Gigabyte EX58-UD3R X58 Motherboard
Packaging & Appearance
Published: 5th May 2009 | Source: Gigabyte | Price: £146.04 |
Packaging & Appearance
Let me begin by apologising for the poor state of the packaging. The box arrived from another review site who saw fit to plaster stickers over the front of the box in a 'Custom' attempt to derail this review as they know we don't just take a couple of shots of the motherboard and expect that to be enough, we go much deeper than that. Also, the clumsy oafs at that magazine also bent three pins on the motherboard. Luckily for us most enthusiasts know what a shower of buffoons they are so I'll leave it there.
The front of the packaging goes along the same lines of previous EX58 motherboards from Gigabyte with white box embossed with the main title across the front along with the obligatory Intel emblems. Being part of the Ultra Durable 3 range, those who have read reviews from the UD range will already know that 2oz of copper is used in the PCB. Couple this with solid capacitors and RDS(on) MOSFETs and you have a long lasting, efficient motherboard. The Ultra Durable feature is explained in much greater depth when we flip the box over to its rear.
The accessory list is sparse with just 4 SATA cables, an IDE and FLOPPY ribbon cable, back plate and 3 motherboard manuals. Note the lack of SLI connectors. Despite this Gigabyte have confirmed that this motherboard will now support SLI as standard with the latest BIOS update. The motherboard back plate is of typical Gigabyte design, clearly labled and colour coded for ease of use.
The main board adopts the theme of the EX58 range being a sky blue/white design with matching blue PCB. This is a much improved design over previous Gigabyte motherboards but there is still a nod to the past with the odd coloured port that stand out like a sneezing man on his way back from Mexico. The rear of the board is nothing different from the rest of the Gigabyte range but it's still nice to see the inclusion of a motherboard back plate for the Northbridge.
The CPU socket area is a little cluttered with plenty of capacitors and chokes to insulate should extreme cooling be your weapon of choice. Air cooling on the other hand should present no issues, even with the use of over sized tower coolers. Perhaps the most striking part of the motherboard are the memory slots. Rather than support twin triple channel memory, Gigabyte have opted to use just four memory slots supporting a maximum of 16GB (when 4GB modules become available). With 6GB being the sweet spot for everyday computing on X58, there is little need for 6 memory slots. While certain applications will certainly take advantage of 12GB+, this board would be better suited to someone who wants to purchase a fast triple channel kit and given that this board officially supports up to 2.4Ghz of bandwidth, it would be rude not to!
The PCI area has two 16x PCIe 2.0 slots capable of Crossfire (and possibly SLI via BIOS flash), 2x PCIe x1 speed, 1xPCIe x4 speed and two standard PCI ports. Below this is a floppy drive connector which is a rarity on motherboards today. To the left of the PCI area we find a COM port, Firewire port and 2 USB ports. At the edge of the motherboard are the colour coded motherboard headers. Sadly no 'quick connectors are included as with other manufacturers which is a shame as this is a simple but useful feature. Those more astute out there will also be wondering where the on board power, reset and CMOS reset switches are. Sadly, this board is also missing this feature.
One area which I was impressed with was the I/O back plate. 8 USB ports, 2 Firewire along with PS/2 ports for both keyboard and mouse are there for your connectivity needs. For audio there are S/PDIF in/out ports along with the usual 7.1 3.5mm audio jacks fed by the ALC888 codec. Another feature which is most unusual for a budget board is the inclusion of 8 SATA ports, six on the ICH10R controller capable of RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 along with a further two on the Gigabyte SATA2 controller capable of 0, 1 and JBOD.
The coolers on the UD3R are all aluminium and the Northbridge (read QPI bus) and left hand MOSFET cooler have covers, the uppermost MOSFET cooler and Southbridge do not. All are coloured in a very fetching gun metal grey with the NB and left MOSFET cooler attached by short a copper heatpipe.
The two heatsinks which are not covered are of a similar design using short thick fins rather than the fragile thin fins we are used to seeing on motherboards. While this is an attractive design I can't help feeling this design is not as effective due to the reduced surface area available to dissipate the heat created by said components. All of the heatsinks apart from the QPI bus are attached to the motherboard via plastic spring loaded pushpins while the QPI bus is held fast via the much better screw method.
