GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD5H (rev. 1.0) Pro Reviews

Before continuing with the review wrap-up, we would like to take this opportunity to give our friends at GIGABYTE a hearty “Thank You” for allowing us the opportunity to review the Z87X-UD5H motherboard. In designing the Z87X-UD5H, GIGABYTE took the design of the UD3H and enhanced it with added features and for optimal enthusiast-centric performance. The board layout and design was well thought out with some key design decisions differentiating the board from the competition. The inclusion of the CMOS battery and three fan headers to the left of the CPU socket was pure genius, giving better access to components and ports normally designed-in as more of an after-thought. The fan header location is especially nice for fan cable routing, giving the capability to customize cable size with enough ports provided for use with multiple air cooler fans or even a water cooling pump. The flat black coloration of the board adds to its mystique with the gold and chrome accents enhancing its looks even further. Performance-wise, you couldn't ask for more. Its 16-phase digital power delivery system gives the board the punch needed to take it to the next level of overclocking, all without busting the bank. There were a few issues encountered with the board, one taking the form of a questionable design decision and the other a BIOS oddity. Design-wise, the board is perfect except for the fact that GIGABYTE chose to exclude WiFi and Bluetooth functionality from the board. However, you do get dual Intel GigE NICs and you have an always-accessible PCIe x1 slot that can be used for a WiFi card if desired. The only complaint with the BIOS was a hard lock encountered when attempting to capture screens while in Windows Mode. This hard lock did not occur on every screen, but seemed to be confined to those with enhanced graphical capabilities. In any case, this issue is most likely addressable by GIGABYTE via a BIOS update.

Gigabyte looks to have some stellar hardware in the Z87X-UD5H motherboard. Gigabyte has shown us a true evolution in its hardware and its Easy Tune software. Gigabyte looks as if it is wanting to truly compete in the high end enthusiast motherboard market again, although there are some unpolished edges on the Z87X-UD5H. There are some issues that are most likely BIOS related that will have to be worked out, and none of these are truly deal breakers, but you would surely want to see these addressed quickly. Had UEFI cursor support not slipped back to being terrible, and we had not seen the intermittent flash drive compatibilities, the Gigabyte Z87X-UD5H would have been an award winner today. The Gigabyte Z87X-UD5H can be purchased for right at $225 with Free Prime shipping which we think is a solid value for the feature set and utilities provided.

Overall then, we like this motherboard a lot. It offers competitive performance, great USB and SATA connectivity, good power consumption numbers, an interesting new BIOS mode, a nice mix of manual and automatic overclocking features, and a price tag that's competitive with other models in this upper mainstream category. If you're building a new Haswell system, definitely give the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD5H some consideration, though watch out for heatsink incompatibility.

If you don’t need onboard wireless, and don’t want to pay for loads of other features aimed more at extreme enthusiasts than the average system builder, Gigabyte’s GA-Z87X-UD5H is the best Z87 board we’ve seen so far. Sure, we’d like to see a couple more brackets included in the box to expand the number of usable USB ports. But considering that this board costs a fair bit less than other Z87 options we’ve looked at so far, their absence is certainly forgivable. And if you want to add a couple more USB 3.0 ports to the back of your system via pin headers, adapters are available online, after all, for well under $10.