Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P review

The Z68XP-UD3P falls right in the middle of Gigabyte’s Z68 line-up, so it should strike a good balance between features and price. The board is sensibly laid out, having reasonably sized chipset and MOSFET heat sinks that didn’t interfere with our CPU cooler or expansion cards.

The numerous expansion ports provide plenty of room for graphics cards or future upgrades. Its complement of one PCI-E x16, one PCI-E x8, three PCI-E x1 and two PCI slots should be more than enough for most people, although a dual-slot graphics card will obscure one of the PCI-E x1 lanes. The four memory slots can take up to 32GB of 2,133MHz RAM.

The board has three USB headers and one USB3 header, plus six USB ports and two USB3 ports on the rear I/O panel. Four SATA2 ports are paired with four SATA3 ports for faster transfer speeds when using compatible hard disks or SSDs.

Its single HDMI video output will prove useful if you intend to use your processor’s integrated graphics. Realtek’s ALC889 audio chip supports Blu-ray lossless audio, and outputs sound via the six analogue 3.5mm audio jacks or the digital S/PDIF output.

Gigabyte’s Touch BIOS uses elements of EFI, but it still looks like the traditional blue and white BIOS screen. The BIOS has a good range of options, but no way of saving overclocking profiles.

Considering it costs around £48 more than the Asus P8Z68-V LX, we can’t recommend the Z68XP-UD3P to PC builders looking for the best value for money. It might have a few extra features, but the user-friendly UEFI BIOS on the Asus P8Z68-V LX makes that board a better choice.