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Gigabyte X58A-UD3R Ultra Durable Motherboard Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Board Layout and Features
As the name suggests the GA-X58A-UD3R features the Intel X58 chipset and is designed for the 1366 Core i7 processor. The UD3R is one of the lower end X58 motherboards from Gigabyte with a comparable feature set. The onboard PMW is an 8 phase analog design featuring Ferrite Core chokes and Japanese solid state capacitors.
One thing you will notice about the CPU socket is the black metal finish on both the socket base and cover. These are typical of a Lotes socket design, however the actual socket is a hybrid featuring Lotes retention clips and a Foxconn socket base. It seems the designers at Gigabyte wanted to remove any silver components from the design and yet preferred to use a Foxconn socket.
One thing you will notice about the CPU socket is the black metal finish on both the socket base and cover. These are typical of a Lotes socket design, however the actual socket is a hybrid featuring Lotes retention clips and a Foxconn socket base. It seems the designers at Gigabyte wanted to remove any silver components from the design and yet preferred to use a Foxconn socket.
A primary feature of the Core i7 is a high bandwidth triple channel memory controller. This motherboard will support up to 24GB of DDR3 memory at speeds up to 2200Mhz.
There are a total of 7 expansion slots with the layout designed to accept triple Crossfire or SLI card configurations. 2 of the 16x PCIe expansion slots feature full 16x bandwidth while the remaining 2 have a total of 8x lanes each. There are 2 1x PCIe slots located at the top with a single PCI slot located towards the bottom.
There are a total of 7 expansion slots with the layout designed to accept triple Crossfire or SLI card configurations. 2 of the 16x PCIe expansion slots feature full 16x bandwidth while the remaining 2 have a total of 8x lanes each. There are 2 1x PCIe slots located at the top with a single PCI slot located towards the bottom.
There is no lack of SATA connections on this motherboard, in fact there are 10 internal SATA ports to choose from. The 6 blue ports all support RAID configurations in levels 0,1,5, and 10. 2 of the white SATA ports nearest to the blue ports support the new SATA3 protocol at speeds up to 6GB. The remaining 2 ports come as part of the Floppy and IDE connection and support speeds in the SATA2 range.
The floppy port is located under the last PCI Express slot and shares space with the 2 internal iEEE 1394 (firewire) ports and the DualBIOS chips. Gigabyte was one of the first companies to use a Dual BIOS system which has since become a standard on most enthusiast motherboards.
The floppy port is located under the last PCI Express slot and shares space with the 2 internal iEEE 1394 (firewire) ports and the DualBIOS chips. Gigabyte was one of the first companies to use a Dual BIOS system which has since become a standard on most enthusiast motherboards.
USB, Front panel, and IDE connections are located in the bottom right of the motherboard near the SATA ports. Unlike some of the other motherboards we have used, the UD3R does not come with onboard power and reset switches or Debug LED.
