wevsspot Posted March 6, 2012 Posted March 6, 2012 Negative ghost rider. I've got twin GTX 570s so both PCIe 16/8 slots will be in use. I'll just have to sandwich that Creative card in between the two. I've got two side panel fans so there will be some fresh airflow between the sound card and top video card as long as they aren't directly touching one another. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted March 6, 2012 Posted March 6, 2012 Gosh I hope there aren't any problems with this new board. I've lost count of how many builds I've done and can only recall one time when there was an issue with the motherboard I couldn't fix or resolve. And then get two bad in a row at the worst time. What are the chances............................. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
El_Capitan Posted March 6, 2012 Posted March 6, 2012 That was my experience with all the P67 boards. Something or other just didn't work right. Welcome to SB. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted March 6, 2012 Posted March 6, 2012 Kind of a slap in the face reality check really. After several years of rock solid service out of all my X58 boards, the SB experience came as a surprise. Kind of regretting my decision right now. I mainly did this whole thing to get native SATAIII support for my RAIDed SSDs. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted March 6, 2012 Posted March 6, 2012 You could always skip using the sound card. The onboard sounds surprisingly decent. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
d6bmg Posted March 7, 2012 Posted March 7, 2012 ^ That will depend on the sound card which he is using. Any x-fi card would be no match for onboard audio. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted March 7, 2012 Posted March 7, 2012 I guess if worse came to worse I could always slap my older Audigy2 ZS PCI card in. Or I guess I could sell my XFI Titanium PCIe card and get a different PCI card. I've got an aversion to onboard sound after using decent > excellent quality sound cards the last several years. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
d6bmg Posted March 7, 2012 Posted March 7, 2012 I guess if worse came to worse I could always slap my older Audigy2 ZS PCI card in. good idea. Or I guess I could sell my XFI Titanium PCIe card and get a different PCI card. Terrible idea. PCI-E is the future & PCI is dying. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted March 8, 2012 Posted March 8, 2012 Wanted to give everyone an update. The UD4 arrived yesterday and I had time to put it on the bench and test everything before I put it back in the case and under water. Thankfully everything on this board appears to work just great. Even better was that there wasn't a single glitch. No weird behavior, disappearing SLI when the onboard LAN was enabled and no Windows errors or hangs when USB3.0 is enabled (thank you Etron for an excellent USB3.0 controller and thank you Gigabyte for getting away from the Renasas controller). I know that someday I'll have to concede to the UEFI BIOS, but I'm just as happy having an old school AMI BIOS to navigate through. It's a good looking board, and as usual the Gigabyte PCB is super duty. It is sturdy, no flex even on the test bench and wasn't warped out of the box (more than I can say for the P8Z68 Deluxe from Asus). Overall I guess I'm happy with the purchase. In my haste to get ANY board that worked correctly I did give up some things that I immediately missed when I started working with this board, namely an onboard power and reset switch - but I guess I'll get used to that. And, as I mentioned earlier, I was disappointed in the lack of an external Clear CMOS button, but that is rectified easily enough by making my own clear switch or just keeping an old jumper handy. The only other feature I really missed was the front panel quick connect blocks provided with many MSI and Asus motherboards. No need to chastise me, because I knew all of these things when I decided on the UD4, just pointing out some shortcomings on this board compared to others in the same price range. My biggest concern was PCIe spacing, especially between the top PCIe x16 slot and the two x1 slots below. I knew I'd lose the first x1 slot, but putting my XFI in the second one leaves about 1/8 inch gap between the sound card and fan shroud on my top GTX 570. I'm going to install it like that and run some 3D benchmarks to see how bad the restricted airflow affects temps on the top card. It always runs hot anyway because of all the heat that comes up from the bottom card. Maybe the XFI will act as a heatshield The UD4 is a great looking motherboard. The PCB is solid, and I mean solid black thanks to the thickness and quality construction. I didn't measure the PCB thickness, but it is noticeably thicker than the Asus PCB, and significantly thicker than the PCB used on the MSI Z68A-GD65 motherboards. The CPU power circuitry is crazy long and stretches the length of the rear I/O ports plus some to give you an idea, so the corresponding heat sink looks like it is a foot long I hope that the lack of some features at this price point is an indicator that Gigabtye focused more on the quality of the components and features they did decide to include, instead of just pumping up the board with bells and whistles. I can't stress enough though how flawless this board appears to run though. There wasn't a single (not even one) issue getting all my hardware running exactly the way it's designed to. That in and of itself was a relief after my 72 hours of hell with the Asus and MSI boards. In summary I can recommend the UD4 for a solid build with zero frustrations. Just be aware of the small list of things it doesn't have (compared to other boards at this price point), and that PCIe slot spacing might be an issue. Speaking of PCIe slot spacing,.... I'm befuddled as to the engineering decision here. The inclusion of two PCI slots at the bottom of the board seems like such a waste. To me it would of made more sense to ditch one (or maybe both) of those slots and increase the spacing between the x16 and x8 PCIe slots. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
El_Capitan Posted March 8, 2012 Posted March 8, 2012 Nice quickie review, wevs! Finding the right motherboard is always tough. ASUS and EVGA probably have the best layouts for motherboards. ASUS, Gigabyte, and EVGA are usually my recommendations for motherboards. EVGA can be bad sometimes because of their raised chipset heatsinks, which makes using something like a Noctua NH-D14 near impossible. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waco Posted March 8, 2012 Posted March 8, 2012 I would have ditched all of them and added PCIe lanes coming from the southbridge if I could redesign it. I'd also drop the second PCIe x16 slot down one to open up the distance between the two cards. I don't think I've ever seen a board with two PCIe slots more than a two slots apart (or a single slot in reality, since all cards are dual slot these days). Glad you like the board so far! Like you said it's slightly barren but it's built like a tank. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wevsspot Posted March 8, 2012 Posted March 8, 2012 Well, if the X-Fi Titanium causes significant heat issues with the top card I can spring for a half height PCIe or PCI card to at least open up 1/2 of the fan surface of either the top or bottom 570 depending on the form factor. The bottom card always runs about 8C cooler so it might make more sense to block half the fan on that on by using a PCI interface card. The Asus Xonar DX or D1 look like solid choices. Or maybe the Creative X-Fi Xtreme gamer PCIe card. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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