Removing the heatsinks was a cinch and while the NB cooler was a firmly attached using a cement like material, it soon wiggled free. I would however, liked to have seen a better, less permanent paste used rather than the very hard material I found. Despite this, the mount was very good and should not need replacing.
The Southbridge is the standard ICH10R chip used in all of the X58 motherboards we have tested thus far at OC3D and as with most other motherboards, the method of heat transfer was via thermal pads for both the SB and MOSFET coolers, all of which appeared to make good contact with the components.
So then, while the EX58-UD3R has some obvious omissions from its stablemates, these omissions might not necessarily be features you need or will miss. It's hard to pass judgement on whether the missing features will be detrimental to the board as the price has inevitably been cut to compensate for this loss.
Hopefully, this will be the last of the features sliced from the EX58 UD3R's armoury but before we take a look at the motherboards performance, let's take a look at the BIOS...
Most Recent Comments
Nice review mate.
If I were to get the inkling to go I7, this board would probably make the shortlist. Performance at a good price is always a winner.
If I were to get the inkling to go I7, this board would probably make the shortlist. Performance at a good price is always a winner.
Teehee £158 for "budget"...
*wanders off muttering to self about what the motherboard market has come to*
*wanders off muttering to self about what the motherboard market has come to*
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Originally Posted by name='prosser13'
Teehee £158 for "budget"...
*wanders off muttering to self about what the motherboard market has come to* |
Quote:
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Originally Posted by name='prosser13'
Teehee £158 for "budget"...
*wanders off muttering to self about what the motherboard market has come to* |
Considering the kind of systems u can still buy with 775 and get an equal terms use out of it. Performance on a par.
Nice mobo, but u can get an EP45-DS5 for around £120 (at least I did), and clock the eff out of whatever proven cpu. And that's a ddr2 option. Heck get urself 8g of nothingness whilst ur at it and u still have cash left, from what u didn't buy the I7 kit with, to buy a GTX260/275/280/285 to build a rig not to be sniffed at.
Prices of motherboards have been rising for a long time now. You are always going to pay top dollar for cutting edge technology. Take SSD's for example: for a 30GB SSD you could have 2TB of standard drives in raid 0!
Aye w3bbo - I'm just reminiscing of the old days, in 939 and the like, where £150 would buy you the best board out there 
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Originally Posted by name='w3bbo'
Prices of motherboards have been rising for a long time now. You are always going to pay top dollar for cutting edge technology. Take SSD's for example: for a 30GB SSD you could have 2TB of standard drives in raid 0!
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You just cant do that with I7 mobos.
EVGA Classified - £380
Gigabyte UD3R - £150
Less than half the price?
Gigabyte UD3R - £150
Less than half the price?
X58 boards are expensive yes, but it's fair to say that there's a reason why. The X58 chipset as such is not exactly basic with the sheer number of PCI-E lanes, triple channel memory controller and as I understand the power regulation on these boards must have to be fairly strong for these 130W TDP CPU's. Combined with the fact that Intel is well aware that there is no true Core i7 competitor that they are free to price their CPU's and Chipsets accordingly. That being said, I don't believe that the overall i7 adoption cost is so bad these days with the price of respectable DDR3 kits taking a nose dive and more "budget" friendly i7 boards like the EX58 UD3R making an appearance.
I see prosser13's argument with regards to AMD boards and I do recall my legendary DFI LanParty UT nF4 series motherboard that at £90 would reach high base HTT's in excess of 300MHz but the AMD nForce boards were historically cheaper than Intel equivalents like for like. I remember the Canterwood 875P boards sitting around the £100 mark but that was ever so long ago and ever since I recall the higher end 925XE, 955X, 975X, X38/48 boards all exceeding £175. The X58 is no exception.
I do however like what this £160 motherboard acheives and think it's a fantastic buy if you believe that you can take advantage of the perks from the Core i7 platform but have a restricted budget. Excellent review W3bbo
I see prosser13's argument with regards to AMD boards and I do recall my legendary DFI LanParty UT nF4 series motherboard that at £90 would reach high base HTT's in excess of 300MHz but the AMD nForce boards were historically cheaper than Intel equivalents like for like. I remember the Canterwood 875P boards sitting around the £100 mark but that was ever so long ago and ever since I recall the higher end 925XE, 955X, 975X, X38/48 boards all exceeding £175. The X58 is no exception.
