GIGABYTE GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI (rev. 1.0) Pro Reviews

The Gigabyte X79S-UP5 WiFi is really a great product. I really had a hard time coming up with things that it did poorly. If you want to overclock your CPU until it fries to a crisp, this board is not for you. But if you value stability, and a lot of drive ports at a reasonable price, you don't need to look any further. The addition of SAS support and a PCI slot, things that are specific to the Intel C606 chipset, are quite obviously focused on Workstation users, but given today's HD media, managing large amounts of storage is something that many users are familiar with. Adding support for as many drives as the Gigabyte X79S-UP5 WiFi offers would normally cost an arm and a leg, simply to cover the cost of a RAID card to add all those ports. Here, that functionality is provided nearly for free.

As part of the Computex 2012 show, Gigabyte demonstrated to us their new version of Ultra Durable. This fifth iteration of their power delivery combines their previous features with a new phase from International Rectifier, which is marketed to offer up to a 60°C lower temperature than traditional MOSFET solutions. Initially this new design is being paired with six motherboards, all designated with UP rather than UD in the name. The first of these we have in is the X79S-UP5 WiFi, which combines Ultra Durable 5 with the C606 chipset. The C606 chipset is the server version of the X79 chipset, which enables up to eight SAS ports.