Computex 2016 - Day 2

Computex 2016 - Gigabyte

The first thing we saw from Gigabyte was actually from Aorus, its gaming laptop brand. It had the latest versions of the X5S and the X7 on display. The Aorus X5S v5 had been upgraded with the new RGB Fusion keboard, which allows you to program RGB lighting to it on a per-key basis and also assign macros to any key, not just the five dedicated ones (which are still present). Everything is controlled in the Aorus software. The company wouldn't be drawn to disclose many details on its approach when the mobile versions of Nvidia's Pascal architecture launch, but it's not easy to guess that the existing line-up will quickly be upgraded. That said, it did tell us that it has no plans to produce SLI models with the new GPUs. Lastly, Aorus showed us the latest version of its X7 chassis, with a slightly redesigned chassis giving it more ventilation and thus better cooling.


Gigabyte is of course most well-known for its motherboards, and it had a number of refreshed X99 and Z170 lines with added features on display. If you're interested, you can see these along with their feature lists in the pictures below. Features to look out for are proper onboard U.2 connectivity for next-generation SSDs (and finally the phasing out of SATA Express) and Thunderbolt 3 connectivity, something Gigabyte is still pushing heavily. On the topic of SSDs, RAID 0 array support for NVMe SSDs (two or even three on higher end models) is present. On some motherboards the company has also started giving extra metal shielding and durability to DDR slots, not just PCI-E slots.


Gigabyte also added itself to the list of companies with GTX 1080 cards to display, although like the other partners it was unable to confirm clock speeds – these will be available in the coming days though. The card we saw was the GTX 1080 Xtreme Gaming, with features like additional HDMI connectivity for VR headsets, a redesigned custom cooler and RGB lighting.