Gigabyte Intel Core ATX Motherboard GA X58A UD7 buy online
Band : Gigabyte
Model : GA X58A UD7
>> Very Satisfied
Its been a few weeks now and so far its perfect not one complaint i installed 12GB s of RAM and haven t had any problems at all I also installed an SSD as the boot drive and its just blazingly fast its disturbing in a good way I d write a whole bunch of info but thats when i m not satisfied with the product there isn t much to say when you are I would highly recommend it with an SSD it reads at around 250MB/s
>> All bark no bite Allright nibbles maybe
Here is a flagship motherboard from Gigabyte that promises the world and leaves you hanging It all sounds amazingly good on paper but absolutely fails to deliver in practice Anyone who did a quick research about this board can easily spot widespread memory issues This board is very finicky about what memory is used In my case it didn t even like the one I picked from vendor s approved module list Patriot Viper Triple channel 2000mhz 6 gig kit Although explicitly stating it supported DDR3 2100 speeds people including myself had problems getting past the stock 1066Mhz setting Having said that it is a colossal shortcoming for an overclocker s board Turning to Gigabyte tech support for resolving this issue was in no way shape or form helpful Let s just say that Gigabyte Tech Support was a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic Bios flash after bios flash and various settings I came to the sad realization that at least in my case it was a no go for fast settings Overclocking capabilities are good but no cigar yet for this board Good overclocking yields is expected from a board of this price segment Things start to look even worse when compared to EVGA s X58 boards The chipset cooling attachment is big and intimidating and quite pretty to look at At first glance it arouses a certain level of curiosity and excitement Once again in typical fashion of this board the big bad mean NB cooler falls short also In fact under stock settings at full load it is very hot You can crack a few eggs on it
So what is good with this board Let s see The layout is good although if you incorporate the NB cooler it becomes very cramped in that section X58 UD7 incorporates 24 phase power USB 3 0 and Sata 3 as well as added copper which Gigabyte claims will result in a cooler running board less energy waste and a more stable board which yields better overclocking return
I feel that this is a half baked product rushed to the market to claim we did it 1st Obviously they are the 1st manufacturer to roll out a product with USB 3 0 and SATA 3 support However USB 3 0 and SATA 3 are not a part of an official AMD or INTEL controller yet Which means it is a 3rd party controller that is slapped on the PCIe bus Bad news is the more PCIe bus gets populated the less available bandwidth to each device That is true for your killer fast graphics card also There are few articles on hardware enthusiast websites which show that SATA 3 is essentially does not make any difference when compared to sata 2 However with the advent of insanely fast SSDs this is sure to change SSDs with their mind blowing speed will be required to saturate that kind of bandwidth Until then it only seems wise to wait until INTEL and AMD decide to incorporate USB 3 0 and SATA 3 into one of their upcoming chipsets Hopefully by then SSD prices will soften a little more
Coming back to our review at hand here This board is way too expensive to have all these issues and especially for a flagship hardware I cannot help but have a bitter smile on my face Because it is not worthy of that many dollars and that title If you are hellbent on buying this board because it looks good on paper feel free to do so And those who are looking for a great built with rock solid stability need to look elsewhere
Feel free to comment I would like to see what others thought about this review and the board
