Gigabyte has finally revealed the X399 Designare EX motherboard, which is the first motherboard that comes with a Thunderbolt port. On top of that there is a whole bunch of other features as well as an exceptionally good looking color scheme. The Designare EX series currently represents Gigabyte’s flagship motherboards.


The X399 Designare EX is based on an ATX form factor featuring RGB backlighting underneath each heat sink and there are steel reinforcements on the PCIe slots. Storage wise we find eight angled SATA ports. Apart from that you get three M.2 slots allowing the installation of differently sized SSDs. The first M.2 slot is placed in the middle of the motherboard and it's compatible with 22110 units (110mm), the second one is in the bottom area and it supports 22110 (110mm) SSDs, while the third is placed in the bottom right corner of the motherboard and is compatible with 2280 units (80mm) again. Furthermore each slot come with a M.2 heat sink which should help preventing your SSD from thermal throttling.

In addition, the X399 Designare-EX supports Thunderbolt add-in cards. While the on-board Type-C port is just a regular USB 3.1 connector, there's a 5-pin header near the SATA ports which is compatible with Thunderbolt.

Gigabyte equipped the X399 Designare EX motherboard with one PS/2 port, eight USB 3.0 ports and two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports. Furthermore there are two Gigabit Ethernet ports and the analogue audio panel with optical out as well as a WiFi module with two connectors for antennas.

At a first glance this is certainly a good looking motherboard. Since the X399 Aorus Gaming 7 is listed on Newegg for $390 US, we expect a similar price for this motherboard as well.



Source: Techreport