Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H (Z87) Motherboard Review

After being somewhat brainwashed by the UD4H by Gigabyte and being told it’s going to be a top seller, I can honestly say that I fully agree as it packs a good amount of features, includes strong performance, amazing overclocking potential and looks god damn sexy while doing it too. We’ve had so many Z87 boards in our offices over the past weeks, and generally we find they are the same design with a new chipset, though the UD4H simply breaks the mould.

The red design which may be criticised by some is refreshing to see, and while it was a bit of a gamble for Gigabyte, it has definitely paid off, and everyone in the office agrees, and would quite happily use this board in their own system, as long as the price is right. Another key detail on the design is not so much the board but the box it comes packaged in which is much more pleasant looking that the white box we’d be used to. The new black design, showcasing the VRM heatsinks gives a professional, yet extreme look and that’s exactly what was reflected in the performance.

Feature wise, for a mid-range board, we have plenty of SATA 6Gb/s ports, USB 3.0 connectors, SLI/CrossFire support and strong cooling around the VRMs so that those wishing to push the hardware to the limits can do so with ease. The BIOS is a welcome addition and could take a while to get used to, but for those wishing to use the older style UEFI, it’s still very much available and with overclocking a real treat to optimise on this BIOS, it helped us to achieve some strong results, which helped to boost performance overall in all of our test benchmarks.

Overclocking aside, the stock performance of the board was quite surprising, as we saw certain tests showcasing the UD4H very well, beating some of the higher-end Z87 boards that we tested against, just as Gigabyte said it would.

No word on pricing at the time of writing this, but we are told, as with all of their Z87 boards, that we will see it competitively priced, and that sales are expected to be very high on this particular model, but as with any launch, the proof is in the pudding and we will have to wait and see how things pan out, but for now we can’t see any reason why this wouldn’t do well in both the retail and system integrator markets

Pros

• Amazing new colour scheme
• Top performance for a mid-range board
• Strong 3dMark 2013 performance
• Powerful cooling performance on VRMs
• Overclocking results were easy to obtain

Cons

• Some may not like the new BIOS but classic mode is still available

eTeknix Says: The UD4H looks great, performs great, overclocks great and is an all-rounder with no criticising features. From the packaging to the board, to how it performs, it really does tick all of the right boxes and is a welcome addition to the Z87 lineup. A strong board with a new design and attitude, this has got to be one of our favourite Z87 boards being released, not just from Gigabyte, but for the whole market.