GIGABYTE X99-UD4 Motherboard Review

[PAGETITLE=Introduction, A Tour Of The Hardware][Top Ad] Since posting a look at ASUS' X99-DELUXE in February, I've been anxious to talk about another X99 motherboard I've spent quite a bit of time with: GIGABYTE's X99-UD4. Based on the fact that you're here reading this, you've probably surmised that I'm going to take care of that now. Similar to the goals of ASUS' DELUXE series, GIGABYTE's UD, or "Ultra Durable" series aims to offer well-rounded solutions that don't cut corners. Being that the UD4 I'm looking at here is an X99 one, it goes without saying that it's going to be beefier than most mainstream boards, and that's something its ~$250 price tag could also allude to. The UD4 is designed for those who want to go the route of a high-end platform but don't need to go over-the-top. Part of that means it has no wireless, but it still does have an M.2 slot, as well as support for SATA Express. Oh - and 64GB of fast DDR4-2800 memory. Like the rest of GIGABYTE's X99 UD boards, the UD4 sports a black base color with gray and gold accents. The X99-UD4 doesn't just pack a ton of features into its modest ATX frame, it also sports a smart design. I appreciate boards that don't settle some important connectors inward, or at odd angles. The 8-pin motherboard connector should prove accessible for almost all builds, and the same goes for the chassis connectors. Beyond that, those wanting to take the quad GPU route will have ample spacing for that. GIGABYTE X99-UD4 Architecture Intel X99 (LGA2011-v3) Form-Factor ATX (12″ x 9.6″) Memory Up to 8x8GB DDR4-2800 Multi-GPU 4-way NVIDIA SLI 4-way AMD CrossFire Expansion 4x PCIe 3.0 x16 3x PCIe 2.0 x1 Storage 10x SATA 6Gbps (Intel) 1x SATA Express 6Gbps (Intel) 1x M.2 (PCIe SSD: 2242/2260/2280) Network Intel Gigabit Ethernet Wireless Can be added with add-on M.2 card Audio Realtek ALC1150 8-channel Optical S/PDIF out USB Back-panel: 2x 3.0 & 4x 2.0 (Intel), 4x 3.0 (Renesas), Internal: 2x 3.0 & 4x 2.0 (Intel) Back I/O 1x 1Gbps LAN, 6x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 1x Optical S/PDIF, 5x Audio Jacks, PS/2 Keyboard + Mouse Features @BIOS, Q-Flash, Smart Switch, Xpress Install, EasyTune, ON/OFF Charge, EZ Setup, DualBIOS, Smart Recovery 2, Smart TimeLock, USB Blocker, Fast Boost, Cloud Station, V-Tuner, Ambient LED, 5x 4-pin Fan Headers A couple of things to note about the UD4 is that it includes an x4 M.2 slot, so you can equip yourself with one of the fastest SSDs going. If you don't want to go that route, you can install a Wi-Fi card instead, although if you have enough PCIe slots left over, that'd be another route to take for that. If you don't use SATA Express, you'll have 10 SATA ports to take advantage of, and at the back, there are 10 USB ports, with a mixture of 3.0 and 2.0. On paper, the feature set looks great, but a visual tour is often better. Let's get on it. As mentioned earlier, GIGABYTE's X99 Ultra Durable series all have a black base color and are accented by gray and gold. Personally, I love clean aesthetics like this. If you want something a little flashier, the company's Gaming or SOC series might be worth a look (the SOC series in particular has an awesome orange theme). At the bottom-right corner of the UD4 we find the 10 SATA ports (2 will become occupied if SATA Express used), as well as the chassis connectors and USB headers (1x 3.0, 2x 2.0). At the bottom left of the board is its audio card, a Realtek ALC1150 offering that supports up to 115dBA and has a built-in amplifier. Interestingly, GIGABYTE separates the left and right audio channels by putting them on separate PCB layers. That doesn't meant that the solution only supports stereo, though: 7.1 support is there if you need it. Four x16 PCIe slots are provided on this board in addition to a trio of x1 slots. In between them all, you'll be able to spot the M.2 connector. Also here are two 4-pin fan headers. Before moving on, it's worth pointing out the hard-to-read "ATX4P" port in the shot above. This is for use with a 4-pin Molex connector, and is recommended by GIGABYTE if you're using two or more graphics cards. I'd have to imagine that with two cards, you're never going to run into a problem, but if you have a Molex connector lingering around, it won't hurt to plug it in. With three or four GPUs, I'd consider it important to utilize this extra power source. Up at the socket area we can find the... socket, as well as the 8 DIMM slots. Two 4-pin fan headers can be seen to the bottom-right of the socket. Another header can be seen to the left of the first set of DIMM slots. And here's a close-up of the M.2 connector. With it, you can install a Wi-Fi module, or even better, a ridiculously fast solid-state drive, such as Samsung's SM951. There's not too much to see at the top of the board, but I did want to highlight the simple fact that the 8-pin motherboard connector is very accessible. GIGABYTE seems to have a knack of occasionally placing this connector in an odd manner (either up and down or inside the board an inch or two), so I was