Gigabyte X99-UD4P (LGA 2011-3) Motherboard Review

A Closer Look & Layout Analysis

The first look at the X99-UD4P board reminds me of the original X99-UD4 board; looking good.

The I/O side of the board presents us with an impressive range of connections. Firstly, 2 separate PS/2 ports, then 4x USB 2.0 ports (black), 5x USB 3.0 ports (Blue), 1x USB 3.0 port enabled for Q-flash and the recommended port for keyboards/ mice for initial boot. You will also find 1x gigabit LAN port, 5x HD audio jacks, 1x S/PDIF optical port and 2 empty Wifi antenna holes.

From there, we move on down to the audio portion of the board, hosting Realtek ALC1150 and AMP-UP codec and its dedicated caps.

Along the bottom, we see all the typical headers for front USB, audio, buttons and an addition PCI power connection in the form of a male molex connector.

Working our way back up the other side of the motherboard, we have our relatively small bank of SATA connectors. The lower of the grey section hosts SATA express, which is capable of up to 10Gb/s transfers. To the far right, we see a CPU switch, which is a hardwired OC switch which auto analyses the best CPU clock for the CPU/ RAM motherboard combination.

Straight opposite the I/O ports, we then have the typical headers, 24-pin ATX power and USB 3.0 header. It’s a shame there aren’t any on-board buttons or debug LED, would finish this off nicely.

Slapped straight in the middle of the PCI slot bank, we have dual M.2 ports, one low and one raised. The lower is designed for a WiFi card and the raised for a typical M.2 SSD. The placement sort of limits your range of usable M.2 SSD cards, but up to 80mm is the main consumer size.

So with this motherboard, Gigabyte has introduced a slightly tinkered heatsink design, featuring LEDs; a full video demonstration is on the Software Overview page.

This board features the standard 8-DIMM slots supporting up to 128GB of 3333MHz memory. The CPU and DIMM slot pins are upgraded gold-plated pins, better connection and less strain on the pins.