The most innovative feature of the Intel Z97 chipset is the support for M.2 drives or SATA-Express ones. Gigabyte opted to only include the SATA Express version, allowing speeds up to 10GB/s instead of the 6GB/s we have seen on previous generation boards. Storage speed is still the Achilles heel on many platforms and with the SATA Express solution onboard the bottleneck of fast NAND flash technology is lifted. Now it all depends on the availability of these new SATA Express drives.

Gigabyte continues to innovate and opted this time, on the left picture one can spot the SMT DIMM technology instead of the regular pin through hole versions on the previous Z87X-OC board( left board). The addition to disable the DIMM channels is a big plus for rapid debugging of faulty RAMs and or counteracting condensation on the DIMM slots. On the right the dip switches to enable/disable the different PCIe slots of the GPUs.

All high end boards must have a Dual BIOS onboard, especially those targeted at the enthusiast OCing crowd. No longer should a corrupted bios be the reason to halt your extreme overclocking sessions. The Killer Network E2201 IC is the only weird component choice we could discover on this Z97X-SOC FORCE board. Why Gigabyte opted to integrate this more expensive network solution on their flagship OCing motherboard can probably only be explained by the marketing people. A cheaper solution could have pushed the price down a little more, however one must admit that the retail price for the given components is one of strong selling points of this Z97X-SOC FORCE board.

The OC Touch zone on the PCB provides overclockers the freedom to quickly change a multitude of options on the fly. The DTB button (DirectToBios) allows one to enter direct to the BIOS, this without having to hammer the DEL button on your keyboard.  The OC Ignition button is especially handy for the extreme guys when cooling down the setup or for when filling the water loop. This button doesn't power up the entire setup, it just provides power to the 8 fan headers. The Memory Safe button can be compared to the function ASUS has implemented a long time ago on their ROG series, allowing the setup to boot with working memory clocks. Not ideal clocks, but at least the user can enter the bios and adjust accordingly. A galore of volt measuring points are provided for those that want to verify the board's behavior under any circumstance without having to rely on software..

Again the provision of two USB headers allows benchers to insert an USB dongle without having to reach to the back I/O panel. The CBAT switch drains the board from current and can be considered as a total BIOS sweep button. Sadly after using this function one is required to either unplug the power cord for a dozen of seconds or to unplug the 24Pin power connector before one is able to power on again.

Even though the Z97X-SOC series are designed with overclockers in mind, Gigabyte didn't minimize on the audio features; by utilizing separate PCB layers for the left and right audio channel eliminates channel crosstalk. The sound chip is based on a Realtek ALC 1150 115dB SNR HD Audio chip, providing the end-user with 10 DAC channels for 7.1-channel sound playback. The build in high capacity gaming headphone amplifier is able to drive 600Ω loads, providing a fuller range of dynamic sound with less distortion.

The back I/O panel has got 4 USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ones. A D-SUB, DVD-D and display port connector for VGA output. Overclockers prefer to have a PS/2 port, especially for them tedious Windows XP installs. Audio wise the required connectors, as an optical Digital audio output. Last but not least the RJ45 connector port for the Killer GbE LAN.