TechRadar Verdict
Gigabyte's affordable X58 board brings Intel top chipset up to date with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps. With a BIOS tweak it might approach perfection.
Pros
- +
Ticks all our boxes for features
- +
USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps
- +
Competitively priced
Cons
- -
Not quite the overclocking king we expected
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Intel's LGA1366 socket is the highest performing PC platform, period. With motherboards typically costing over £200, it's also pretty pricey. In that context, the recently revised Gigabyte X58A-UD3R is a bit of a bargain at just £159.
Like all LGA1366 desktop boards, the X58A-UD3R is based on Intel's X58 chipset and designed to play ball with Intel's finest quad and hexa-core CPUs, namely Bloomfield and Gulftown.
Admittedly, the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R isn't literally the cheapest LGA1366 board you can buy, but it does come with several features you won't find on the likes of MSI's £140 X58 PRO, while at the same time as being around the same price as its arch nemesis, the Asus P6X58D-E.
For starters, you get both SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 and therefore bags of bandwidth.
Of course, these features are not natively supported by the Intel X58 chipset, so you only get a pair of ports for each.
For revision 2.0, Gigabyte has also tweaked the X58A-UD3R's power management with a view to improved overclocking headroom.
On paper, this board ticks all our boxes.
