With most kinds of hardware, the excitement generally swirls around the products with the most features. But since cost is an important factor for most PC builders, the motherboard that strikes the best balance between useful amenities and an affordable price really is the most impressive to us. And we think Gigabyte’s Z68X-UD3H-B3 does just that: At a midrange price, it delivers an above-average suite of features.
This well-balanced board lacks enthusiast extras like onboard power switches, support for triple video cards, or dual Ethernet ports, but it does include a core feature set that should satisfy all but the most demanding system builders. With support for onboard video, eight SATA devices, 16 USB ports, and SLI or CrossFireX graphics, this board offers an excellent core feature set for PC-build projects that range from a home server to an overclocked gaming rig. It’s one of our favorites from the spring 2011 roundup of nine Sandy Bridge boards we looked at.
The Chipset
This Socket 1155 board accommodates Intel’s second-generation “Sandy Bridge” Core i-series processors, and with its Z68 chipset, it offers the chipset’s latest enhancements such as SSD caching and switchable onboard video. Video is especially a strength here; looking at the Z68 chipset’s video features, the Z68X-UD3H-B3 is a polar opposite to the company’s Z68X-UD5-B3, which completely omits support for the Sandy Bridge chips’ built-in video. On this board, Gigabyte went all-out, including HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, and VGA connectors on the board’s I/O panel. The Z68 chipset supports using any two of these ports at the same time, even if you install a discrete video card, too. That makes the onboard video capabilities useful for connecting additional monitors for productivity purposes, even if you’re planning on adding a gaming-class graphics card or two.
With two graphics cards running in SLI or CrossFireX configuration, you can drive six monitors simultaneously. Of course, the monitors on the motherboard connectors will be driven by the CPU’s relatively slow embedded graphics circuitry, so don’t think of this as a cheap way to a six-monitor gaming setup. It’s merely good for productivity apps.
Gigabyte supports Lucidlogix’s Virtu utility on the Z68X-UD3H-B3. This software, along with the Z68 chipset, lets the CPU’s integrated graphics processor work in conjunction with a dedicated graphics card. In Virtu, you’ll find two modes. The first, i-Mode, works with one single-GPU graphics card and lets you use the low-wattage processor’s integrated graphics for desktop work, only kicking in the GPU when gaming, thus cutting your system’s power usage. (Think of it as roughly akin to Nvidia’s mobile-centric Optimus, but for a desktop PC.) The second mode, d-Mode, works with dual-video-card SLI/CrossFireX configurations or a video card with dual graphics chips (like the AMD Radeon HD 6990); it relies on the graphics card for all rendering, so you won’t see power savings from it. What it does do, though: It lets you use your Sandy Bridge CPU’s Quick Sync Video hardware-accelerated transcoding to speed up video encoding.
The Z68X-UD3H-B3 also supports the Z68 chipset’s Smart Response technology, which is a caching feature for use with a solid-state drive (SSD). Smart Response lets you allocate a portion of an SSD to act as a cache for frequently accessed data that lives on a slower, traditional spinning hard drive. This offers some of the performance benefits of an SSD along with the much-larger storage offered by hard drives.
How much of a speedup this pairing actually provides depends on the kinds of programs you’re running, and how frequently you run them. It’s not easily benchmarked, as the intelligent caching doesn’t get triggered in the kinds of tests that disk-benchmarking tests employ. Still, though it doesn’t match the overall performance of using an SSD exclusively, the ability to add a small SSD drive and a terabyte-plus main drive at an overall low cost, and have one complement the other in this way, is quite appealing. It offers a nice compromise among performance, storage, and affordability.
Design
Aesthetically, the Z68X-UD3H-B3 is the Darth Vader of motherboards, with a black circuit board, black slots and connectors, and dark-gray heat sinks. While it’s a classier look than the blue board and neon slots of past-generation Gigabyte boards, you’ll definitely want to keep a mini-flashlight handy when poking around inside the case once the board is installed. It’ll be dark in there.
The board uses an Intersil PWM controller for voltage regulation, which Gigabyte claims offers some cost savings compared with the elaborate 12+4 voltage-regulation module found on the Asus P8Z68-V Pro and the 20-phase power regulation on the Gigabyte Z68-UD5-B3. For typical setups running at stock clock speeds, this isn’t likely to make an operational difference. But if you’re going to be doing minute tweaks to processor settings to maximize overclocking potential, the more elaborate power regulation of more expensive boards like this one may provide you more clock-speed headroom. It’ll only prove its worth (or not), though, once you get down and dirty in your specific configuration.
Overall, the board layout is well-designed, with no heat sinks or other obstructions blocking use of any of the expansion slots. The PCI slots (shown at right) are placed so that you can still access one slot even when running the system with a pair of double-width video cards, a layout that will be a welcome one for gamers holding on to legacy PCI sound cards. The only potential trouble points are the RAM slots, which are very close to the CPU socket. If you’re using a very large CPU cooler, you’ll want to be sure it has enough vertical clearance for your RAM if it will overhang those slots.
Six of the seven onboard SATA connectors are horizontal, allowing you to route cables away from the motherboard. The seventh connector points upward, but it’s far enough to the side of the second PCI Express (PCIe) x16 slot that a drive cable shouldn’t interfere with a long video card.
