Gigabyte X58A-UD9 SLI XL-ATX Gaming Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,193 words · ~10 min read
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apparently in this video we're going to be comparing the cameraman's car to my
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car I think the cameraman wins but that's neither here nor there actually
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what we're going to be talking about is the Gigabyte x58a ud9 this is a very
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exciting board which I've received endless requests to unbox and have a
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look at it so let's start with the front of the Box unlocked power with
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electricity and lightning bolts all over the place and uh for some reason the
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camera wants me to hold this oh maybe he wants me to hold it next to the iPhone
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that's here onoff charge that's another really cool feature that we've seen on
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some of gigabytes newest boards onoff charge allows you to charge things via
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the USB ports whether your computer is on or off hence the name onoff charge so
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including iPhones iPods uh whatever else charges by USB let's have a look what
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else do we got here delivers maximum CPU power with 24 phase CPU power built into
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this board we have support for four-way Crossfire X four-way SLI it has a
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three-year warranty in the US and Canada supports Intel's extreme edition six
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core CPUs as well as having their 333
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onboard acceleration USB 3.0 three times
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USB power so that means if you're using a hub you can power three times as many
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devices without plugging in an additional power adapter as well as
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Ultra durable 3 SATA 3 and any any other
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number of three three-year warranty uh I don't know there's got to be three of
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something else uh supports i7 i7 extreme
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and it's x58 that's three more things okay I don't know where I was
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going with that let's take this piece of
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cardboard off and have a look at the board so this is all basically the same
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stuff um that we saw on the front it has
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smart dual landan so you've got land port automatic switching between the two
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physical gigabit land chips offering hassle free zero downtime high-speed
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network connectivity hybrid silent Pipe 2 so that means you can either hook up
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water cooling or you can hook up this huge air cooling heat sink to your board
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depending on which route you want to go more unlocked power okay and then let's
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go around and have a look at the back of the box which is exactly the same stuff
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again okay why don't we just open it up and have a look at this sweet board then
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and we'll stop looking at the Box although it is a fairly nice box I'll
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definitely give Gigabyte that it's a very snazzy looking box it's very shiny
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see I don't know if you can see this in the Sun but you see how like shiny it is
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can you can you see those reflective little dots in the oh that's not what I
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want you to look at okay let's open up the board further Ado oh I hit the camera
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all right so the first thing we're going to find inside here
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is oh that was just a teaser the first thing we're going to look at is the
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accessories so in terms of accessories we should find a fairly fully loaded
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package here uh we have a three-way SLI Bridge we have a four-way SLI Bridge
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because both of those configurations are supported we have the users manual as
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well as the driver DVD don't use this download the latest off the Gigabyte
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website we have oh hold on hold on uh
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congratulations on your oh neat okay we
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have a Gigabyte uh VIP card okay uh what do you get register
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today for a chance to win an Apple
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iPad cool okay uh we have a gigaby
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sticker some extra motherboard standoffs and I'll explain why we need those in a
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minute we have a smart 6 users manual as well as a multilingual installation
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guide book then on the other side we have some SATA 6 gbit per second
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cables uh four of them to be precise oh wow yeah four okay and then
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we have an i cable we have two long
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Crossfire Bridges we have an EA bracket
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so this includes power 2 EA ports and that all plugs in internally and then a
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couple of Molex or one Molex to two SATA power adapter so that means you can just
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plug in be drives it's very convenient for storage as well as two e SATA to
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SATA cables we have an IO shield and a
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third Crossfire Bridge no that's an SL oh okay that's a straight SLI Bridge
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these are two Crossfire Bridges and then we have three-way and four-way SLI
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Bridges so that pretty much takes care of the entire accessory package for this
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particular board go ahead and put all that back in there do that and now we
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will have a look finally at the board itself no I'm lying again okay we're
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going to have a look at the extreme
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cooler that you can actually put on top of the the hybrid silent pipe that you
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can put on top of it this is the same one that we've seen included ever since
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the x58 extreme oh there's a a sticker
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that fell off here okay supports an extra 8 Pin CPU connector so the first
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thing that you should notice about this board if you're a very observant viewer
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is that it is not a standard ATX board
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so right here you can see a gap between
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where normally you'd have the first slot and where the first slot actually is on
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this board so here I'm just going to grab a board my ghetto ancient motherboard that
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I use to compare size every once in a while so we're going to just put that
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over top of the Gigabyte 9 and you can
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see it's quite a bit longer on the bottom and also quite a bit wider so
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this is sort of an XL ATX eatx sort of
