Bjorn3D.com Bjorn3d.com – Satisfying Your Daily Tech Cravings Since 1996
Overview of the Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H
The packaging for the 8 series from gigabyte carries pretty much the same flavor as the 7 series which is not a bad thing as it usually carries a nice angle shot of the VRM/Heatsink.
Overall the front is a bit more cluttered than some we have seen as it has quite a lot of Ultra durable 5 detail right on the cover which may or may not catch the eyes of consumers. We still think the X79 boards were probably some of the best packaging Gigabyte has done to date and possibly even better than most competitors as it was super clean and simple but got attention.
The rear of the box is full of spec and detail info so that before you ever even make a purchase you have a really good idea of what you are getting.
- User Manuals
- Installation Discs
- SATA Cables
- SLI Ribbon
- IO Shield
This bundle is very simple and will easily get you connected although we would like to have seen more SATA cables as having 8 SATA ports but only 4 cables means if you have a decent storage system you could be left searching for more cables.
Here you can see the whole board layout, and straight away you can see that Gigabyte did a good job of ensuring connections are at boards edge allowing optimal cable routing and no cables needing to be run across the boards surface. The overall board is kept very dark even down to the black caps but there is a nice dose of shiny red anodizing to the heatsink which definitely adds to the appeal and is designed to service the growing demand and appeal to the Red/Black scheme we have seen taking large share of designs recently.
Click Image For a Larger One
Click Image For a Larger One
- PS2 combo keyboard/mouse port
- 6x USB 3.0 Ports
- Clear CMOS Button
- Optical SPDIF connectors
- Gigabit LAN port
- Dsub Port
- DVI Port
- HDMI Port
- Displayport Connector
- eSATA ports (x2) from Marvell controller
- Up to 7.1 Channel HD audio via Realtek ALC898
The connectivity is vast and allows for connection of virtually any display without issue along with many SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports to ensure no lack of high speed transfer.
Click Image For a Larger One
The CPU fan connection you will notice has a secondary header which is pretty cool. This OPT header is designed for usage with either dual fan air coolers or even AIO units where the pump uses a fan header so that you can have the port run full power for the pump rather than hoping the onboard modulation doesn’t slow the pump down and harm performance.
The “Overclockers corner” on the top right has onboard buttons to allow easy bench top usage and also dual switches for BIOS control from not just which BIOS chip to use but also enabling a “Single BIOS” Mode so that it will not inadvertently reflash the main BIOS via the dual BIOS function as so many users have seen before when Overclocking and having a couple bad post attempts. Unfortunately that happened to me before and reflashed a firmware that was not compatible with the chip we was using so you could imagine the headache with that, we do also like that the BIOS now requests flash of the second ROM when updating the main one so that if a cross flash ever happens your not flashing to an older image which may not support your hardware.
Review Overview
Performance - 9.5
Value - 9
Quality - 9
Features - 8.5
Innovation - 9
9
Gigabyte found some excellent performance via internal tweaks and it was enough to best the competition while meeting a very competitive price point. For this it receives the Bjorn3D Golden Bear Award.
