Gigabyte EX58-UD4P Review - PAGE 2

The EX58-UD4P comes into a rather good looking box, obviously showcasing Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 3 technology. Other than that, there's nothing too special to see here. There are more details on the back side along with a couple more features including DualBIOS which is pretty neat.

The board is built on a blue PCB and the components are well laid out. The power connectors are right where they should be and the cooling apparatus looks like it should do a good job keeping things cool. I'm not a fan of the overly colorful theme, but that's hardly a deal breaker.

The back side has nothing of much interest. The heatsinks are held by screwed backplates to ensure good contact and, thus, lower temperatures.

There are no major obstacles in the area around the processor's socket so installing large heatsinks won't pose any issues.

Gigabyte states support for triple channel DDR3 memory up to and over 2100 MHz, that is no small claim. The onboard power and reset buttons are found on the top right corner alongside a three pin fan connector.

This board has plenty of space of expansion including three full length PCIe slots with support for both CrossFire and SLI. The first two run at 16x, while the third is limited at 8x. A pair of video cards will only block the legacy PCI slots, the PCI-e 1x and 4x remain available which is a very smart design decision. However, adding a third video card will entirely block the connectors at the bottom. That really is unacceptable. Also, the 1x PCIe slot can only house a short card as the northbridge's heatsink is in the way.

The bottom of the board has a complete array of connectivity. There are two clearly labeled USB and FireWire headers as well as legacy floppy and PATA connectors for those still relying on older hardware. On the left side, the headers for the front panel buttons and LEDs are color color coded so it's less of a pain to get them into the right spot.

The UD4P sports a grand total of eight SATA 3Gbps ports. six come from Intel's southbridge while the last two are courtesy of Gigabyte's own chip. They're all angled so large video cards will not block any of them.

On the I/O side, Gigabyte supplies access to eight USB ports and a single FireWire port. Continuing with support for legacy hardware, connectors for PS/2 mouse and keyboard are present as well. Sound is provided by the usual six 3.5mm audio outputs as well as optical and SPDIF outputs. The Clear CMOS button is a great thing to have back there. Networking is handled by a single LAN port.

Finally, Gigabyte includes a pretty complete set of accessories. The I/O plate is color coded and clearly labeled. It also comes with floppy and PATA cables and four yellow SATA cables meant for internal drives. The two black SATA cables are actually eSATA, which is provided by the PCI bracket. Power is taken to external drives using the black power cable. Additionaly, Gigabyte includes SLI bridges, manuals, a driver disc and a couple stickers.