Layout

Already at a first glance the Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 looks very good with its harmonic design. This time Gigabyte chose to keep this motherboard almost completely in black. Therefore you find a black PCB, black expansion slots as well as black DIMM slots and connectors. There are only a few grey and even less white spots on the board. We for instance like this kind of design very much. 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-UD3 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 you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3. 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 cooling blocks. 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.