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Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK Black Edition reviewed

by on29 December 2014
Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK Black Edition Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK Black Edition

Index

The Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK Black Edition uses a black and gold color scheme which is good if you like classic designs. There is not a lot of gold coloured components, which is good – for example the Z97X-UD5H (non-black edition) features a gold heatsink which is a bit too much. Humidity protection is ensured thanks to the glass fabric PCB. ESD protection is on board, along with, anti-surge support, and short circuit protection.

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Here we see the 10k capacitors, 2 oz copper PCB, and 15-micron gold plated CPU socket. All-digital twelve phase power delivery is used, featuring ultra-low ESR solid black electrolytic capacitors from Nippon Chemi-con and Nichicon rated at 10,000 hours at 105°C.

Altogether six fan headers are provided, including four system fan headers, one 3-pin and three 4-pin. Unfortunately they are all placed along the motherboard’s bottom edge. One should have been located near the rear chassis fan and one next to the 24-pin connector. Two 4-pin PWM headers are good choice for the CPU.

Next to the socket you will also find two International Rectifiers 3570A and 3598 controllers designed to control and operate the power delivery system and voltage regulation. Two low profile heatsinks are used to cool the motherboard’s MOSFETs, and are connected via one heatpipe.

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The M.2 connector is well positioned, between the CPU socket and upper PCIe expansion slot.

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The user can install up to 32GB of memory in four dual-channel slots. According to the official spec, the top memory speed is 1600MHz (as with most Haswell generation parts). However, unofficial support should extend to faster modules, including 3200MHz modules.

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The upper right corner is home to the oversized on/off button, as well as clear CMOS and restart buttons. The dual BIOS offers robust durability and redundancy. Using the two BIOS switches, it is possible to choose single or dual BIOS mode. This has been a common feature on Gigabyte motherboards for years and it can come in very handy indeed.

The location of the debug LED leaves much to be desired, because it can be obscured by the USB 3.0 header located right next to the display.

The audio subsystem is improved thanks to the Texas Instruments N5532 amplifier, the Realtek ALC1150 part and signal filtering through a series of capacitors and a discrete PCB layer.

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Although the board features three x16 slots, 3-way CrossFire is supported in a x8/x4/x4 configuration, while Nvidia users can build 2-way SLI rigs (since SLI requires PCI x8 connections). The layout should accommodate two triple-slot cards at x8/x8 bandwidth. Note the lack of a PLX chip. The two legacy PCI slots are really not necessary on this sort of product.

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Gigabyte decided to offer an auxiliary SATA power connector to provide extra juice to multi-GPU configurations.

The Z97 chipset provides six SATA 6Gbps connectors, with a further two ports provided by an add-on Marvell controller. The SATA Express connector is located in front of the chipset.

Bear in mind that you cannot use the M.2 slot alongside a SATA Express connection, more precisely SATA ports 5 and 6. This is made clear by a sticker visible on the next image.

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The rear video connectors are fed through the ASMedia ASM1442K and NXP PTN3360DBS chips.

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Last modified on 29 December 2014
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