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hybrid form factor board and uh yeah so that's the first
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thing that you'll notice you'll also notice it has seven PCI Express 16x
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slots although they're not all electrical 16x so this one this one this
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one and this one are all actually wired for 16x while this one this one and this
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one are only wired for
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8X next we have uh yeah that's pretty
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cool so that's the cooler that is going to be cooling the uh the self Bridge as
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well as the nf200 chips that power this particular board uh that's the way that
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Gigabyte was able to achieve so many PCI
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Express slots you can actually populate every single slot I believe they'll all
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run at 8X and I don't recall whether it's using one nf200 chip or or two
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nf200 chips uh so if you know the answer to that please post it in the comments
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under the video and I would be eternally grateful so why don't we start at the
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CPU socket I'll start over again uh this is an LGA 1366 socket it's fairly bog
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standard as far as that goes it is a loat socket so you don't have to worry
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about any problems with the CPU contacting the pins correctly if you are
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concerned about that sort of thing to the left of the socket we have two 8 Pin
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EPS connectors so that means you can deliver a whole lot of power to that CPU
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through this motherboard although you only need to plug in one of them you can
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see this little sticker here supports an extra CPU 8 Pin power connector next we
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have six DDR3 module slots they are running in
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triple channel so the first ones you're going to populate are going to be the white ones and then you'd populate the
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blue ones it supports up to 24 gigs of memory our 24 pin connectors in its
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ideal location along the right hand edge of the board and also along the right
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hand edge of the board and I love this you've got your power and reset switches
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this is where they belong not at the bottom of the board because whether
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you're on a test bench or whether you're in a case it's hard to get at switches
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that are down at the very bottom right of the board this is always easy to
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access cuz it's next to your RAM where there won't be a video card or a CPU
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heat sink overhanging it perfect thank you Gigabyte good work next we have yes
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four SATA 3 6 gbit per second Port so
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the white ones are colorcoded for SATA 6 GB per second we have an IDE port in
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between them and then we have six SATA 2 3 gbit per second ports running off of
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the Intel Southbridge we have an LED uh
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diagnostic the display right here we have our front panel connectors front
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USB front USB front USB front fire wire
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a floppy connector just in case you are still have a floppy drive and then we
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have two additional Molex connectors so
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one here at the very Bott bottom left and then one up above the PCI Express
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slots and those are going to be to provide auxiliary power to a super beefy
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graphics card configuration that you might want to plug into a board like
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this so let's have a bit of a closer look at the cooling solution I know we
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looked at the self Bridge cooling before I'm not talking about that chip
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cameraman okay we had a closer look at the self Bridge solution before so
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that's here that's just a big block of metal basically and then we're going to
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be relying on because there isn't actually a whole lot of cooling
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potential here so if you're water cooling this board only the CPU I'd be a
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little bit concerned because there's a whole lot of stuff here to cool you've
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got your uh SATA 6 um SATA 6 chipset
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down here you got your South Bridge you got your North Bridge you got an nf200
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or two don't forget to write a comment if you know you've got your mosfets and
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that's a whole lot of stuff and you've only got these heat sinks right here and
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that's pretty much it I mean this doesn't really have any air cooling potential to it it's got like a little
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tiny heat sink in there but that's not getting any air flow and then this is
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just a big block of metal so you either need to connect the hybrid silent pipe
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or you need to connect water cooling to the North Bridge block right here and
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that's what's going to take care of cooling all of this stuff because it is
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all connected via heat pipes so as long as you cool this spot right here you
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make sure you take care of your mosfets as well as all of your chipsets on a
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board like this front audio connector is here and let's have a look at the back
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connectivity on this motherboard so so first of all we've got two PS2 ports
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personally I think that's necessary I like PS2 ports they're useful uh yeah
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it's Legacy but I don't think it's that big of a deal next we've got cameraman
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wants it at this angle for some reason all right next we've got digital audio
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out so we have Optical as well as coaxial we have a clear Simo switch and
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it's absolutely idealist possible location on the back panel you can
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always reach that no matter what is installed on the board we have two
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firewire ports we have two USB 2.0 ports
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two USB 2.0 eat combo ports let me just
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double check that that is indeed what those are yes it is we have two more USB
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2.0 ports two USB 3.0 ports 2 gbit
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landan as well as 7.1 audio out so thank
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you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Gigabyte x58a ud9 and
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just for scale I'm going to take the cameraman's iPhone again and show you
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just how huge this board is yeah that's
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right the South Bridge heat SN is like the size of an
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iPhone