Gigabyte X58A-UD7 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals (Cont’d)

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel with keyboard and mouse PS/2 connectors, six USB 2.0 ports (black and yellow ones), clear CMOS button, two USB 3.0 ports (blue ones), optical and coaxial SPDIF outputs, FireWire ports (one standard- and one miniature-sized), two eSATA-300 ports (shared with two USB 2.0 ports), two Gigabit Ethernet ports and independent analog 7.1 audio outputs.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel.

In Figure 8, you can see the accessories that come with the board. Besides the standard ones (manuals, driver DVD, case rear plate, ATA-133 and SATA cables) it also comes with SLI and CrossFireX bridges and the adapter that converts two internal SATA ports into eSATA ports.

Figure 6: Accessories.

The cooling system of X58A-UD7 is a wonder by itself. It has heatsinks over the voltage regulator transistors and the south bridge chip, all of them connected to the north bridge heatsink using heatpipes. It also have a liquid cooling block on the north bridge chip and a big "expansion card like" heatsink, called "Hybrid Silent-Pipe Module", that must be screwed on the chipset heatsink, helping to cool all motherboard components. In Figure 7, you can see this heatsink in place.

Figure 7: Hybrid Silent-Pipe module.