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Navigation:
Introduction + Box and Board Layout
Power Delivery at its Best(not so boring!)
Motherboard Cooling Analysis
Tylersburg X58 IOH+PCI-E
Connectivity
USB, IEEE, Ethernet, Audio AKA Peripheral Sub-Systems
VARIOUS IC SECTION!!!! (VERY INTERESTING)!
UD5 Rev 2.0 Voltage Read Points
Various IC SECTION Continued
BIOS/ Overclocking/ 3 Levels LLC
Conclusion
Introduction + Box and Board Layout
Intel’s Tylersburg (x58) LGA 1366 platform has been around for a few years now, long enough to have matured into the high-end choice for gamers and overclockers. The main features of the Tylersburg platform that set it apart from its predecessor LGA 1156 are its support for i7 900 series including the new 6-core processors, triple channel ram support(backwards compatible with dual channel), and native support for 2-way(16x,16x) and 3-way sli(16x,8x,8x). In an age where processors are processed at the 45nm and 32nm varieties overclocking has reached a new level with the i7 900 series processors. It seems that every single 900 series processor is able to reach the golden frequency of 4000mhz(4ghz), every board is able to boast at least 200blck, but above that is up to board construction, quality, IOH/CPU IMC luck, and overclocking ability. To begin my review of the X58A-UD5 Revision 2.0, I would first like to explain the major differences between revisions 1.0 and 2.0 of the board.
Here is the box including up-close picture of how to tell the revision of the board:
When you open the box you get some basic accessories and manuals/discs:
When you open the box you see you have sli 2x and 3x bridges, as well as four sata cables, some have 90 degree heads for easier attachment.
Then you have the beautiful motherboard in anti-static
Next we move to general board design. Right now the standard for motherboards is a 1Ounce copper PCB, but gigabyte doubles this to 2oounces of pure copper in the ground and power layers, this lowers impedance by 50% and reduces overall board operating temperature. When you have so many mosfets, ferrite chokes, solid state capacitor, various ICs that generate all that heat you need all the cooling you can get, and while the benefit of extra copper is minimal every little bit counts. I would like to mention gigabyte calls this Ultra Durable 3 design, and the whole gigabyte x58 line incorporates the same general added copper and components.
The board:
The back panels is perfectly laid out, and gigabyte was nice enough to allow the use of PS2 keyboard and mouse, USB, eSATA, IEEE, audio connectors, and LAN are all contained on the back panel.
When we move closer to the CPU socket we see that there is the standard 8 pin 12v power header for CPU power, where do you think 16 phase power plant gets all of that 12v power? As we move along we can see that the ferrite core chokes and very nicely lay in rows parallel to the mosfet driver heatsinks, as well as to the CPU socket. What I really like about this board is its use of the Lottes made socket, opposed to the cheaper Foxconn socket which had terrible problems. The problem is that it would not apply enough pressure, causing in some cases the pads on the bottom of the processor to burn and in more cases for less ram than installed to be detected. The Lottes socket is not only more fashionable in its anodized black/silver casing, but also makes sure all of the 1,366 processor’s pads touch all the motherboard’s pins. Everything that could be anodized has been, such as the heat pipes as well as the heatsinks for the board. The ferrite core chokes match with their own shiny casings.
Throughout the CPU socket area as well as right next to the Northbridge and ram slots we have intricate arrays of tiny LEDs. Some are setup to show you how many power phases are on for the CPU, NB, and DDR3, those are blue. You also have others telling you temperature ranges for Northbridge and CPU, and even more telling you voltage ranges for CPU, NB,SB, and DDR3 the colors range from green to yellow to red, depending on range.
If you would like to see the LEDs please move to the Board IC section where I go in detail about the monitoring chip.
Quick switches are very important to people who overclock and tweak their systems, as they are a built in way to power on, reset, and clear CMOS. While switches built in for power and reset button are nice, this function can be taken care of by any conductive metal to the pins for the case attachments. Clearing CMOS is another story, in the past CMOS has to be cleared by removing battery, and if that was not a hard enough reset, then you had to move jumpers, and if that was not enough you had to short out the batter while moving jumpers, all of that is now taken care of by a nifty little switch on the back panel.
This board has four -3pin fan headers and two -4 pin PWN controlled fan header. They are very easy to use and very well placed. The 24-pin motherboard power plug is in its usual place, the power and reset quick switches are right above it at the top right of the board.
The battery for CMOS is placed between the SATA ports and heatsink.
While the bottom heatsink looks kind of worthless, it is anything but, but that we will discuss later. The IDE port is placed the at the bottom of the board, along with the case headers, USB ports are right next to the IDE port which is right next to the floppy port, which is pictured below.
This board has 2x PCI-1X ports, but the problem is one has to be a low profile card, because there is the Northbridge heatsink blocking anything longer. The second PCI-1X port will do just fine with a normal sized card. Then we have PCI-E 16X ports , 4 of them to be exact, but if you have 3 double slotted GPUs, then only 3 are usable, as the fourth is right between the two 16x PCI-E ports. The PCI port is right in-between the bottom PCI-E port and the second one.
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