Everyone is going green these days, and they are trying to find more and more products that are as green as they want to be. One way people go about is to try to reduce their electricity usage, which has lead to a whole host of power sipping products being inserted into nearly every technology company’s product line. Computers are definitely not exempt from this, and companies like GIGABYTE are hoping that they can provide high performance motherboards that are also the foundation of a greener personal computer.

Features and Specifications

The GA-EP45-DS5 Energy Saver motherboard represents one of GIGABYTE’s efforts in providing a motherboard that has both guts and an green streak. This latest mobo is fairly well appointed, with the huge selection of ports and connectors you would come to expect from a top end part. It also represents one of the last few boards to use DDR2 memory in the INTEL chipset lineup.

Here’s a quick rundown of some of the highlights found on-board:

• Supports 45nm Intel^® Core 2™ multi-core processors with FSB 1600 MHz
• Dual channel DDR2 1333+ for remarkable system performance
• 2 PCI-E 2.0 x16 graphic interface with CrossFireX support for ultimate graphics performance
• Built-in TPM chip with 2048bits encryption to highest level digital data protection
• Smart Backup provides data backup solution with 4 serial ATA device attachment from 2 hardware RAID chip
• Diagnostic LED and ACPI LEDs on board to display system and power status
• 2 Gigabit Ethernet LAN with Teaming functionality
• Supports Dolby Home Theatre^® audio to create a stunning surround sound listening experience.
• DualBIOS solution gives a multiple security to the system
• Blu-ray playback outputs supported by high quality 106dB SNR ALC889A HD audio

In addition to all those computer-centric features, the GIGABYTE EP45-DS5 has a whole host of additional power management components and features that should allow it to use the electricity provided in the most efficient way.  This includes features like Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced, which implements the VRM in a fashion that reduces power usage at idle. There’s also Green Ethernet, which adjusts power consumption automatically according to your LAN cable lengths and is purported to provide up to 10% power savings.

For a full list of all the features on this motherboard, you can check out the product home page.

When it comes to pricing and availability, things get a little more interesting for the GIGABYTE EP45-DS5 mobo. This motherboard is actually only available in GIGABYTE’s home country of Taiwan. I’m not even sure if there are plans to bring this particular model to North America. Still the power saving features on this board are present on many other boards from GIGABYTE, and they do have some similar configurations.

Basically this is going to be a test of GIGABYTE’s technology, to see if it uses less power then . . . say . . . my normal test rig. We’ll definitely get to that, but let’s see what else the Gigabyte EP45-DS5 mobo has to offer.

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