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GIGABYTE X58A-UD9 Motherboard

GIGABYTE's packed a lot into their X58A-UD9!

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The top-down shot of the UD9 (labelled 7 on our sample) shows a bloody insane layout, packed with more tech than we've ever seen. It's an EATX form factor, but still doesn't seem to have enough room.

The I/O panel covers two PS/2, Optical/Coaxial, Clear CMOS, 6- and 4-pin FireWire, four USB2, two hybrid USB2/eSATA, two Gigabit Ethernet, two USB3 and 7.1 channel audio. There's still enough room for a vertical USB slot there; but we're only half kidding.

What seems to be a trend on highend X58 boards, these two 8-pin ATX power plugs combine to give phenomenal amounts of electrical headroom. While only one is needed for most cases, LN2 users will appreciate the extra capacity.

The power delivery system is impressive!

The UD9 uses an LGA1366 socket from Lotes. This is the more premium version; it's nickel-plated to look awesome!

One of the highlights of GIGABYTE's high-end boards are their chipset cooling arrays, and the UD9's is no slouch. Watercooling is an option, or a large heatsink can bolt into that grooved area to provide some serious dissipation.

Six DDR3 slots are supported as normal for three channels of fast memory. ATI's Crossfire and NVIDIA's SLI logos are silkscreened onto the board, just in case you forget it has them.

The top-right corner of the board plays host to a hard power and reset button, very handy for benching outside a case; even moreso when you've got large graphics cards in the way.

The 24-pin ATX connector lies alongside the edge of the board, with two white SATA3 ports adjacent.

Storage options continue with six blue SATA2 ports, two white SATA2 and an IDE port. They're all right-angled for cabley goodness.

For lovers of LED POST screens (ourselves included), there's one included on the board. It doesn't appear to display processor temps once booted into the system, but we'll confirm this in the full review.

The ICH10 Southbridge and one NF200 chip (as we'll see in a minute) are cooled by a large copper block, topped off with the textured aluminium.

The bottom edge of the board contains all the usual USB and FireWire headers, as well as a Floppy port and an additional Molex connector.

If ever you thought that three PCIe slots weren't enough, here's a whopping seven! Slots 1, 3, 5 and 7 are all electrically 16x, while slots 2, 4 and 6 are 8x.

Another molex connector lies at the top of the PCIe slots, providing extra stability when running Quad Crossfire or SLI.

The USB3 ports are powered by the usual NEC chip, with the front panel audio connector adjacent.

Between the PCIe slots are Packet Switch chips to reroute PCIe lanes between the slots. This sample is the X58A-UD7P Rev 0.2 - which will be known as the X58A-UD9 when it hits retail. Where UD8 went, we'll never know.

The power delivery system for the CPU socket continues underneath the motherboard, with a serious array of SMDs.

Curious to find out which chips are running on the board exactly, we pulled off the cooling array with two screws and a few simple pushpins.

The first chip we spot underneath the heatsinks is NVIDIA's NF200 chip; which takes 16 PCIe lanes and splits them into 32. Also appears on the GTX295!

Right next to this chip is the X58 chipset, working as the Northbridge for the board.

With the stock thermal goop cleaned off we can see the chip in more detail. It's relatively simple, with the design dating back to 2008, but keep your eyes open for a successor in a year or so.

Down to the PCIe slots and we find a second NF200 chip, this time covered in thermal goop (the first had a thermal pad).

Intel's ICH10 Southbridge chip is the final chipset to be cooled by the array, handling the storage and I/O tasks.

Finally, a shot of GIGABYTE's powerful VRM, naked for viewing pleasure. It's an impressive board, to be sure, but whether or not it can compete with the ASUS Rampage III Extreme remains to be seen.

The top-down shot of the UD9 (labelled 7 on our sample) shows a bloody insane layout, packed with more tech than we've ever seen. It's an EATX form factor, but still doesn't seem to have enough room.

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GIGABYTE X58A-UD9 Motherboard

GIGABYTE's packed a lot into their X58A-UD9!

Related articles

Vertiv rolls out cooling and power reference architecture for NVIDIA platform

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