So which Gigabyte Z87 motherboard and why?

im sure u'll be fine with the UD3H. The only difference I could make out between the two was colour and the UD4H has more power phases or something (16 vs 8 on UD3H)

Apart from that I think they identical. You could use a PCI-e sound card on the top of the first GC in slot number 1. It will be a tight fit next to the CPU cooler/fan header but its definitely possible. im no expert but would be confident getting it to work.
 
Just saw the link and posted this in the thread:

are gigabyte smoking crack?

sounds like a good offer until you have to:
take a picture of the serial numbers (mine is already installed so that aint going to be easy)
desecrate your motherboard box by peeling of the barcode sticker/tag
give them all your personal details AND banking details :O
fingers crossed you are one of the first 35

Cant be arsed I think
 
casual_eze said:
im sure u'll be fine with the UD3H. The only difference I could make out between the two was colour and the UD4H has more power phases or something (16 vs 8 on UD3H)

Apart from that I think they identical. You could use a PCI-e sound card on the top of the first GC in slot number 1. It will be a tight fit next to the CPU cooler/fan header but its definitely possible. im no expert but would be confident getting it to work.
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Thanks - I'll look into the power phases.

Yeah, unfortunately I have a regular PCI soundcard. I could fit a PCI-e version above the top GPU I'm sure, but that's another £45-ish to spend to replace the PCI card I have now.

... Also - does the PCI-e slot at the top share lanes with the top x16 slot? Will it take bandwidth away from the GPU in the top slot if it's occupied?


jb7 said:
I can't decide between the ud4 and ud5

What extra does the ud5 give, other than 2 sata ports?
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Extra LAN port, couple extra USB ports, heatpipes connecting the onboard heatsinks. The UD5 seems like a nice upgrade from the UD4 actually. The second LAN port would come in handy for me actually.
 
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I went with the UD3H myself .... I couldn't see much difference between the UD4H and UD3H. Couldn't go with the D3H as I wanted more than 6 SATA ports.

A year or 2 down the line I may get a more refined motherboard for overclocking once the Haswells have bedded down in the market. It happened to me when I went from a nForce 650i chipset to a P45 chipset motherboard.
 
Weazle said:
I went with the UD3H myself .... I couldn't see much difference between the UD4H and UD3H. Couldn't go with the D3H as I wanted more than 6 SATA ports.

A year or 2 down the line I may get a more refined motherboard for overclocking once the Haswells have bedded down in the market. It happened to me when I went from a nForce 650i chipset to a P45 chipset motherboard.
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The UD4H has 16 Power Phases vs 8 for the UD3H, there maybe more differences, but that's the main one.
 
stulid said:
The UD4H has 16 Power Phases vs 8 for the UD3H, there maybe more differences, but that's the main one.
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Realistically, is that likely to make much difference? On a Sandybridge board I'm sure it would be beneficial, but with Haswell tanking out at anything over about 1.3v is it likely to come into play at all?

The difference is only 20 quid I suppose...
 
That 20 quid difference was the clincher for me. In the grand scheme of things considering the overall cost of the build it wasn't going to break the bank!
 
its very cool indeed. lots of options/advanced settings. If you like to tinker its great.

Being a noob though and just getting back into decent pcs, im finding it a little overwhelming. i havent changed anything really apart from setting my memory to XMP profiles for 1600MHz.

I like the monitoring down the sides of the main page telling you stuff about the CPU/memory/temps etc. Gigabyte have semi decent windows software too that ive installed and that gives you access to some of the bios settings. Again though, its a bit much for me at moment so im slowly working my way through things.

If you have any specific questions, let me know and i'll try answer/take pics etc
cheers
 
next up is to consider upgrading the bios. I'm very much of the belief that if it aint broke dont try and fix it but my MB shipped with version F3 and F5 is out except there is no change log. With it being a new product there has got to be bugs they ironed out so im thinking about doing it anyway!

Can anyone advise whether they have used gigabyte windows tools to upgrade the bios and how risky that is? Much rather do that than faf about with bootable USB keys etc
 
qflash and through the bios is the best way,just extract the bios to a usb memory stick and press f8 to use qflash,the usb doesn't need to be bootable anymore just formatted in fat32 which they usually are anyway

you can also take bios screenshots and save them to a usb stick by pressing f12 in the bios

you'll soon get used to all the settings with time
 
JWildfire said:
I've been comparing specs for the past couple of days and im considering the UD3H, possibly the UD4H. I'm waiting for my 900D to be dispatched (via Specialtech) before I commit. Who knows, maybe the mobo price's will drop a little in that time, or more choices present themselves ;)
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Just placed my order :D
Went with the UD4H in the end, felt like the sweet spot between all three boards.

HAPPY DANCE!
 
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