glad to see a normal implementation here. For back panel connectivity, the UD4 offers dual PS/2 ports, 6x USB 3.0 and 4x 2.0, a single LAN port, as well as a full complement of audio jacks. To the right of these is a mount for a Wi-Fi module, should you end up installing one (I am not entirely sure these are common). In way of accessories, GIGABYTE includes four sleeved SATA cables (a nice touch), a CrossFire bridge, and an impressive four SLI bridges, with two being designed for 3-way configurations that have different gap lengths. Two unique components in this picture include the I/O panel and also the 1-to-3 power cable. On the I/O panel front, you can plug the little cable into the motherboard to activate its LED lighting, while the cable is to be used if you are going to be doing some extreme overclocking. To take advantage of the feature, you'd plug this cable into the board's lone 8-pin motherboard power port, and then populate the three ends with cables straight from the power supply. It probably goes without saying, but this will not be a commonly used feature. Overall, the X99-UD4 is a great-looking motherboard and I can't manage to complain about much of anything. If I really had to dig deep and come up with something, it'd be that I'd like to see the board offer 6x 4-pin fan headers. For some, 6 headers might not be needed, but if it adds another header to a different spot on the board, it might be more convenient than what's already there. With the hardware tour tackled, let's check out the X99-UD4's software. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=A Tour Of The Software & EFI][Top Ad] An archive including all of the screenshots we captured (EFI + software) can be downloaded here (.ZIP, 2.0MB). When I took GIGABYTE's Z97X-Gaming G1 WIFI-BK for a spin last fall, I remarked that the company had made great strides with regards to its EFI quality in recent years - but, not all was perfect. I ended my look at the EFI by saying, "it feels like to me that GIGABYTE focused way too much of its efforts on prettying up its EFI than improving its functionality this generation." Well, it's as if I wasn't the only one who had that concern, because with the EFI on this X99-UD4 board, the complaint no longer sticks. This EFI still has three different interfaces, which some might seem a bit clunky, but all are pretty usable, and look great. You can see the main interface below. This is similar in design to the original EFI interface GIGABYTE rolled out, but it sports much-improved aesthetics. In fact, this might be one of the best-looking EFIs to have ever been released. It's clean, and almost classy. Unlike the interface we'll look at in a moment, this one isn't high-resolution; it's locked to 1024x768. In a way, I don't mind this, simply because the interface in general is good. An EFI doesn't need to be about eye candy, after all. An expanded interface can be seen below. This one scales up to 1080p, although for some reason, it was a bit buggy when I used it (note cut-off text at the bottom, and black space to the right). I am not sure if that's a typical issue, as the last GIGABYTE board I looked at didn't have that problem. Nonetheless, the default theme featured here is nice, although I find the interface a lot more tedious to work with than the simpler one seen above. You might disagree, which is why it's great to have a couple of different options. The third and final EFI on this board is simply called "Startup Guide". It's essentially a toned-down EFI, which could be useful for those who need to tweak very little. I find this interface to be a bit too simple, but once again, it's not a bad thing to have the option here. The software component of the X99-UD4 is called EasyTune, and since it's changed very little since the version available for GIGABYTE's Z97 boards, I'll point you to that review page if you wish to learn more about it. One thing that does differentiate this particular EasyTune from the Z97 version is that there's an "Ambient LED" option in the "App Center", which controls the LED (off, still, beat, pulse) on the I/O panel (if you plugged in its power cable). I'd recommend installing EasyTune to anyone who wants to overclock their CPU automatically. The overclocks provided are admittedly modest compared to what you could pull off yourself, but that's not really the point. EasyTune's goal is to give you a stable overclock that anyone can pull off. Just note that the "Extreme" setting is unlikely to work for everyone, as that one in particular does actually push things a bit high (default is 4.1GHz on a Core i7-5960X, as an example). Overall, both the EFI and EasyTune software included are great iterations of what we've seen before. While I wasn't entirely pleased with some EFI choices on GIGABYTE's Z97 gaming board, I can't complain about that much here. Except for the fact that there's still no fan control solution in here. Both ASUS and MSI offer fantastic fan control...

GIGABYTE X99-UD4 Motherboard Review

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Rob Williams