Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Motherboard Review

Contents

• Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Motherboard
• Gigabyte Motherboard Driver Disk
• User’s Manual
• Quick Installation Guide
• Four SATA cables
• I/O Shield (Color Coded)
• 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s Cables
• 1 x 2-Way SLI Bridge Connector
• 1 x 3-Way SLI Bridge Connector
• 1 x 4-Way SLI Bridge Connector
• 1 x 2-Way CrossFireX Bridge Connector

Mainboard Features

Even though this is Gigabyte’s lower end motherboard for the X79 chipset, they still have included many great features on this board. It has a black a grey color scheme that I really dig and will go with most cases. There are 4 DDR3 Quad Channel Memory, 2 on each side of the processor. As you can see the plate for the processor is certainly huge and there is a lot of room given as well for after-market coolers. The DDR3 Quad Channel memory as I have mentioned before is just a marketing term which really means 4 Dual Channel memory sticks.  And again we can see with this board, the memory slot is disturbingly close to the first PCI-E 3.0 slot. I know the spacing will not be good especially when you are trying to remove your memory and have to push the pins outward.

As you can see on the motherboard, they feature 8 SATA ports which vary with different speeds and uses. Of the 8 SATA connectors: 4 black ports are the SATA 3Gb/s ports, 2 grey ports are the Marvell SATA 6Gb/s ports, and 2 white ports are true SATA 6Gb/s ports. And we all know the Marvell SATA ports aren’t really true 6Gb/s ports so if you are going to use an SSD drive, make sure to use the 2 white SATA ports for this motherboard.

There are 4 PCI-E 3.0 slots, 2 PCI-E 1x slots and a PCI 8x slot. They have also adding multiple options for SLI with 2-Way, 3-Way, and 4-Way capabilities. You can also have 2-Way CrossFireX as well. This is a really great option since most enthusiasts and even computer hobbyists use SLI or CrossFire in their PC builds nowadays. And there are also nice big heatsinks for the northbridge and southbridge of the motherboard.

And lastly the rear I/O which comes fully loaded with many ports that any computer geek would appreciate. You have 8 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 2 power E-SATA powers, Audio Ports, and SPDIF port.