GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 AM2+/AM3 Motherboard Review

Hardware Installation

In the Hardware Installation section we examine how major components fit on the motherboard and whether there are any serious issues that may affect installation and general functionality. Specifically, we are interested in determining whether the motherboard has adequate clearance levels in all critical areas.


On the AM2/AM3 platform, most CPU coolers can only be installed in one orientation but there are some that buck this trend by including custom mounting hardware. On this motherboard, the Thermalright Ultra-120 has no MOSFET coolers to clear but it does overhang the first two DIMM slots. This is actually slightly problematic because it makes installing and removing memory modules harder than it should be (particularly since we had to remove the 120MM fan every time), and it may prevent the installation of modules with particularly tall heatspreaders.


Clearly, there are no concerns about memory clips coming into contact with the back of the graphics card and you can clearly see the sizeable gap between the CPU cooler and the northbridge cooler. This should ensure that even the largest heatsink will fit without issue.


As mentioned previously, the 4-pin CPU power connector is in a poor location and although it doesn't actually interfere with any components, it simply looks ugly from an aesthetics point-of-view.

As you can see, because the motherboard is narrower than the ATX standard, a full-sized 10.5" graphics card overhangs it by quite a bit. The graphics card does overhang the IDE connector, which means that you need to remove the card before connecting/removing the ribbon. This is only a minor annoyance since very few people have IDE devices anymore.


When a dual-slot graphics card is installed, you lose access to one PCI-E x1 slot, but the USB headers and SATA ports are fully accessible

There is one big issue though. The clip on the PCI-E x16 slot is impossible to reach when a dual-slot graphics card is installed. There is no room to slide your finger between the card and the southbridge heatsink and thus you cannot loosen/unlock the card from the slot. The only solution we found was to lift the card from the back until there was enough room to access the clip. Not exactly an elegant solution and not something anyone should have to deal with at this point in time.


There is nothing on the back of the motherboard that interferes with the Thermalright's backplate and there is nothing that should create compatibility issues with other CPU cooler models either.