Having Trouble Installing Windows 7 By USB With Your GIGABYTE 100 Series Motherboard?

We understand that some users are having trouble installing Windows 7 by USB drive on their systems that have a  GIGABYTE 100 series motherboard inside.

The problem lies in the fact that Windows 7's installer is only compatible with an older type of USB driver. The GIGABYTE 100 series motherboard uses a newer kind of USB driver, meaning you will get an error when trying to install Windows 7.

Thankfully there is a fix for this which allows you to package the updated driver on to your USB driver.

In order to build the patched version of Windows 7, you'll need a few things:

1) A genuine copy of Windows 7 or iso file
2) A USB drive with over 4GB of storage
3) A separate computer
4) The Windows Image Tool available for free from GIGABYTE 

Once you download the Windows Image Tool from GIGABYTE the process is fairly easy. Here's the process you need to follow step-by-step:

1) Open the tool from GIGABYTE. There's no need to install it.
2) In the source option select your disc drive
3) In the destination path pick your USB drive.
4) Make sure the 'add USB drivers' option is selected
5) Click start and wait for the process to finish.


Note: if you just need to add the USB drivers to an existing ISO you can do that from the source option.

Check out this video from our YouTube channel to learn more:

Here Are Your Winners of the GIGABYTE Z97 Last Hurrah Contest!

The GIGABYTE Z97 Last Hurrah wrapped up last week and now the results are official.

We would like to congratulate Xtreme Addict and Arhaam for winning the contest. Xtreme Addict took first place in the Extreme Cooling category with 79 points and won a GIGABYTE Z170X-SOC Force motherboard. Arhaam won the ambient cooling category with 73 points and is also taking home a GIGABYTE Z170X-SOC Force board.

For more information on the contest and the official results, head on over to HWBOT's OC E-Sports portal.

Win a Trip to BlizzCon From GIGABYTE and Blizzard

Heroes of the Storm™ is one of the hottest games to come out of Blizzard® in a long time. Using familiar gameplay mechanics found in games such as DOTA, Heroes of the Storm allows players to battle it out with their favorite characters from the Blizzard universe. The game is free-to-play and supported by micro-transactions for in-game character upgrades.

Heroes of the Storm will be one of the highlights of Blizzard's BlizzCon expo which kicks off in November in Anaheim, California. GIGABYTE is the official motherboard partner of BlizzCon and we want to send you to the show!

While supplies last, when you purchase select GIGABYTE motherboards you are eligible for participation in the sweepstakes where you could instantly win a variety of prizes including a Kerrigan hero, a Succubus skin and a GRAND PRIZE Trip to Anaheim, CA to attend BlizzCon® 2015.

Find out more at: http://event.gigabyte.com/heroes/.

Want to Learn More About the Killer Wireless AC-1535?

The GIGABYTE Z170X-Gaming G1 motherboard certainly is an exciting product, and one of the most interesting parts on the board is the Killer Wireless AC-1535 controller from Rivet Networks.

Wireless network controllers are a part that's often forgotten about on the motherboard. For the most part they work, and work well, so that's good enough for most users. However, the Killer Wireless AC-1535 brings a load of new features that goes above and beyond what a standard built-in adapter can offer.

Recently Forbes' contributor Marco Chiappetta had a chance to review a  Killer Wireless AC-1535 and he had this to say about it:

Virtually across the board, the Killer Wireless-AC 1535 outpaced the Intel solution. To give some examples, when using the Nighthawk X6 router in the real-world environment, and connected at a range of 5M, the Killer NIC offered up 676.28Mbs to Intel’s 666.9Mb/s. At 15 meters the Killer NIC offered 607.6Mb/s to the Intel controller’s 508.2Mb/s. And at 25M, the delta remained significant—399.1MB/s to 338.8MBs. When connected to a Linksys E8500 in a real-world environment, the numbers are similar. The Killer Wireless-AC 1535 offered up 622.9, 635.6, and 499.5MB/s, at 5M, 15M, and 25M, respectively, to the Intel 7265’s 621.8, 608.7, and 454MB/s. Performance in the clean environment showed similar, and sometimes larger, deltas in the Killer’s favor, though the real-world numbers are far more likely to mirror what an end-user is going to see (and be able to reproduce) on their own network.

As you can see, the  Killer Wireless AC-1535 stands out from the competition and is a must for any enthusiast system. The Killer Wireless AC-1535 is available now on the GIGABYTE Z170X-Gaming G1 motherboard.

GIGABYTE OC Guru Dinos22 is Livestreaming Now!

For the next few hours Dinos22 will be livestreaming an OC tutorial and answering your questions. Check it out on YouTube Gaming! If you like what you see let us know and we'll be sure to do more livestreams in the future.

Congrats to all the Winners of the GIGABYTE Z97 Last Hurrah Challenge!

The GIGABYTE Z97 Last Hurrah Challenge wrapped up over the weekend, and you can view the leaderboard over on HWBOT. As with any GIGABYTE overclocking challenge, the results were more than impressive and we wish to congratulate both the winners and everyone who entered.

