Gigabyte P67A-UD7 P67 LGA1155 Sandy Bridge SLI Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,866 words · ~9 min read
0:00
welcome to another lonus tech tips unboxing this is going to be for
0:04
gigabytes highest end p67 series board
0:07
this is the p67a ud7 we have full
0:10
support for Intel's latest core I3 i5 and i7 processors on the LGA 1155
0:17
platform although if you're putting an I3 on this thing shame on you um so the
0:22
first thing we're going to find out about this board is that it has a three-year warranty okay and it delivers
0:26
maximum CPU power so why don't we go ahead and open up the front of the box
0:31
and find out what exactly Gigabyte means by that well they have equipped this
0:35
motherboard with a 24 phas power design
0:40
because on the p67 platform most of the
0:43
overclocking Intrigue has been removed from the motherboard side because we're
0:47
pretty much just overclocking using the CPU multiplier the most important thing
0:51
the motherboard manufacturers can do for you these days is provide a stable
0:55
platform with lots of features and great power delivery because that's how you're
0:59
going to get the most out of your chip they've also designed their chipset
1:03
cooling design to be uh cooled well by a
1:06
downdraft CPU Cooler so something like a Noctua NH c14 would be a great choice
1:12
for a board like this let's go ahead over here and have a look at what else
1:15
Gigabyte has to say for themselves on this board here's the 24 phase power
1:19
yeah delivers maximum CPU power we get it you've got uh overclocking
1:23
performance which they're saying is more higher is better okay and then they're
1:27
saying they've also got a longer lifetime because because they have their Ultra durable 3 technology plus dual
1:32
power switching okay thanks guys next we have their 333 onboard acceleration
1:37
which means you have support for SATA 3 6 gbit per second you've got USB power
1:43
3x which means that you can run up to three times the number of peripherals
1:47
off one USB 3.0 Port using a hub and then you've also got 3x uh USB 3.0 which
1:54
is up to 10 times the speed of USB 2.0
1:57
support for three-way SLI and three-way oh I'm sorry that totally moved and
2:02
three-way Crossfire which is a bit unique for our p67 board because most of
2:07
them are only going to have support for two-way SLI and two-way
2:11
Crossfire and that's pretty much it oh yeah also they're onof charge feature so
2:16
you can charge your uh iPhone or iPad or
2:20
whatever other device even when this PC
2:23
is powered off so they've got nice black
2:26
internals or in internals interior here on the all the packaging let's see what
2:31
Gigabyte has included with this board okay first we have a warning
2:37
socket 1155 is not socket 1156 so please
2:42
please make sure if you're buying a p67 board like this one you are not trying
2:47
to install a socket 1156 processor in it
2:51
here we've got our users manual as well as a six series drivers and utilities
2:56
DVD which you should throw away and download the latest from the Gigabyte website multilingual installation guide
3:01
book showing you how to install your CPU RAM all that good stuff next we have a
3:05
couple of stickers a Gigabyte one and a Dolby Home Theater one finally we have
3:10
an IO Shield so that'll go on the back of the board handily
3:14
colorcoded for your convenience next we
3:17
have uh two no four SATA cables uh two
3:21
right angle and two straight we have a three-way SLI Bridge a two-way SLI
3:26
Bridge remember that if you need Crossfire Bridges those will be included
3:29
with your graphics card we have one of their awesome back panel
3:35
eSATA PCI guys so you plug that into two
3:38
of your internal ports you get more eSATA then you can use that adapter to
3:41
plug in a couple Standalone drives and you got some eSATA cables this is a
3:45
great little kit big fan gigabytes been including that with their boards for a
3:49
little while so this is appropriately bright yellow okay so
3:54
let's go ahead and close that up we're done with that let's have a look at the
3:57
board itself this is it the p67a ud7 now unlike some
4:03
of their uh last generation ud7 boards
4:07
Gigabyte has not opted for a non-standard size to this board this is
4:11
a standard ATX board although other than that there's nothing really very
4:16
standard about it this is an exceptional looking board and out of all of the p67
4:22
boards I've seen so far I think it features the best color scheme which yes
4:26
I'm shallow whatever guys deal with it I
4:30
love the color scheme I was pretty tired
4:33
of seeing the traditional here I happen
4:36
to have one handy the traditional Gigabyte baby blue
4:42
and you know white and blue and I mean
4:46
it looks all right but show me something it matches that's the challenge right so
4:50
let's start with the uh the overall layout of the board here we've got our
4:53
LGA 1155 socket right here in the middle
