Closer look at the EP55-UD6
Like we said earlier, the P55-UD6 is pretty and I am not talking about the shades of blue, orange and white that make up the motherboard for the technical aspects of the motherboard. There are a few things that makes this board stand out from the rest, but chief among them is the physical layout. Everything connected to this motherboard is in the right place. We will explain as we examine the motherboard.
The absolute first thing that will catch you eye will be the six DIMM slots. That's right. The UD6 has a total of six DDR3 slots. Don't get this confused with the X58 series of motherboards that also have six slot and support triple channel DDR3 kits. The UD6 is still a dual channel board but it does DDR3 up to 2600MHz which we have yet to see on the market. When that time comes, we will bring you the news. With Intel's i5 and i7 processors, memory voltages should not exceed 1.65 volts.
The UD6 is covered with passive aluminum heat sinks topped with decorative cover plates. The are covering components like the North Bridge and power mosfets. There is no water-cooling inlets like we saw on the X58 Extreme, but the heat sinks are connected via a heat pipe. What we like about the heat sinks on the UD6 compared to others is they are not over-the-top. The 24 phase power VRM which is responsible for ultimate power efficiency and with better thermal results. Hopefully, this will lead to some nice overclocks.
The UD6 offers several combinations of expansion slots. There are three PCIe x16 slots. When all used together, the following configuration is possible: x16, x8, 4x. The x16 and x8 slots can be used to enable Crossfire and SLI. The bottom x16 slot would be ideal for a third Nvidia card for Physics. The top x1 PCIe may be unusable depending on the card you use. It could be hampered by the over-sized North Bridge cooler and the close-by x16 PCIe .
We love the right angle SATA ports on the UD6, but the angled stance is not all there is. There are three controllers onboard the UD6. The six blue ports are controlled via the Intel chipset, while two others are managed by a Gigabyte SATA2 chip and the last two are governed by a JMicron controller, JMB362. An onboard LED lets you know what is going on with the motherboard, if anything comes up. Right behind the last set of white SATA plugs in a reset button.
There are a few things different about the CPU socket on the new i5 motherboards. The first thing is the ZIFF socket itself. The CPU cover is held in place by a special screw. Once the new lever is locked into place, the cover slides forward and is held securely in place. Gigabyte made sure there was plenty of room for large heat sinks and even water-cooling components.
Talking about combinations, the rear of the UD6 has a few. We see there are eight USB ports as we recognize them. However, there are two others combined with the the two eSATA plugs the board has to offer. The same thing goes with for the lone PS/2 port. The one connector can be used for a mouse or keyboard. I would like to see legacy totally gone, but I guess this is a good idea in case of BIOS or USB problems. The firewire (two of them: 6 and 4 pin), optical plugs and LAN ports are as we know them.
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