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!

 

[Bichou]

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 :techgage: they were protection sheilds that went behind the motherboard, onto the case to protect from electrical shorting.

Go figure

Merlin

 

[Unregistered]

Base clock and overclocking

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]

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.

 

[Unregistered]

Thanks

Ok, thanks for the answer.

 

[Unregistered]

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!

 

[Philip]

Reliable

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]

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]

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.

 

[Philip]

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.

 

[Rob Williams]

I didn't check every custom computer shop, but the ones I did, said they don't do Gigabyte because of reliability.

Chances are, that shop used Gigabyte boards in the past and had them fail (or come back as returns due to failure), which is the reason they are staying away now. That doesn't mean the boards are bad though, and it could be that the shop just ran into a string of bad luck, and decided to ignore Gigabyte boards going forward.

There's a computer shop in town here that does the same thing (at last check) with ASUS boards. They had a round of bad boards and ended up ignoring the brand (still not sure whether they ignore them still or not). It's their loss though.

Congrats on the build though! Is it your first home-built PC?

 

[Kougar]

and also a bracket used to secure your SLI bridges (thanks to a reader for pointing that out in our UD5 review).

Ah-hah! I was starting to go nuts trying to figure out what this thing was as I didn't see it listed anywhere, all I knew is it said SLI on the wrapper. Interesting little addition to the usual accessories.

Did I mention this board is heavy?? It makes my P35-DQ6 with it's copper mountain of a northbridge cooler almost feel light by comparison.

I gotta say, after dealing with several Gigabyte boards I'm happy to see how secure the chipset cooler mechanism is, no twisting or an uneven base (Original Rev1 P35-DQ6 suffered from this, and was why they toned down & changed the cooler completely). There's even a brace bar on the back... and I assume thats either one or two northbridge PWM mosfets under that tiny black heatsink.

I got this puppy for $200, was an open box item but looks like it was never fired up even once by the person that returned it. Now if I could just order a D0 stepping CPU to bring it to life...

 

[Merlin]

I got the MSI platinum for 199.xx, I was looking for a better board, and after reading about the gigabite oc'ing, I might just drop one in my i7 box, watercooled.
I just got the MSI to get things put together