4:57
surrounded by 24 phases of C CPU power
5:00
delivery we have our 8 pin connector up here in the top left of the board
5:05
exactly where it belongs we've got a pretty Innovative looking cooling design
5:09
going on here on the mosfets as well as on the chipsets so you can see there's
5:13
heat pipes connecting these two heat pipes connecting this guy and this guy
5:16
and then I can't tell if it's one heat pipe going all the way through but there's also a heat pipe running between
5:21
the North Bridge and the mosfets up here
5:24
uh in terms of RAM support we have uh up
5:28
to four dims in dual Channel mode so that is
5:32
a two Banks of dual Channel memory supported by this particular board this
5:36
is DDR3 memory just like the last generation p-55 so if you are upgrading
5:42
you can reuse your old p-55 compatible
5:46
memory moving down this uh right hand edge of the board we've got a couple
5:49
useful things first we have an onboard power switch love these and I love the
5:53
location of this I'm actually pretty tired of seeing them down here on the
5:57
down on the bottom edge of the board because when you have a bunch of graphics cards installed you can't reach
6:02
that anymore so this is great next we have a clear Simo switch also
6:06
conveniently located right here and last but not least we have a reset switch
6:10
right here the reset switch you don't use as much so I can uh definitely
6:14
forgive them for using a cheaper switch than the power one there we have our 24
6:18
pin connector in its ideal location along the right hand edge of the board
6:22
and then next we have our let's see what
6:25
are these okay here we go so these ports are sort of colorcoded these are SATA 2
6:30
3 gbit per second these ones are SATA 3
6:34
6 gbit per second and these ones are
6:38
running off of the thirdparty chipset SATA 3 6 gbit per second so SATA 2 SATA
6:44
3 this one's running off the Intel chipset this one is not we have an LED
6:50
post reader and apparently there's a clear SEO somewhere around here although
6:54
I don't actually see it um so maybe you
6:58
guys can sort of point out where that is for me here's all of your front panel
7:01
connectors here is your USB there is your front USB 3.0 apparently wow you've
7:08
got look at that you've got two front USB 3 how many chipsets did they put on
7:14
this thing okay well that's outstanding so you have two front panel headers for
7:18
USB 3.0 that's great right now there aren't really any cases that support
7:22
that standard yet but hopefully by the time you watch this video there will be
7:26
if you're watching it a lot later here is fire wire which if you're honestly
7:30
still using then good for you I guess someone has to and then let's have a
7:34
look at our slot layout we've got a single PCIe 1X slot we've got three PCIe
7:41
16x slots which are all actually only
7:44
wired up to PCIe 8X and then we have an
7:47
oh sorry okay these two are wired for
7:51
full 16x operation although I don't know what they actually run at and then this
7:55
one is wired only for 8X and this one is wired only for 8x
7:59
so if you are running three-way Crossfire or three-way SLI don't kid
8:04
yourself you're not going to be running it 16x 16x 16x but it hasn't really been
8:08
demonstrated that it impacts performance negatively anyhow all right we have two
8:13
Legacy PCI slots in what I'd say is pretty much an ideal location because it
8:17
looks like the way it's set up these are going to be your uh 16 X1 and 16x2 Slots
8:22
so you would cover these these ones if you're running two dual slot graphics
8:27
cards it doesn't leave as much spacing as I normally like to see but it does
8:30
leave you pretty good expansion options you have one 8X slot left as well as one
8:35
PCI slot and one 1X PCIe slot for any
8:39
expansion cards that you require let's move around to the back of the board and
8:43
have a look at is one of the more impressive IO Shields that I've ever
8:47
seen so we've got our PS2 combo Port which I'm still a big fan of love these
8:52
things they're great we have six yes
8:55
count them six USB 3 2.0 super speed ports we have
9:02
digital audio in both Optical and coax seal flavors we have dual EA two USB 2.0
9:09
ports and two fire wire ports dual gigabit Lan as well as 7.1 audio out so
9:16
thank you for checking out my unboxing of the p67a ud7 don't forget to
9:20
subscribe to Linus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and
9:24
other videos about computers and stuff
9:30
so I just want to give you guys a brief explanation of how the PCIe slots work
9:34
on this board there is an nf200 chip which is basically splitting the two 8ex
9:40
slots into either okay here so bear with
9:44
me here it's either taking the 16x bandwidth and splitting it into 16x 16x
9:49
or it's taking that 16x bandwidth and splitting it into 8X 8X 8X and 8x so you
9:55
still do have good bandwidth to all four slots even if they're all populated