Gigabyte X58A UD3R V2 Review

Up Close

The UD3R v2 certainly doesn't push any boats out when it comes to design, following on perfectly from its v1 counterpart and the rest of the Gigabyte range. An information packed box gives way to the standard blue board with sky-blue and white slots that we're all familiar with.

Here you can see the many PCIe slots with the rather curiously placed legacy PCI slot as I mentioned in the video. You can also see on the bottom right the red-marked "Charge" USB header. This allows a much greater power-draw than USB standards so you can charge your iPhone/Mobile much quicker than normal.

The CPU area is where the main changes are found with the increased amount of power circuitry to better deliver smooth power and greater overclocking performance. The Gigabyte heatsinks always look lovely with clear writing and a nice deeper blue than that of the slots.

The RAM area is kept fairly clear. Normally this is where companies cram those few things they couldn't find room for elsewhere but Gigabytes design keeps everything in sensible places and allows this to have maximum airflow to keep the DIMMs and CPU cool.

Despite still retaining FDD and IDE compatibility the focus is definitely on SATA slots with 6 SATA 2 and 4 SATA 6G/bps sockets covering your storage requirements.

The front panel connectors, so often a bane of our lives, are once again well served by Gigabytes continued use of a very clear, colour-coordinated, header.

The IO panel contains everything you'd expect to see from PS2 ports, SPDIF, USB 3.0 to Audio, Firewire and LAN.