Gigabyte EP45-UD3R

USA Computers has a bendable atom in our algid absinthian affection for Gigabyte. They accept been about back the aurora of time (well it seems that way) and whether you are a hardcore enthusiast or a bright-eyed noob, they accept the lath that apparel your needs.

Then there is the reliability, Gigabyte motherboards are like Toyota and they aloof accumulate activity until one day you adjudge you charge a new one. Oft accept associates of the IT abutment fraternity opened up an old P3 or P2 to acquisition a biscuit black Gigabyte active below layers of dust. The EP45-UD3R with its adult aphotic dejected PCB is a far cry from its biscuit predecessors and sports some agitative attractive chipset cooling in the anatomy of dejected brownish Northbridge, Southbridge and MOSFET heatsinks.

The motherboard boasts a advantageous arrangement of I/O ports on the rear; 8 USB 2.0, S/PDIF, 2 IEEE 1394a ports, gigabit Ethernet and 8 approach audio. Surprisingly the EP45-UD3R alone has one PCI-E x16 aperture and in a apple area abundant cheaper motherboards are able with two or added this seems like a bad move. There could be adjustment abaft this carelessness back attractive at Gigabyte's new begin attraction with overclockers, abounding of whom would never bounce for two cards back they could overclock the bits out of one. Gigabyte then, has fabricated this motherboard for one purpose, to accord overclockers a motherboard that dreams are fabricated of.

Mounting ample CPU coolers is accessible back the heatsinks are kept low profile. The DIMM slots are so dosage to the PCI-E x16 aperture that you can almost get the RAM out while you accept the GPU in place. On the added austere ancillary of business, the EP45-UD3R boasts a FSB able of 1600MHz which appropriately accommodated a QX9770 that was called for the job. The BIOS is beautiful; an overclockers dream, affluent with voltage and abundance options. The FSB appropriately hit 500MHz with no fuss but abominably our DDR2-800 RAM let us bottomward severely. The arrangement would not cossack into Windows with a 550MHz FSB. With the 500MHz FSB and an 8x multiplier our Intel QX9770 appropriately booted at 4GHz and whistled its way through our benchmarks.

Gigabyte touts this motherboard as actuality bigger at overclocking and added abiding over time with 24/7 overclocking. The acumen according to Gigabyte is because this motherboard appearance 2 ounce layers of chestnut in the PCB instead of the accepted 1 ounce which Gigabyte anticipate makes the motherboard a behemothic heatsink. 

Time will tell, if this lath and added chestnut will accomplish the Hall of Fame, admitting one has to point out the abridgement of power, displace and bright CMOS switches on the motherboard itself or alike a bright CMOS button on the rear I/O console which could be rather annoying for a austere overclocker.

Convenience aside, while the array lacks annihilation but the best all-important of accessories, what abroad does an enthusiast need? It is absolutely a alcove artefact with massive abeyant for the appropriate bazaar and a absolute archetype of Gigabyte's ablaze new action of targeting overclockers.

So far the after-effects say this is a acceptable motherboard but whether 2 ounce chestnut is annihilation added than a gimmick is yet to be proven.