P55A-UD7 Rev.1.0 Motherboard Review
Contents:
1. Introduction
2. Packaging & Accessories
3. Layout
4. BIOS
5. Test Setup & Overclocking.
6. Power Consumption
7. Max Overclock
8. Conclusion
1. Introduction
Today I got a call from a call from EXL Public Relations asking me if I would like to review some Gigabyte P55 chipset Motherboards. When she said she had a P55A-UD7 I could not resist.
The P55A-UD7 is Gigabyte’s flagship LGA 1156 motherboard packed with some of the best features available on any P55 chipset board. Its boasts of a 24 phase power- World's Best Phase Power Design, USB 3.0, Sata 6 Gbps, DDR 2600+,3 way SLI™ and 3 way CrossFireX, Dolby Home Theater®, Cloud OC (OC thru Mobile Phone), Water Block & Hybrid Silent-Pipe 2, Ultra Durable 3 design, featuring 2 ounces of copper, Japanese Solid Capacitors, 2 Gigabit LAN, Hardware OverVoltage Control IC, Visible Overvoltage Reminder, OV-Alert LED, Visible Overclocking Reminder, Visible Temperature Reminder & Onboard Quick Switches for power, reset & clear cmos.
2. Packaging and Accessories
At first glance the box is huge, bigger than 2 normal ATX motherboard boxes put one on top of the other. Nice Glittering front & back give an effect of multi-colour hologram, the front flap opens to reveal the motherboard and the features on the left.
Along with the normal accessories like PATA, SATA cable, Gigabyte also included e-sata expansion bracket with external power and e-sata cables.
Since the P55A-UD7 supports Tri-Sli, Gigabyte includes 2 bridges for SLI configuration, one rigged Tri-Sli bridge and a flexible normal SLI bridge.(However sample board I received was missing the latter.)
The Board comes with the Water block already fixed on the Nvidia NF200 controller, However for those of us using air cooling Gigabyte included what the call Hybrid Silent-Pipe 2. It’s a massive dual heat-pipe based heatsink that fits in place of the waterblock and aids in cooling the SB, NF200 & power mosfets as they are all connected by heat-pipes. But due to the size and design I think people with huge Cpu coolers might not be able to use this. (More on this Latter)
3.Board Layout & Looks.
Layout wise the 24-pin and 8 pin power connectors are exactly where I like them. 10x90° Sata connector don’t get in the way if u have huge VGA cards. Floppy, COM & front panel right at the bottom. Would have liked to see the Power button down with the reset & clear cmos Button instead of next to the ram slots. Overall a nice clean Layout with no heatsink obstructing any of the Pci slots.
Looks like Gigabyte could not fit all the 24 Phase mosfets on top so some of the mosfets are soldered to the bottom of the board.
However if u plan to use the silent-pipe 2 please note that it sits dangerously close to the first 16x Pcie slot, but since it has 2 pcie16x slot single vga card users should not have any problem as I used the second 16x slot and faced no issues with it.
Also with the heat-pipe attached I just managed to squeeze my Ultra 120 cooler any Cpu cooler bigger than the Ultra 120 will not be able to use the heat-pipe.
Back Panel has the normal set of connectors ps2 keyboard/mouse, usb ports, optical & coaxial digital audio out, e-sata ports, dual Gigabit lan ports and analogue audio plus 2 blue high speed USB 3 ports.
This is easily one of the best looking boards available in the market today. When I look at decal and No.7 running across the heatsink it reminds me so much of the Ford GT40 racing car.
4.Bios
Virtual Bios for P55A-UD7 is available here to check out.
GA-P55A-UD7
5. Test System & Overclocking Results
• GIGABYTE P55A-UD7 Rev1.0 F6 bios
• Intel Core i7 LGA-1156 875k CPU
• ThermalRight Ultra 120 Cooler
• 8GB Crucial BL25664FN1608
• Intel SSDSA2M080G2GC 80GB SSD
• MSI Hawk 5770
• Corsair TX650 PSU
• Windows 7 64-bit
Since the 875k is an unlocked cpu I decided to see just how high I could take it without increasing any voltages. Set everything to normal, disabled Turbo Boost and set load-line calibration to level 2.
Since I will be running these settings 24/7 decided to run all test at 4Ghz.
Cpu Test
PCMark Vantage
Cinebench
Memory Benchmark
HDD Benchmark
6.Power Consumption
At default 3.2GHz cpu unit consumes just 113 watts at idle.
At full load it pulls 263 watts
And at 4Ghz overclocked the same jumps to 315 watts.
7.Max Overclocks
With the limited time I had to spend with the board these are the overclocking results achieved.
The max I could take the bclk is 218mhz not bad as this was with 8gb ram.
Also quite sure it was the cpu and not the board that was limiting it.
Max clocks for the 875k was a decent 4.53ghz
Gigabyte has bundled the normal bunch of software with the board like EasyTune6 & Smart 6. But also included AutoGreen & Cloud Oc software which enables you to control/overclock your pc thru your mobile phone or from any internet browser. Not something needed but could be a cool feature to impress your friends. This is from my Samsung WM6 phone.
8.Conclusion
I have had this board for a week now and am amazed how stable this board is. Gigabyte have really loaded this board with everything you might need usb3, sata 6gb,firewire, e-sata, 10 Sata Ports addition Pci-e lanes and Bandwidth thru PEX8608 PCI-E bridge controller, Tri-Sli / Crossfire with the help of NF200 chipset, the world best 24-phase power design and a good software bundle.
Overall to sum it up it’s a feature packed board, excellent build quality, overclocked very well, superb hybrid silent pipe / water cooling, good software package and excellent packaging.
I would like to thank Esther, Harshal & Gigabyte for providing the sample board.
