Gigabyte EX58-UD5

[Rob Williams]

Our X58 motherboard coverage continues with a look at Gigabyte's EX58-UD5, an offering that's competing with all the other $300 launch boards out there. Though still expensive, there's a lot being offered here, including a plethora of USB and S-ATA ports, solid design, support for 3-way GPU configurations and a nice top overclock.

You can read the full review here and discuss it here!

I had a GA-N680SLI-DQ6 and they included the same retention bracket you thaught to use with a fan, but they recommand to use it in order to securely fix the bridge connector between two graphics card

[Merlin]

Oh, don't you just love these mystery items that come with your purchase?
I had some plastic strips that came with a case. No mention anywhere where they went or what they did. Come to find out from they were protection sheilds that went behind the motherboard, onto the case to protect from electrical shorting.

Go figure

Merlin

If the default base clock of 133Mhz was closer to 135Mhz is it not possible that the 200Mhz overclock was closer to 201 or 202Mhz in reality which made the system unstable?

Have you thought of trying with a base clock of 197-198Mhz to see if it worked?

Just a couple of idle questions prompted by your article. I have personally zero overclocking experience.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

If the default base clock of 133Mhz was closer to 135Mhz is it not possible that the 200Mhz overclock was closer to 201 or 202Mhz in reality which made the system unstable?

I don't think so, because when at 133MHz, CPU-Z showed 135MHz, but during overclocking, CPU-Z reported what I should have expected (eg 190MHz when I set it there), so I don't believe that's the issue here. It's rare when 1 or 2MHz would make such a substantial difference, though, and I also tested the board at 195MHz, which didn't help at all, so I don't believe 200MHz is going to be a possibility for many people. But like I've mentioned before, even ~180MHz is going to be fantastic for most people. Anything higher is generally a waste.

Ok, thanks for the answer.

So, what you all think about this board?
Should I trust the user review from newegg ?

[vivek90]

I OWN one Man
its great man,Check This out
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=478946

[vivek90]

use the UD5's F5a bios its the most Stable one

[Rob Williams]

Welcome to the forums, and grats on the great clocks!

I love this board, but custom computer builders refuse to use it because Gigabyte has a bad rep for their boards being less reliable (greater failure rate) than other brands. How long will it be until we find out whether or not Gigabyte has made this new board more reliable than previous ones? (and is there a website with reliability report stats? )

[Greg King]

Originally Posted by Philip

I love this board, but custom computer builders refuse to use it because Gigabyte has a bad rep for their boards being less reliable (greater failure rate) than other brands. How long will it be until we find out whether or not Gigabyte has made this new board more reliable than previous ones? (and is there a website with reliability report stats? )

I have never heard this and on the contrary, I have heard that they are quite reliable. I have absolutely no numbers to back this up, nor have I ever use a Gigabyte product. I am simply going by what I have heard from the community.

I know of no website that tracks the stats that you are looking for either.

[Rob Williams]

Gigabyte is a huge company, and they didn't get to be that way by releasing products that fail a lot sooner than their competition. I admit that I haven't used a Gigabyte board long-term, but I have no doubts that they are well-built and will last just as long as the competition, as long as you keep care of them (no extreme overclocking).

[Kougar]

Originally Posted by Philip

I love this board, but custom computer builders refuse to use it because Gigabyte has a bad rep for their boards being less reliable (greater failure rate) than other brands. How long will it be until we find out whether or not Gigabyte has made this new board more reliable than previous ones? (and is there a website with reliability report stats? )

The name escapes me but from what I know there are a few system builders that use Gigabyte motherboards.

Gigabyte, just like everyone else, has their share of niggling issues, but failure rates is not one of them.

I've owned one of the very first GA-965P-DS3 motherboards that I bought the day Conroe (First Core 2 Duo) launched in 2006. If any motherboard should fail it would be the first revision of a new chipset & board design, on a budget motherboard no less. I've overclocked the FSB to 532 stable and pushed it to 550FSB just to test the envelope. I ran the board 24/7 with a 500+ overclock on an E6300. I actually still have the board and it still works perfectly fine. In fact I rebuilt it and the E6300 and put a tame 400FSB OC on it and have been using it as a F@H SMP + F@H GPU box for the last couple months.

Thanks guys. This makes me feel better about my purchase. I didn't check every custom computer shop, but the ones I did, said they don't do Gigabyte because of reliability. I was suspicious that was just an excuse to explain why they couldn't give me what I wanted. I love the UD5 board for the core i7, so I decided to build my new PC myself rather than pay someone else to build it for me with a different board. It is working great so far, and I know my computer's guts better than I ever have before, having built it myself.