Gigabyte X79-UD3 Motherboard

Conclusions

The Gigabyte X79-UD3 brings many features, such as four PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, six SATA-600 ports, two eSATA-600 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, and an outstanding number of overclocking options.

The main problem with the socket LGA2011 platform is that the CPU and motherboard are very expensive. This model from Gigabyte, which is the only ATX model this manufacturer offers (all other models are bigger, using either the XL-ATX or E-ATX sizes), currently costs USD 270. Expensive? Not really. Today there are only three socket LGA2011 motherboards cheaper than the Gigabyte X79-UD3, the ASRock X79 Extreme-4M (USD 220), the MSI X79MA-GD45 (USD 230), and the ASRock Extreme4 (USD 235), and all of them have fewer features and don’t come with four PCI Express x16 slots. True competitors from MSI and ASUS cost more, making the Gigabyte X79-UD3 your best option if you want to save money while building a PC based on a Core i7 “Sandy Bridge-E” processor with four video cards and yet have a high-quality motherboard with lots of extra options.