Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P Review
Up Close cont
Published: 22nd July 2011 | Source: Gigabyte | Price: £131.99 @ Aria |
Up Close cont
Despite its full ATX size the UD3 doesn't want for connectivity options. The Gigabyte front-panel connector is one of my favourites, being both colour-coded and having the connections marked on the circuit board. Anyone who's spent ages flipping through a manual trying to work out what goes where will appreciate the simplicity of the Gigabyte solution. We've also got a USB 3.0 connector should the two hard-wired ones prove too few for your high-speed needs.
All your PCI needs are covered. We've got two legacy PCI slots for those ancient old bits of hardware you should have long thrown out, three PCIe x1 ports for those extra USB ports or soundcards and the like, as well as the two big ones for GPUs. One x16 and one x8. It's a little disappointing to see the second port is only x8 and restricts the main PCIe to x8 if both are populated, but there is a reason this is the UD3P and not the UD5 or better.
Speaking of USB3.0 ports the ones on the UD3P are provided by an EtronTech EJ168A which is a new one on us and we can't think of another motherboard we've seen that used this particular solution.
Up next to the DIMM slots is a row of LED indicators for those times your overclocking exploits or hardware installation isn't quite up to snuff. The memory sockets do seem particularly close to the CPU socket, so if you plan on some monster cooler it's worth making sure you've got low profile DIMMs.
The Z68XP-UD3P has 8 SATA ports, with half of them being the 6Gbp/s variety. This is good to see as the backwards compatibility of the SATA III means there is no reason other than cost to not use as many as possible, especially as the speed benefits are so enormous compared to SATA II.
Finally round the back we have a plethora of USB2.0 ports along with the standard LAN and audio connectors and a couple of USB3.0 ports. Video output is limited to a HDMI but that's plenty for most modern displays.
Most Recent Comments
great read that bry :thumb:
my question is mate, if it was your hard earned cash you was handing over would you be getting this or the tz68?
) so still looking at boards|
Originally Posted by VonBlade
If it was my hard-earned I'd get this over the Biostar. No matter how much of a bargain the Biostar is it's just so fugly. |
As for the UD4, we've reviewed the D2H, the UD3P and the UD5. So it's probably wise to read this review and our UD5 one and decide if you could manage with slightly less than the UD5, or need slightly more than the UD3. There is very little between them.
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Originally Posted by VonBlade
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As for the UD4, we've reviewed the D2H, the UD3P and the UD5. So it's probably wise to read this review and our UD5 one and decide if you could manage with slightly less than the UD5, or need slightly more than the UD3. There is very little between them. |
the UD5 has 2 esata/usb combo ports to the UD4's 1 but the UD4 has a sata6 esata port lol if you ask me the UD4 has more to give for less money But the UD5 does have one more pci-e slot but only at 4x so nothing really there for me plus it shares bandwidth with the pci-e x1 (which there is 2) slots so if anything is in them then its only 1x lmao why bother hahahahI have Corsair H100 on it, running super cool, @ stock 30c idle, 38c load. So temps are not a problem. It's at auto CPU voltage and @ stock speed now, running decently stable. I have a Corsair HX850 watt PSU running the system. I have the Gskill 17000 ram running at stock speeds 11-11-11-30 @ 2133mhz, so I'm trying to figure out what my O/C issue is.
At stock speeds the system is great, but any type of overclock warrants issues in windows 7.
I'm running a EVGA 580gtx as the Gpu as well...
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Originally Posted by v3rninater
Hey guys, saw the review on this board, I have it in my new system along with a 2600k Intel Proc. Was wondering what the bios settings are for the O/C, because anytime I try to overclock even to 3.5ghz, software doesn't run well at all in windows. It's like it's unstable, even if I go up to 1.39v to the CPU. I have Corsair H100 on it, running super cool, @ stock 30c idle, 38c load. So temps are not a problem. It's at auto CPU voltage and @ stock speed now, running decently stable. I have a Corsair HX850 watt PSU running the system. I have the Gskill 17000 ram running at stock speeds 11-11-11-30 @ 2133mhz, so I'm trying to figure out what my O/C issue is. At stock speeds the system is great, but any type of overclock warrants issues in windows 7. I'm running a EVGA 580gtx as the Gpu as well... |
Try manually pumping the voltages up to 1.35v and then just increase the CPU multiplier to 4.2 or something. Don't bother tinkering with the Bus Speed for Sandy Bridge, you'll be lucky to get a 10MHz increase in that.
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