When you search for optimal overclocking parameters, you can often make a mistake and select the settings that turn out too high for the CPU, memory or mainboard. This is when the so-called “Watchdog Timer” comes to your rescue. This system may have different names by different makers, but the idea behind it remains the same. After a failed attempt (or multiple attempts) to change the faulty settings, the mainboard reboot automatically in safe mod and stop displaying a warning message. Usually they offer the user to continue booting with default settings or access the BIOS to correct the settings. All mainboards except Gigabyte ones acted exactly like that. They have long learned to reboot correctly without dropping all BIOS settings down to their nominal values, but they didn’t stop after rebooting and proceeded quietly with the OS loading.

I noticed countless times that overclocking settings have been cleared after Windows had already loaded. I wrote about this issue countless times in my reviews of Gigabyte mainboards. Finally, thanks to notorious “double reboots” I learned to hear if the selected settings were applied successfully or reset back to defaults. I already put up with the fact that Gigabyte engineers didn’t want or couldn’t fix that issue. It is just recently that I found out that the problem has been successfully eliminated. I only wished that I had learned about it under better circumstances.

I wrote in one of our previous reviews that one day our Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme mainboard refused to overclock CPUs and memory for some reason. The weird thing about it was the fact that the board was still running impeccably in nominal mode, but wouldn’t boot even after the slightest overclocking, such as even 1MHz increase in the base frequency. However, it would reboot after a few failed attempts and get back to the nominal mode, though it didn’t continue booting but stopped and displayed the following:

I would have been very happy that after so many years Gigabyte mainboards had finally learned to respond properly to over-overclocking, if I hadn’t lost one of the best mainboards for Intel Core i7 overclocking. However, it turned out that Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme mainboard was working perfectly fine on a different testbed in the nominal mode as well as during CPU and memory overclocking. Therefore, I was especially curious to test the new Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard: would it be able to overclock?

It did, but with a lot of effort. Time after time when a couple of boot attempts failed the mainboard kept producing the same message about boot failure and resetting the parameters. Although I used to look forward to seeing this message before, now I almost hated it. And then, on the third, fifth or eighth attempt to boot with the same parameter settings it would suddenly start working just fine. It passed all tests, rebooted and did absolutely find until system shut down. After that all problems came right back up. I assume that Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme could also start eventually with the selected overclocking settings, if I had been a little more persistent. But I had never had problems like that before; I didn’t see this warning message even once. So, what changed? I got a new power supply unit. I recently started using Enermax Infiniti EIN720AWT PSU in my testbed. As soon as I replaced it with a different model, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P was cured from all the booting issues during processor overclocking and began booting successfully on first attempt, just the way it should. I hope Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme will also work fine when it returns to me.

I can’t find a reasonable explanation to what happened here. I could get it if Gigabyte mainboards didn’t work with Enermax Infiniti EIN720AWT power supply at all, because I had experienced things like that with several mainboards and PSUs before. But when the board works perfectly fine in the nominal mode and refuses to boot during overclocking – this is something I can’t perceive. Moreover, if this only had been the case during some serious overclocking, but 1MHz base frequency increase is not even overclocking. I don’t know who is more responsible for this issue: Gigabyte or Enermax. We have been working with Gigabyte mainboards and performed some overclocking experiments on them with the following power supply units: Antec NeoPower Neo HE 550 rev. A4, Sunbeamtech NUUO Series SUNNU550-EUAP, OCZ GameXStream OCZGXS700, Seasonic M12D SS-850EM, SilverStone SST-ST85ZF and Enermax Liberty ELT620AWT. I am sure that this list is way bigger, I just didn’t have a chance to check out all PSUs available. But what is so special about Enermax Infiniti EIN720AWT? What is different between Gigabyte and all other boards that work just fine with this PSU?

Well, all’s well that ends well. As a result, we have once again replaced the power supply unit in our testbed, but it is a minor change. Most importantly, Gigabyte mainboards have finally learned to react adequately to over-overclocking. This is a significant thing, in my opinion. They have finally got rid of the last serious issue on Gigabyte mainboards that has been a pain to overclocking fans for many years. The company was persistently working on eliminating the problems with their products one by one. We have long known that Gigabyte mainboards works perfectly and overclock processors very well. Now it has become even easier. At this point I can’t name any serious issue with Gigabyte mainboards. The company offers dozens of very different models, so some may have certain drawbacks of their own. However, there are no global issues with Gigabyte mainboards anymore. There is no such thing as an ideal mainboard. And Gigabyte mainboards for Intel processors are not ideal either. However, they have now gotten closer than anyone else to my hypothetical idea of a perfect mainboard.