents:

Retail front	Retail rear	Open box	Bagged Mobo
CD/Manuals	eSATA bracket	Cables	UBS & Rear I/O

    The retail box for the GA-P35-DS4 has some information on the front about several of the features found on the motherboard; while on the back of the retail box, all kinds of information can be found pertaining to the GA-P35-DS4's components, features and software. The included gear with the P35-DS4 are as follows: four locking SATA cables, one floppy and IDE ribbon cable, USB PCI bracket, dual eSATA PCI bracket kit which includes eSATA cable and power adapter, drivers disc and manuals.

Gigabyte P35-DS4 layout:

    Here's a couple of pictures I grabbed from newegg.com since, quite honestly, they show off the layout better than I could:

A Closer Look:

Frontal view

Solid State advertising

    Usually in this section I go over the layout in detail and do this by starting off with the CPU socket, but this time I'm going to start with the solid state hardware. Just as CPU's go through upgrade changes, so do hardware components. The MOSFETS, Ferrite Core Chokes, and All-Solid Capacitors: these new designs lead to highly efficient and cooler running components.

SB heatsink

NB heatsink

Upper heatsinks

Rear heatsink

  Next, I want to go over the Gigabyte's Silent-Pipe Technology, which is a fancy way of saying it's a heat-pipe cooler. Two heatpipes and four separate heatsinks make up the Silent-Pipe. One heatpipe goes through all four heatsinks, while the second heatpipe only passes through two heatsinks.  The lower heatsink sits on the Intel ICH9R Southbridge. The middle heatsink sits on top of Intel P35 Northbridge chip and has SILENT-PIPE in raised letters written on top. The upper two heatsinks sit next to some of the solid state components and have GIGABYTE in raised letters on top, and they flank the CPU socket on two sides, thus allowing the air from the CPU fan to help cool the fins. On the backside a large, copper heatsink is used for that additional cooling for the underside of the CPU.

   Now it's time to move over to the CPU socket, which is LGA775 and supports Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Quad, Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual-Core, Pentium Extreme Edition, plus some other versions. It will also handle the newer CPU's that run at the 1333FSB.

    Moving over to the upper right corner, we have four 1.8v DDR2 DIMM sockets that will support up to 8GB of system memory and up to 1066 MHz on the FSB. Next to the DIMM sockets are the header connections for the 24pin power connector, the Floppy connections and a PCIE 12v Molex connection for when multiple graphics cards are used.

    Moving down to the lower right, which is the busiest section on the motherboard, we are going to start off with the ICH9R Southbridge chipset. This chipset lies under the lower heatsink and controls all of the connections listed. They are: six SATA2 headers in orange, four USB headers in yellow, a IDE header in lime green, two SATA2 headers for RAID in purple, front panel header in multiple colors, and finally two IEEE headers in grey. The IEEE headers are controlled by the TSB43AB23 chip.

 Next in line is the lower left corner, and here we have the all the PCI expansion slots, starting off with the two PCIe x16 slots, then 3 PCIe x1 slots, and two standard PCI slots. Behind the two smaller expansion slots is the CMOS battery and the dual BIOS chips. Yup, dual BIOS chips........   On the front side of the expansion slots are connections for the SPDIF_IN, CD_IN and Front panel Audio. Also, this is where the chips for the I/O controller, Codec and LAN controller are found.

4/8Pin ATX 12v

Rear I/O left

Rear I/O right

    The last stop on this trip is the upper right of the GA-P35-DS4, which has the 8pin ATX 12v power header and the all-important rear panel I/O connections. The rear panel I/O has the standard PS/2 connections, the long-forgotten (but not missed) Parallel and Serial connectors, Coaxial and Optical S/PDIF connections, four USB2 ports, one IEEE port, one RJ-45 LAN port, and the 6 port audio connection for up to 7.1 surround sound.

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