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Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £120
inc VAT

Loads of USB ports and PCI-E slots make this a fantastic AM3+ motherboard a must-buy for gamers.

Specifications

AM3+, ATX, AMD 990FX chipset, supports: FX, Phenom II, Athlon II, Sempron 100

http://www.amazon.co.uk

The 990FXA-UD5 is Gigabyte’s top of the range AM3+ socket motherboard and uses AMD’s 990FX chipset. As it’s a large ATX board, it comes with a range of features that make it perfect for overclockers and gaming enthusiasts.

One of the first things that you’ll spot about this motherboard board are the five PCI-E x16 slots. You can use three of them for graphics cards: using one or two will run the slots at x16 speed; installing three cards causes the primary slot to run at x16 speed, while the two other slots drop to x8 speed.

Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5

The other PCI-E x16 slots run at x4 speed and are designed for other expansion cards, although they’ll be blocked by a graphics card installed in the slot above. If that’s not enough, then there’s a PCI-E x1 slot, out of the way that won’t be blocked by a graphics card, and a legacy PCI slot.

As you’d expect from a high-end motherboard, there are four DDR3 DIMM memory sockets that support up to 32GB of RAM at speeds of 2,000MHz when overclocked. Storage isn’t’ going to be a problem either thanks to the eight SATA3 ports. This gives you enough room for all the hard disks you could want to install and the speed to take advantage of a fast boot SSD.

Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5

There’s also single PCI-E x1 and PCI slots for extra sound cards and USB expansion hubs if you need them, but with a grand total of ten USB ports on the back panel, two of which are USB3, and two USB and one USB3 header on the front, your USB support should be well-accounted for.

Elsewhere on the rear, there’s a FireWire port, two eSATA ports, an S/PDIF optical output, 6x analogue surround sound outputs, a Gigabit Ethernet port and a legacy PS/2 port. You won’t find any graphics outputs like HDMI and DVI-D, as the 990FX chipset doesn’t have any integrated graphics and AM3+ processors don’t have on-chip graphics.

Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5

It will get the best out of your CPU as well, as our AMD FX-8350 processor and 4GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 RAM achieved 90 overall in our benchmark tests. This is exactly what we expect from this kind of processor, but its unwieldy Award BIOS menu is a little dated and it makes it fiddly to access the detailed overclocking options.

The Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 is one of the best AM3+ motherboards we’ve ever seen. It’s crammed full of features, and while we would have liked to have seen a few more USB3 ports for this price, that’s a minor issue. If you want the best, this is it and it wins a Best Buy award.

Basic Specifications

Rating *****
Processor socket AM3+
Form factor ATX
Size 305x244mm
Processor support FX, Phenom II, Athlon II, Sempron 100
Processor external bus 100MHz (HyperTransport)
Chipset north bridge AMD 990FX
Chipset south bridge AMD SB950
Passively-cooled north bridge yes
Integrated graphics No
Supported memory type DDR3
Maximum memory speed PC3-16000
Memory slots 4
Maximum memory 32GB
Dual-channel support yes

Buying Information

Price £120
Supplier http://www.amazon.co.uk
Details www.giga-byte.com

Internal Ports

Power connectors 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 8-pin ATX
PCI-E x16 slots 5
Dual graphics architecture SLI, CrossFireX
PCI-E x4 slots 0
PCI-E x1 slots 1
PCI slots 1
Fan headers 4
Floppy ports 0
IDE ports 0
Serial ATA ports 0
RAID chipset (max disks) AMD SB950 (6x SATA III, RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD)

Features

Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Sound (ports) Realtek ALC889 (6x analogue out, optical S/PDIF)
USB2 ports / headers 10/4
Firewire ports / headers 1/1
Legacy ports PS/2
Other ports 2x USB3
Cables included 4x SATA, 1x SLI bridge
Brackets included none
Software included Norton Internet Security (OEM)

Setup and Overclocking

Voltage adjustment CPU/RAM/Chipset
CPU clock max adjustment 7,000MHz

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