I do however like what this £160 motherboard acheives and think it's a fantastic buy if you believe that you can take advantage of the perks from the Core i7 platform but have a restricted budget. Excellent review W3bbo
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Originally Posted by name='Mul.'
X58 boards are expensive yes, but it's fair to say that there's a reason why. The X58 chipset as such is not exactly basic with the sheer number of PCI-E lanes, triple channel memory controller and as I understand the power regulation on these boards must have to be fairly strong for these 130W TDP CPU's. Combined with the fact that Intel is well aware that there is no true Core i7 competitor that they are free to price their CPU's and Chipsets accordingly. That being said, I don't believe that the overall i7 adoption cost is so bad these days with the price of respectable DDR3 kits taking a nose dive and more "budget" friendly i7 boards like the EX58 UD3R making an appearance.
I see prosser13's argument with regards to AMD boards and I do recall my legendary DFI LanParty UT nF4 series motherboard that at £90 would reach high base HTT's in excess of 300MHz but the AMD nForce boards were historically cheaper than Intel equivalents like for like. I remember the Canterwood 875P boards sitting around the £100 mark but that was ever so long ago and ever since I recall the higher end 925XE, 955X, 975X, X38/48 boards all exceeding £175. The X58 is no exception. I do however like what this £160 motherboard acheives and think it's a fantastic buy if you believe that you can take advantage of the perks from the Core i7 platform but have a restricted budget. Excellent review W3bbo |
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Originally Posted by name='w3bbo'
Prices of motherboards have been rising for a long time now. You are always going to pay top dollar for cutting edge technology. Take SSD's for example: for a 30GB SSD you could have 2TB of standard drives in raid 0!
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As for SSD, I can't see me ever buying a current day SSD. I'm confident enough to allow quote-age on that.
BTW, this board DOES support SLI and the warranty will NOT be affected.
It's just a BIOS (F5) update - that is it!
Maybe other brands will void the warranty, but not Gigabyte.
And well done for picking up our new EZ-Share technology
Allowing you to share and safe profiles.
You should receive a prize for that
It's just a BIOS (F5) update - that is it!
Maybe other brands will void the warranty, but not Gigabyte.
And well done for picking up our new EZ-Share technology
Allowing you to share and safe profiles.
You should receive a prize for that
Ah cool.
So will Gigabyte be stopping production of the UD3R - SLI then?
So will Gigabyte be stopping production of the UD3R - SLI then?
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Originally Posted by name='w3bbo'
Ah cool.
So will Gigabyte be stopping production of the UD3R - SLI then? |
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Originally Posted by name='w3bbo'
EVGA Classified - £380
Gigabyte UD3R - £150 Less than half the price? |
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Originally Posted by name='GigaMan'
No, the UD3R - SLI will go ahead, we think that it will just make sense and will create less confusion in the market.
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BTW, welcome to the forums GigaMan. It's always nice to have company reps give feedback and add info as appropriate
.Review updated and score ammended to reflect the fact that this motherboard now supports SLI with the latest BIOS update. Well done Gigabyte!
Its a good thing all these companies make so many different models of boards, chips, graphics, chips,, etc... as it means we can still get our hands on a wide variety of performance parts
I mean otherwise the only places that would be seeing these i7 and quad cores would be corporate and buisness sectors!!
i do think they should get some sort of regulations about newer products should always be significantly more powerful than older model's and the improvement % should be equivalently higher!!
as every1 knows : you do get headaches upgrading all the time!!
I mean otherwise the only places that would be seeing these i7 and quad cores would be corporate and buisness sectors!!
i do think they should get some sort of regulations about newer products should always be significantly more powerful than older model's and the improvement % should be equivalently higher!!
as every1 knows : you do get headaches upgrading all the time!!
Just to put that side of ur mind at rest, I work at one of the biggest corporations in the country and nation-wide they use 10s of 1000s of pcs, mostly p4 with a large sprinkling of c2d. Very small % of 45nm.
... and tbf they do their job.
... and tbf they do their job.
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