GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD3H (rev. 1.0) Pro Reviews

The Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H is a solid motherboard with a some quirks that seem to be BIOS maturation issues more than hardware problems to be concerned with. Hitting the $149.99 mark with Free Prime Shipping surely gives it a bit more value in the overview however. We think this is a great piece of hardware that has a few BIOS fixes in front of it, but after that, it is very likely to be a great buy for the sub-$150 category.

My motherboard reviews over the past few months have almost solely been of high-grade enthusiast products from various brands. There are a lot of board options for those looking to spend $200 or more, and I will cover more of those soon, but there are just as many options if you want to spend a bit less. Gigabyte was one of the first to send me such a relatively inexpensive board option focusing on basic functionality with a few additional things thrown into the mix for good measure. Gigabyte has been around for a long, long time, and their years of experience in designing board products and other consumer-grade devices give them a level of expertise that might be overlooked by some. In an effort to solidify their product offering and deliver clear and concise design choices catering to certain users, Gigabyte has now launched a whole new esthetic design with their Z87-based product lines. Each Z87 product features a different color to separate it and its functionality from all the other Gigabyte boards. Many recognize Gigabyte's orange-themed OC products, and we now have gold, red, black, and blue boards following the same pattern.

Gigabyte impressed us with the UD4H, but we were a little apprehensive to show excitement for a value board. Much to our surprise here the UD3H has proven to be a very good performer for a sub-$200 budget. Now do keep in mind that each board has its own target segment, but as we see gaming being a huge set of enthusiasts users this board can easily match and perform in any gaming rig, and even has the looks to pull off an excellent looking windowed rig with the all dark PCB and dark components. Since this board does lose a very small amount in tuning compared to what we saw on the UD4H, we think platform consistency does need to be addressed and could be as simple as a firmware update in the future. Also, the lesser features may make some look to a different model, but for the price this is a very stout board with very nice component choices. Overall, if you’re looking for a board within a budget and don’t need some of the fancier bells and whistles, the Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H is an excellent choice for its performance and component quality.

Before continuing with our final thoughts on this board, we would like to take this opportunity to give our friends at GIGABYTE a hearty “Thank You” for giving us the opportunity and pleasure of reviewing the Z87X-UD3H motherboard. The board features a clean looking black, grey, and blue color theme with shiny silver and blue overlays on the heat sinks. With the exception of the BIOS hiccups, I had no issues with the board and found its performance to be on par with the other tested Z87-based boards. Two of the nicer features were the placement of the primary PCI-Express x1 slot and the CMOS battery. Both are to the right of the primary PCI-Express x16 slot, meaning that you will always have a usable PCI-Express x1 slot when running the board with two or all three of the PCI-Express x16 slots populated. Further, the CMOS battery remains easily accessible as well. Its BIOS, while flaky, was one of the most innovative designs I've seen yet with its ability to use slide bars while in Dashboard Mode. However, the board was not without issues, centered specifically around that innovative BIOS. I was forced to switch to the backup BIOS after the board began to destabilize. This was after attempting to clear the CMOS and pulling the CMOS battery to clear the CMOS memory. Using the BIOS was easy while in Classic Mode, but became either laggy or overly sensitive using the mouse in Dashboard Mode. Mouse related issues became very apparent in Dashboard Mode when switching between the settings entry field and the sliding bars. However, keep in mind that the issues encountered, even the board instability, are most likely due to an immature BIOS version with all issues encountered easily remedied via a BIOS update. Note that the BIOS instability encountered had absolutely no impact on board performance after switching over to the backup BIOS.

While the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H Intel Z87 motherboard is our first full review on Intel Z87 motherboards. I'm confident that GIGABYTE has set the bar high. If you're looking to upgrade to an Intel 'Haswell' system the Z87X-UD3H will be a great choice for you!