[O/C] X58A-UD3R: High-End Overclocking on Gigabyte’s Entry X58 Platform

[sno.lcn]

First Look

The X58A-UD3R is Gigabyte’s entry X58 motherboard, and has been around for quite some time. It’s been tested by a hundred review sites, and used by overclockers all over the world. Since the general review portion of this article wouldn’t tell you anything you didn’t know already, I’ll skip the fluffy stuff, hit the high points as far as features are concerned, and jump straight into the testing portion. How many reviews of this board have you seen with something like an i7 920, some 1600MHz memory, and a mid to high end graphics card, showing you what the weekend overclocker or casual user might expect from this board? We all know this is a proven product, and probably the best value (performance + reliability / $) you can get for an X58-based computer. Let’s see how this board performs under some real pressure.

Testing

When Gigabyte sent me this board, I wasn’t sure how I was going to approach this review. Admittedly, I was planning on doing the same comprehensive overview, some game testing with aggressive overclocking on air, and throw a little dry ice or LN2 overlocking in at the end. I started out with a Xeon w3570 (with an unlocked multi), and quickly hit a heat wall. I was thinking of grabbing a 920 from Microcenter, but was bored by that idea as soon as I thought of it. The fact that the X58A-UD3R can handle a 920 without breaking a sweat is no secret. The true measure of a motherboard’s quality isn’t, to me anyway, it’s ability to handle every day use. If that were the case, why would I buy one model over another based on anything other than price? To me, a worthy motherboard is one that can take all the abuse I can throw at it without a hiccup, and can supply enough clean power to keep my components happy at the highest frequencies and under maximum stress levels. This is on top of all the expectations someone would have for a daily use product. So let’s see if the X58A-UD3R has what it takes to run with the big dogs. My main goal here was to see how many hwbot boints I could snag using this board and these components:

Core i7 980x 3020A457 + Xeon w3570
3x2GB Kingston HyperX PC16000 – BDBG chips
Radeon HD 5870
OCZ 1000w PSU
K|NGP|N Dragon F1 EE CPU Pot + LN2

The w3570 maxed out around 5.4GHz, which is pretty much in line with results others have gotten, according to this CPU’s hwbot page. This chip would have great potential if not for the nasty cold bug around -80° C. I did these runs with the very last bit of the remaining LN2 after testing the 980x. The 32m submission netted me 31.5 points and the 1024m submission is good for 21.1 points. So these two benchmarks alone are worth 52.6 hwboints.

My full article is here -> http://www.overclockers.com/X58A-UD3...y-X58-platform

[ebolamonkey3]

Thanks for the review, this'll probably the board I pick up.

[sneekypeet]

wow you have time to win contests and write articles? How was that first bowl of cereal?

Nice write up!