Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts
Being the first motherboard that I’ve reviewed in about 2 years I was very impressed.  Gigabyte really has taken a lot of time to design this motherboard.  As I said in the introduction you want your computer products to be reliable and Gigabyte’s Durable 3 line is just that with and added 2 one ounce coppers layers to the PCB and even better Japanese capacitors that are said to last up to an impressive 50,000 hours.

I really do like the design of the board.  I didn’t have any issues installing my CPU cooler or GPUs.  Nothing was blocked or in the way.  The position of all the connectors was great and some of the added things like the power and reset buttons on the board, the CMOS reset button on the I/O, and the LED diagnostic display make troubleshooting and working with the motherboard very easy.

This board has all of the new features you would expect like USB 3.0 and SATA 3, but still has some old or what you would call legacy things like PS/2 conenctions and an IDE port.  This shows that Gigabyte isn’t all about enthusiasts.  The USB 3.0 performance on this board is very impressive and if you have USB 3.0 devices this is the board to use it on.

I found the BIOS very easy to navigate and the MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.) made it really easy to set the right settings for memory and made overclocking quite simple.  I remember when BIOS’s were very complicated and overclocking via the BIOS was such a pain.  It was very simple for me and I’m sure it would be for someone who was very new to overclocking as well.

Right now the X58A-UD5 sells for $289.99 at my favorite online retailer, which does not make it the cheapest or most expensive Intel LGA 1366 offered by Gigabyte.  Overall ThinkComputers gives the Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard a 10 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!

rating10 10 small TC award recommended small

Pros:
– USB 3.0 and SATA 3 (6Gbps) support
– Ultra Durable 3 design
– Easy to navigate BIOS
– Board layout
– Useful features and utilities

Cons:
– None that I found

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