One of the most high-end P55 boards around, is the Gigabyte board worth spending on?
The Appearance
The light blue colored theme colored board is beautiful. Alternating light blue and white DIMM slots and PCI-E slots.
Even the SATA connectors are in alternate light blue and white color, and there’s ample of it too.
6x DIMM slots, I believe this is the key feature of the UD6 – a P55 board with 6 instead of 4.
Feature rich back panel.
A convenient power on switch located at the board, near the DIMM slot.
And also another highlight of the board, 24 Phase Power VRM Design.
More Details on specification and bundle are available at the official product page.
User Experience
It’s a high quality board no doubt, with features rich such as the 6x DIMM slot, 24 Phase Power VRM Design, 2 Oz copper PCB, Smart TPM, XHD, possible 3x GPU configuration and so on so forth but what I really hate about the board are the simple things.
The 6x DIMM layout meant that the board has much reduced real estate for components, couple along with the rather huge set of heatsinks covering around the LGA1156 socket makes it really cramped. This resulted in a VERY cramped area for the 8-pin CPU 12v power connector. Fortunately huge heatsinks like the Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme could still manage to fit.
The PCI-E x16 slot nearest to the processor is placed VERY close to the heatsink on the northbridge.
Then of course, the rather minor matter of having only 1x PS/2 port. I still prefer boards to have both.
And the pins for the for the various connectors (power, reset and so on) – they’re pretty much covered, so unless you’re viewing it DIRECTLY on top – you can’t see the colors at all!
Conclusion
I may have my complaints but this main problem with this board is the price, hence my mixed feelings.
It’s pricey, which doesn’t quite make sense for someone with an LGA1156 setup. Think about it, the board alone costs more than the Core i5-750 and Core i7-860 and more than double the cheapest P55 board.
Whether or not someone really needs 12GB RAM, getting an X58 setup with a Core i7-920 would be a better option unless you have already placed priority on the features offered by this board. Furthermore X58 boards offer 6x DIMM slots as well, plus they run at triple channel.
I like the way you review mobo, no benchmarking whatsoever. Benchmarking mobo is unnecessary imo, since it doesn’t give much difference among mobo of the same type. All I care about mobo are brands, pcb layout, I/O ports and PCI-E slots.
I don’t have any plan to buy new desktop in the near future though, because PC gamer inside me is dying. Maybe Diablo 3 will give it a new life. :/
thanks. 😀 i refuse to bench with mobos cos to me, a P55 is a P55 is a P55. 😀 it’s the other things that makes the difference.
good forum buddy keep it up. basic hydraulic disign
problem with beep sound.
cpu cooling fan not good
or bios setting