The official results are still being tabulated, and HWBOT will release the official results and overall winners soon. But for now we can share who got first place in the Extreme Challenge and Ambient Challenge.

For the Extreme Challenge, team PURE's Xtreme Addict took first place with 79 points. He was followed closely by Jagat Review's Lucky_noob who scored 63 points.

Over at the Ambient Challenge, arhaam from Indonesia's team OC-44 took first place with 73 points while Coldest from Jagat Review's team took second place with 63 points.

Congrats again to all the winners, and for more information on the contest head on over to HWBOT.

GIGABYTE OC guru from Australia does a 1v1 interview with OCTV, an interesting watch!

Overclocking TV (OCTV) conducted a series of one-on-one interviews with some of the world’s best known overclockers during the recent Computex 2015 overclocker gathering. This week they’re focusing on dinos22 who is one of GIGABYTE’s OC gurus. Check it out!

The Awards Keep Coming in For GIGABYTE

GIGABYTE is pleased to receive two more awards for its 100-series motherboards.

First up, our friends at HiTech Legion recently gave the GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 a GOLD award.

They give the motherboard the highest of praises:

Gigabyte designed the Z170X Gaming 7 motherboard well it is stable, it performs as expected for a high end gaming board it doesn’t skimp on connectivity and is remarkably one of the sexiest motherboards they have ever produced.

Now over at ThinkComputers our Z170X Gaming G1 motherboard was bestowed with a very high score.

During the review the author pointed out some of the industry leading features that allows GIGABYTE motherboards to stand apart from the competition:

As I said in the introduction of this review the Z170X-Gaming G1 has been on my radar since it was revealed at Computex. Now that I’ve got my hands on it and have been able to test it am I still excited about it? You bet I am! Gigabyte has really put together an amazing flagship board for their Z170 series, name a feature and this board has it! 

 As I mentioned in my other Z170 motherboard reviews with Z170 we are going to see a lot more I/O connections and Gigabyte also has great implementation of this. Gigabyte makes use of Intel’s dual Thunderbolt and USB 3.1 controller. This means you have four PCI-Express 3.0 lanes routed to the Intel controller so you can use 40 Gb/s Thunderbolt 3.0 from the rear USB 3.1 port. Gigabyte also includes the USB 3.1 bay so you can use USB 3.1 devices on the front of your tower. When it comes to M.2 slots you have dual 32 Gb/s M.2 slots which means you can run two M.2 solid state drives in a RAID setup. Gigabyte includes a M.2 to U.2 adapter for NVMe solid state drives too!

Check back soon as we post more reviews. GIGABYTE 100 series motherboards are available now from retailers and etailers around the world. 

Turn Your GIGABYTE BRIX-s Into a CustoMac!

Ever since Apple announced it was joining the world of x86, people have been building 'Hackintosh' computers. For those that don't know, a Hackintosh is a regular PC that's running Mac OS X.

Of course Apple doesn't officially support such efforts which is why communities have sprung up to help fill this gap. After all, without Apple's official support the process isn't quite a walk in the walk in the park that you'd expect.

Our favorite community to support such efforts in making what they call "CustoMacs" is TonyMacx86. Recently they published a guide on how to run MacOSX Yosemite on a GIGABYTE BRIX-s. You can check the guide out there but be warned: it's not exactly for beginners but anyone that's comfortable tweaking some settings in their BIOS should be able to pull it off.

So, are you reading to build a BRIXintosh?

TweakTown Gives The Z170X-Gaming G1 Top Marks!

It always feels good to be recognized for good work.

As you know, we recently released our 100-series motherboards based on the Intel® 6^th generation CPU and the Z170 chipset.

Our board for gamers that demand the best, the Gaming G1, was recently reviewed by TweakTown where it received an Editor's Choice award and a score of 95%.

Here's what Steven Bassiri from TweakTown said about the board:

 

Apart from having one of the highest capacity VRMs for the Intel Z170 chipset, the Z170X-Gaming G1 has to be one of the most feature packed motherboards. While this is kind of expected since the Z170 chipset is the most feature packed, GIGABYTE went above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to adding features. They not only added 4-way SLI/CrossFireX support, but also the latest Intel USB 3.1/Thunderbolt 3.0 controller and two extra SATA controllers. The board also comes with 13 possible USB 3.0 ports and two 32Gb/s M.2 slots. GIGABYTE even paid attention to the Wi-Fi/BT antennas providing a retention bracket for the MMCX connections which do not use the screw-in method. If all that wasn't enough, GIGABYTE also provides a USB 3.1 front panel bay so that you can use USB 3.1 devices through the front of your case.

This is one crazy packed motherboard. It has all the latest technologies from Intel, Killer, and Creative and they are all implemented well. The Intel USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3.0 controller is implemented with the proper hardware for the USB Power Delivery specification and integrated graphics switching, Killer's latest NICs are implemented so they can work together, and Creative's hardware is implemented like it is on a sound card with the addition of replaceable amplifiers and dedicated DAC.