Last time we reviewed a Z68 motherboard, it was the Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3. We quite liked the board for its price range, but felt that overclocking was held back by its small 4+2 phase CPU voltage regulator circuit. Today we’ll be looking at something a bit more robust from Gigabyte, the Z68XP-UD4. This board comes equipped with a far more powerful VRC – 16+1+1 phases for the CPU and its components to be exact.

The Z68XP-UD4 retails for about $200 online right now, about $75 more than the Z68A-D3H-B3. You should go into this review expecting overclocking to be the main concern for a board like this. It’s not an over-the-top flashy board with two-of-everything, machine gun heatsinks, and more lights than a Christmas tree; most of the focus was put on a high end voltage regulator for the CPU, with a few extras thrown in.

We already covered the new features of the Z68 chipset in a recent review, so if you want to know why you should consider it and not the P67 or H55 for your Sandy Bridge build, read here first. For this review, we’ll get right to checking out the layout, and then take a closer look at the components of the board before moving on to overclocking results and performance.