Layout

Already at a first glance the Gigabyte GA-X79-UD7 looks very good with its harmonic design. Like with the X58A-OC the colors - orange, black and grey - suite nicely and together with the matte black PCB. Optially this really is a nice looking product. The layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install even todays largest CPU coolers. The fact that there are SATA connectors which have been angled by 90 degrees, allow an easy installation of oversized graphics cards like for example a Radeon HD 6990.

Gigabyte equipped the Gigabyte GA-X79-UD7 with a 16 phase power design. In this case there aren't phases dedicated especially for the CPU and DIMM slots. Each of the sixteen pahses comes with high quality POScaps as well as PowerPAK MOSFETs. Totally the power design can provide the CPU with up to 1'500 Watts of power. This really is enough even for the highest overclockings.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Gigabyte GA-X79-UD7. Officially supported are the following clock speeds: 2133 / 2000 / 1866 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz. There is also engough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders.

Southbridge as well as current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via a passive heatpipe cooling solution. The cooling blocks have been positioned wisely, which means that they don't collide with memory or CPU cooler. Fortunately Gigabyte decided to not install an active southbridge cooler. Like this the board can be used noiseless right out of the box.