GIGABYTE Z68XP-UD3P Review

👤by David Mitchelson Comments 📅31-08-11
Closer Look

Moving in for a closer look the UD3P takes advantage of a 12-Phase Power design and utilises a similar heatsink design to that of the other Z68 U series of motherboards. Using the Intel Z68 chipset the UD3P is of course LGA1155 and will therefore work hand-in-hand with Intel’s 2nd Generation Core i7/i5/i3 processors. The UD3P has an 8-pin socket for EATX power – you can use 4-pin but it’s advisable to use 8 for better stability, especially for overclocking.


12 Phase Power Design and gunmetal heatsinks covering MOSFETs


Being Sandy Bridge we have support for dual channel DDR3 memory. There is support for Intel XMP and for a maximum of 32GB – 1066MHz to 2133MHz.


The memory slots on UD3P – dual channel DDR3 (1066MHz to 2133MHz)


Further along the motherboard we have the SATA storage ports. There are 4x SATA 2 (Black) and 4x SATA 3 – 6Gbps (White/Grey). The SATA 3 ports share two different controllers – 2x ports are supported via the Intel Z68 and another 2 via Marvell 88SE9172. These ports are placed precisely along the edge of the motherboard so that right-angled SATA cables will fit perfectly.


Storage – SATA 2 and SATA 3


Pictured below you can see the large heatsink that covers the Intel Z68 chip on the UD3P. At the bottom of the UD3P there are 2x USB2.0 headers giving a total of 6x USB 2.0 ports. We also have a USB3.0 header in this region, this gives us 2x USB3.0 ports.


Intel Z68 chip with large heatsink


Moving to the PCI-E lanes we have 2x PCI-E 2.0. The top lane will provide x16 whilst the lower lane will deliver x8. If you do intend to go with a dual graphics card configuration then the speed will drop on both of the cards to x8 as this is shared. In this region we also have 3x – x1 PCI-E 2.0 lanes and another 2x PCI for older devices such as sound cards.


SLI and CrossfireX compatibility with UD3P


Finally, turning our attention to the I/O we have the following ports:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 1 x IEEE 1394 port
• 1 x HDMI port
• 8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 1 x RJ-45 port
• 6 x Audio jacks via Realtek ALC889


The I/O panel on the UD3P


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