VR-Zone

A Closer Look at the Gigabyte X79-UD5

We begin with a look at the box and accessories. The front of the box is quite mild compared to some manufacturers whilst the back is crammed with the features Gigabyte wants you to take note of.

Below are the accessories that come with the X79-UD5. the biggest inclusion is a combined WiFi & Bluetooth 4.0 expansion card that connects to a PCIe 1x slot with a set of antennas. Nice!

Complete list:

With four SATA cables, most users will be covered and most that aren't will probably have spares but perhaps a few more would be better? Nitpicking really..

Now for the board itself:

It's an E-ATX model so consideration needs to be given to the case it will go in. It's quite a nice looking board, much better than the candy color Gigabyte color schemes of old.

There is very little to criticize regarding the layout with the exception of the CMOS battery. We can forgive this though as they last for years and these days it is rare that a failed overclock will require removal of this battery.

Below we see the rear I/O panel of the UD5. We see seven (red) USB 2.0 ports, two (blue) USB 3.0 ports, a PS/2 KB/mouse port, firewire and a pair of eSATA connectors (one 6GB/s and a combo USB/eSATA 6GB/s). There is a single RJ45 LAN port. Some user may like to see an additional LAN port here. Audio outputs are a common five analogue ports and a S/PDIF optical connector.

The three buttons on the second module from the left are a one touch overclocking button, a switch to change between the two BIOS chips and a small CMOS clear button on the bottom.