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.
This is seriously one of the best motherboard reviews I have ever read. I really liked the “motherboard porn” and the fact you spent so much time on the VRM. Thanks!
Great board too ;)
I had a choice between this and the asus z68 vpro. I wish I would have gone with the gigabyte, but the asus had a combo deal on newegg at the time :(
Do you know if the text bios is actually a UEFI bios with a text interface? Or is it still a standard bios? Will Gigabyte eventually upgrade it since you say the bios chips are capable of UEFI?
I’ll ask Gigabyte and get back to you on this. Thanks for reading!
Researched for about 3 weeks before finally settling for this board. Bought this motherboard to go with my 2600k Sandy Bridge processor and 8GB Corsair Vengeance(soon to be increased to 32GB). It worked flawlessly out of the box. No problems no hang ups no hassles. Would definitely recommend this board to anyone who wants a system that performs at the highest level without spending $400 for a motherboard. The applications which come with it make overclocking a breeze and there is even a quick boot option which had my pc booting up within 6 secs from pressing the power button. simply put this thing rocks thus far and i would definitely recommend this product.
I have a question about the SATA3 connectivity.
Are there also some native SATA 3 controllers included on the Z68 chipset OR is this board Marvell controllers only?
The reason I’m asking this is because I’m considering doing a partial upgrade since I’m getting a Samsung 830 SSD and I’ve currently got a MSI P55-GD65 SATA 2 motherboard only.
The Z68 chipset has two native SATA 3 ports, and four SATA 2 ports. Gigabyte adds two more Marvell SATA 3 ports, but you won’t want to use those for your SSD.
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[...] the things that really matter, with few bells and whistles. We were extremely pleased with their Z68XP-UD4, so it will be interesting if they can replicate that performance with this 990FX [...]