GIGABYTE X58A-UD7 is it worth buying?

[dr emulator (madmax)]

well as the title says, is it worth it?

after reading this review by windwithme i'm seriously considering buying one ,
now at first i was thinking of getting a evga motherboard or an asus p6t ,
but this motherboard seems to tick all the boxes of what i need,
i'e, sata 3 usb3, Parallel ata and even a floppy disc connector
plus i'm not interested in having five graphics cards
(i only need one x16 pciexpress)


so what is this thread about ?

well i want my fellow tpu'rs opinions on whether you all think it's worth a look,
anyone who has this motherboard who isn't a member here can join in by signing up "here"
(it's free and will only take a minute to do so) and tell me how good or bad it is,
what problems you've encountered and what workarounds you had to implement to sort things out

i eagerly await your views

and don't forget to visit techpowerup's homepage for the latest technological news reviews articles downloads and much more
(hint click on the highlighted and underlined dark blue letters )

 

[Solaris17]

im wating to ship out my current EVGA board. ill be getting back my third one.


imo the whole GIGA UD series has rocked

 

[SystemViper]

I have had great luck with GIG boards, the UD3P in 775 and several i7 socket 1366 boards too, They make a solid board and it's fun to overclock them, I will be testing a P55 UD4P with some i5 chips and i am excited to be using the GIG board since i am very familier with the bios and EZtune..

There are so many good boards out there, it's alll about getting what suits your needs and what you like, but you can't go wrong with the GIG boards.

 

[CDdude55]

im wating to ship out my current EVGA board. ill be getting back my third one.


imo the whole GIGA UD series has rocked

Just got an EVGA X58 board recently (need to wait like a month and a half for the CPU and RAM), i hope i don't have to do an RMA on mines, don't want to delay this build any further.:shadedshu

 

[Solaris17]

Just got an EVGA X58 board recently (need to wait like a month and a half for the CPU and RAM), i hope i don't have to do an RMA on mines, don't want to delay this build any further.:shadedshu

mine is the vanilla x3 SLI. if thats the one your getting. the board can do amazing things. but if you have a C0 proc or basically anything that doesnt want to OC dont push it. dont force it to be were you want. like my C0 only wanted 4.2 i couldnt go any more. i tried to see if i could get 4.5 for a bit. but my board wanted nothing to do with it. keep that in mind. it ot to 4 easy enough and 4.2 with a little effort. but when it doesnt want to go anymore. it doesnt want to.

 

[Pickles24]

I have had this board for a few months now, and I have yet to find a flaw in it. If you plan on cooling the board with liquid the barbs are welded on to the block and they are 10mm.(3/8"). EK is making a block for the nb/sb and mosfits, should be out any day now. I have heard the silent fan is a little over kill, I have it attached, and it runs real cool.. Compared to the Asus Rampage II Gene I was running the NB and SB are 20c lower. Some are having difficulty with memory, I have not had a single issue with my OCZ platinum. Over clocked my 920 to 4.2 first try and only had to tweak some minor voltage settings over the last month. I believe it's well worth every penny I paid for it.. I hope this helps.

 

[PaulieG]

I've owned the Gigabyte UD3R and UD5. Gigabyte simply dominates x58 as far as their across the board x58 and p55 offerings. The UD5 was simply the best of the 7 different x58 boards that I owned. This is a small update/upgrade above that board, so I imagine it is flat out awesome.

 

[Pickles24]

No noises here.. what could possibly make noise on the board? The only things I really could find people would complain about, were maybe only having 2 gsata 6gbs onboard, and the Hybrid Silent Pipe covering the PCI 1X slots. I doubt there is a major change in temp with the NB silent pipe on or off, so it would free the PCI. It can also be configured to run raid with (6) sata 3gbs controlled by ICH10r, (2) gsata 3gbs, controlled Gigabyte sata2 controller, and (2) gsata 6gbs controlled my Marvell 9128.
I ran the Gigabyte sata2 controller with the XHD(extreme hard drive), I thought the ability to add more hdd's to an array at anytime was dope. The speed seems to be the same as the intel controller I had my older Raid0 array on.

 

[PaulieG]

One suggestion I have is to find a UD5. Basically a very similar board at a significantly cheaper price. I still miss mine. Quite possibly the best of all boards I've ever owned.

 

[dr emulator (madmax)]

thanks Paulieg i'll have a look
apparently i'm going to struggle to get one of these ud7 boards at the mo
(lucky i started this thread as it gives me more time to research it)as they are out of stock, and the shop i was going to get my parts from wanted £31 or about 50.74 US$ more than it is at an online retailer :shadedshu so that shop might not be getting my money

 

[Pickles24]

After running my LC loop and putting my board back into the case, I didn't have the pump attached to the cpu fan. When I turned it on, I finally heard the death screech. I about crapped myself. The board does make the sound, and all the rows of leds were lit up.. Annoying to say the least, you have to unplug to reboot. All fixed now, I guess it does make the noise if it thinks the board could be damaged.

I am so getting this block in the next week.

 

[Jaffakeik]

I've owned the Gigabyte UD3R and UD5. Gigabyte simply dominates x58 as far as their across the board x58 and p55 offerings. The UD5 was simply the best of the 7 different x58 boards that I owned. This is a small update/upgrade above that board, so I imagine it is flat out awesome.

Yes UD5 is superb MB I like it very much,no broblems so far for half a year

 

[trt740]

After further review and some advice from several people who I trust and know I have changed my mind sounds like this is a super good board. I would get it.