The first of this board’s two PCIe x16 slots runs at full x16 speed, but due to a chipset limitation, that throughput will drop to x8 speed along with its partner’s if you run a pair of video cards in CrossFireX or SLI mode. The Z68X-UD3H-B3 lacks the third PCIe x16 slot found on many Sandy Bridge ATX motherboards, but unless the board comes equipped with a special support chip like Nvidia’s NF200, the third slot would typically be hobbled at x4 speed, anyway. If you’re a member of the serious-enthusiast crowd and run a trio of video cards, you’re best off choosing a board like the Z68X-UD5-B3 instead, which includes the NF200 chip to add additional PCIe lines, allowing multiple cards to run at faster speeds.
Unlike some of the higher-end boards we saw in our Spring 2011 motherboard roundup, the Z68X-UD3H-B3 lacks dedicated power, reset, and CMOS buttons on the board itself. To clear the CMOS memory, you’ll need to use a screwdriver or paper clip to short a pair of pins—not ideal. (No jumper is included.) These pins reside right next to the case LED/button connector pins, and will likely be difficult to reach behind the tangle of reset/power/LED wires. We wish Gigabyte had taken a different approach on this particular feature.
Expansion & Ports
The Z68X-UD3H-B3 comes equipped to host an army of USB devices. It has support for four USB 3.0 ports, two on the back panel and another pair available via a motherboard header connector. However, Gigabyte doesn’t include a back-panel slot apparatus for the second pair of ports, so if your case doesn’t have USB 3.0 ports, you’ll need to purchase a USB 3.0 slot plate to make use of the second and third ports. The back panel also includes four USB 2.0 ports, with headers on the motherboard supporting an impressive eight additional ports. Again, though, Gigabyte failed to include a backplate with cabling to make use of any of these headers right out of the box. (For a primer on board slots, ports, and headers, check out our video primer on motherboard technology and buying.)
The board supports eight SATA drives, with the Z68’s onboard controller supporting a pair of SATA 6Gbps ports and four SATA 3Gbps ports. One of the 3Gbps ports is actually routed to the eSATA port on the back panel, so only five of the six chipset ports are found on the motherboard. However, Gigabyte also includes an additional pair of SATA ports on a separate Marvell controller. What sets these apart: The dual Marvell SATA 6Gbps ports support Turbo XHD, which will detect a pair of identical drives and offer to automatically set up a RAID 0 array with them for you. If you’re planning on opting for a pair of SSDs, this will offer up even greater drive speed, though you’ll get none of the file-saving redundancy found in a redundant RAID configuration.
On the audio front, an optical digital-audio port is available, in addition to the typical six analog surround-sound connectors. A single PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector is included for legacy devices, and two IEEE 1394 ports (one via a motherboard header) are also present. Rounding out the connectivity conveniences, you’ll find a Gigabit Ethernet port, plus a connector for adding an optional RS-232 serial port via a backplate cable. The layout looks like this…
As you can see above (and we mentioned earlier), the Z68X-UD3H-B3 also includes a grab bag of onboard video ports: HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort, and VGA. Any two of these can be active at one time, whether you’re relying on the on-chip video or have installed a separate video card.
Other Features
Gigabyte uses what it calls “Hybrid EFI” technology for its BIOS scheme on this board. Entering the BIOS screen, you see a traditional, text-based Award BIOS with the ultra-detailed timing settings that enthusiasts expect from Gigabyte’s boards. Though it’s not a full implementation of UEFI firmware, it does support some crucial UEFI features, notably the installation of 3TB hard drives, and the company includes a utility for enabling these monster-capacity drives even on 32-bit operating systems like Windows XP. The board also includes Gigabyte’s Touch BIOS utility, a Windows-based utility that gives access to many BIOS settings without having to jump out of the OS. Experienced users will find this handy for quick adjustments, and casual tweakers will appreciate the ability here to activate Gigabyte’s Smart QuickBoost utility, which offers three levels of automatic overlocking.
Another nice feature involves this board’s USB-charging capabilities. The Z68X-UD3H-B3’s USB ports offer a fast “On/Off Charge” feature that Gigabyte claims will shorten charge time of your connected devices like the Apple iPad by up to 40 percent compared with standard USB ports. And like many recent laptops, the board supports charging devices with the PC in standby or power-off modes.
Conclusion
Overall, the Z68X-UD3H-B3 offers an impressive feature set for a board priced well under $200. The more expensive boards we looked at in concert with this one are certainly justified if you’re looking to install three video cards, overclock at extreme speeds, connect 10 hard drives, or test your board outside of a case. But for users with more typical—but not necessarily modest—performance and feature requirements, the Z68X-UD3H-B3 supplies full Z68 chipset features, easy automated overclocking, and the ability to run with onboard video or up to two video cards, all at a very reasonable price (about $170, when we wrote this in late May 2011). With its onboard video outputs, it’s also an excellent choice as the basis for an always-on system or home-theater PC. You can use the onboard video to save power most of the time, but add in a fast graphics card whose demanding power draw will only kick in while gaming.
Source:http://computershopper.com/components/reviews/gigabyte-z68x-ud3h-b3
