Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H Review
Published by Hiwa Pouri on 17.11.14Page:
Conclusion
| Overall | + | - | |
| The Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H is available for as little as 115 Euro and therefore comes with a really attractive price tag. This board offers a reasonable feature mix in combination with an attractive design as well as good build quality. The UD3H is basically Gigabytes entry-level offer into their Ultra Durable class and the fact that this board just costs a little more than 100 Euro makes it highly attractive. | -
Design - Layout - Features |
||
| Layout | + | - | |
| Basically the Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H's Layout has been very well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors and apart from those there is even a SATA-Express port as well as a M.2 slot. The latter two greatly add to the storage flexibility of this board. Unfortunately there are no power and reset buttons and there is also no debug LED. Overall the decision to cut these features from the list is understandable, since the price of this board is very aggressive. Something that needs to be mentioned is the fact that only the first of the three full size PCI Express x16 slots has been wired with all 16 lanes. The second slot is attached using eight lanes and the third full size slot has been attached using four lanes. Inbetween the first and the second full size PCI-Express slot, there are two PCI-Express x1 slots. If you decide to setup an SLI or CrossFire configuration, there is plenty of space inbetween the card to breathe. | -
Angled SATA
connectors - Space around the CPU socket - Placement of PCI-Express x16 Slots - Voltage measuring points - Display connectors |
||
| Performance |
+ |
- |
|
| Calculating the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board ranks average in our comparison tables, which includes values from all Z87 motherboards we've tested too. When taking the average of all 2D results, can be found in the bottom third of our tables. On another note, we had a look at power consumption and noticed that this boards consumption is average. | - 3DMark 11 | - PCMark - Sleeping Dogs |
|
| BIOS - Overclocking |
+ |
- |
|
| As you might have expected from Gigabyte, you get an excellent BIOS which offers not only a boatload of tuning and tweaking options but is also very easy to use. Especially with the entry screen with which Gigabyte is trying and also succeeding to add elements which make the BIOS much easier to use for unexperienced users as well. | - Clear arrangement | ||
| Recommendation |
+ |
- |
|
| The Z97X-UD3H is a really good board if you don't want to rob a bank before building a gaming PC. Apart from that you can also build really nice and very fast office PC based on this motherboard. | - Gaming - Multimedia - Price |
- High-End | |
| Rating | |||
| We give the Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H very good 4.5 out of 5 stars. | |||
Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch
| Navigate through the articles | |
Gigabyte-Z97X-UD3H Preview |
ASUS Z97-Pro Gamer Preview
 |
|
|