 

[willie_52]

I am currently building a new system to replace my 8 year old ASUS. After much research I have purchased the UD7 motherboard. It is sitting in the box waiting for me to finish purchasing other new hardware. I hope to finish the system by the end of February. The ASUS board was a first generation SATA and I have had some unusual compatibility issues over the years but with that said it was a very good product for many years.

 

[CDdude55]

It is sitting in the box waiting for me to finish purchasing other new hardware. I hope to finish the system by the end of February.

I'm doing the same, i bought an EVGA X58 board last month and it's still in it's box waiting till i can afford both the CPU and RAM. Should be done around March hopefully.

 

[Pickles24]

I had to uninstall my raid0 today to put a dual boot win7/Ubuntu Studio(Grub only likes raid 1/5). So after countless restarts in multiple configurations and transferring over 4tbs of data to and from internal hdds and backups I will say this board is a tank. It flexed it's muscle and worked flawlessly, never getting over 42c. Sure it looks great, runs real fast and overclocks like a champ.. but this board is a heavy weight brute. Linux on a 4ghz i7 is like overkill for speed, feels like a stable XP on steroids.

Using Everest Ultimate Edition and it didn't recognize the board, but a tech emailed me today with a newer version.. It benches with the big boys..

 

[dr emulator (madmax)]

well thanks for your replies and votes guys it's apreciated i'd still like to hear from anyone who wasn't sure or who said no though
on with the poll

 

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

Just got an EVGA X58 board recently (need to wait like a month and a half for the CPU and RAM), i hope i don't have to do an RMA on mines, don't want to delay this build any further.:shadedshu

mine is the vanilla x3 SLI. if thats the one your getting. the board can do amazing things. but if you have a C0 proc or basically anything that doesnt want to OC dont push it. dont force it to be were you want. like my C0 only wanted 4.2 i couldnt go any more. i tried to see if i could get 4.5 for a bit. but my board wanted nothing to do with it. keep that in mind. it ot to 4 easy enough and 4.2 with a little effort. but when it doesnt want to go anymore. it doesnt want to.

I've had my classified for almost a year. And I love it, it's been rock solid 24/7, haven't rebooted my system in almost 3 months. I've owned 5 EVGA boards now, a 750i a 780iFTW, a 790i, a EVGA 160-LF-E659-KR P55 Classified, and a E760 CLASSIFIED, and haven't had a single problem with any of them! I did break a SATA slot off on the 750i, but I will attribute that to being drunk.

Where has my experience has been the exact opposite with Gigabyte, I've owned 4 of their boards in the last 6 years (both Intel and AMD), and have had to RMA every on within a years time, and even had to RMA one board 4 times to get one that worked ( as well as getting the same exact dead board back from RMA still dead). As well as incompitent help from their tech support ( not to mention every reply was in broken english), and even a broken RMA website. Also when you fill out all the forms for RMA and they send you the reply email to so you can mail it off, they still print out a blank from for you to fill out by hand even though they have all your information (LAZY much?). Gigabytes RMA is the worst I have ever encountered for any kind of product, yes even worse than Sony!

A lot of people swear by Gigabyte, and on paper their boards look amazinng and are feature packed. But I have yet to have 1 positive thing happen while using one of their products.

I say go with another manufacturer like EVGA, ASUS, or DFI!

 

[dr emulator (madmax)]

thanks [H]@RD5TUFF that's what this thread is about i want to hear everyones opinion nothing is set in stone atm (i was even thinking of getting an msi motherboard as the one i've got at the moment is still ok no leaky caps or anything which is a supprise since my powerpack was so faulty)
oh well on with the poll

 

[willie_52]

Great comments concerning Gigabyte. I have been to many sites read many comments concerning Gigabyte and the UD7 board. Some folks swear by Gigabyte and others have a negative experience. After spending more money then I should have on a motherboard I hope I fall into the favorable column. Over the years I have had not such a good experience with customer support often I blame it on my lack of expressing my problem or my lack of understanding it. I was between the UD7 and the Classified which was slightly more expensive. Here is hoping I did good.
Willie_52

 

[[H]@RD5TUFF]

thanks [H]@RD5TUFF that's what this thread is about i want to hear everyones opinion nothing is set in stone atm (i was even thinking of getting an msi motherboard as the one i've got at the moment is still ok no leaky caps or anything which is a supprise since my powerpack was so faulty)
oh well on with the poll

Your welcome. If you were perhaps looking for specific model recommendations I personally highly recommend the EVGA CLASSIFIED 760( I own thsi board and has been running my i7 950 @ 4.1 GHZ 24/7 for almost a year straight, and has been powered down for the total of 15 days I was out fo town on business), or the ASUS P6X58D Premium or ASUS Rampage II Extreme ( Rampage 3 is coming out soon so may want to hold out for that), or ASUS Rampage II GENE or DFI LANPARTY JR X58-T3H6 (configuration can be a bit tricky but for the price, it's hard to beat this board on value and stability).

 

[trt740]

did you see this review http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...a-x58a-ud7-lga1366-motherboard-review-20.html

 

[dr emulator (madmax)]

thanks everyone, i'll take a look tomorow at the other reviews, hopefully i'll have shifted this damned cold

 

[trt740]

this is a good thread to read http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=240276 this is also good http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=243912

 

[dr emulator (madmax)]

once again trt740 a big thanks, all info is welcome whether it be good or bad