Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7 LGA 1156 Motherboard Review

[Mike D.]

Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7 LGA 1156 Motherboard Review

Manufacturer's Part Number: GA-P55A-UD7 (rev 1.0)
Price: Approximately $320 CDN | Price Comparison
Manufacturer's Product Page: GA-P55A-UD7 (rev. 1.0) - GIGABYTE - Product - Motherboard - Overview
Warranty: 3 year limited warranty
Buy from: NCIX | DirectCanada | BestDirect




With all of the focus on bang for the buck these days, it’s often easy to lose sight of the finer things in life. After all, in the age of “fast enough”, hard core enthusiasts can’t help but feel just a little left out. What is the world coming to when you can buy a quad core processor for $100 and a decently outfitted motherboard for even less? Well, today we’re throwing our frugality hat out the window and we’re going to take a look at a motherboard on the complete opposite end of the spectrum – the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7.

Although you may be thinking to yourself that high end and P55 are somewhat contradictory terms – and you’d normally be right – the P55A-UD7 is so far from your average P55 board that about the only thing it has in common with lesser boards is the fact that it supports LGA 1156 based processors. The X58 and LGA 1366 is certainly Intel’s idea of high end at the moment but there is a lot of potential in LGA 1156 and a wide variety of processors at all different price points.

Make no mistake; the P55A-UD7 is absolutely packed to the gills with features. Not only does it support USB 3.0 thanks to the popular NEC USB controller, Gigabyte has also provided SATA 6Gbps connectivity – both features not natively supported by any of Intel’s chipsets at the present time. And if a pair of SATA 6Gbps ports weren’t enough for you, there are no fewer than three additional storage controllers onboard providing more SATA ports than you can shake a stick at. Aside from robust storage potential, Gigabyte also provides a much more flexible PCI-E configuration on the P55A-UD7 thanks to the integration of both the Nvidia NF200 and PEX 8608 PCI-E bridge controllers. This means that the P55A-UD7 is not limited by the platform’s PCI-E configuration and supports not only SLI and Crossfire, but Tri-SLI and 3-Way Crossfire-X – features not normally supported on the socket 1156 platform.

The P55A-UD7 has quite literally to many features to summarize, but Gigabyte has outfitted it’s new socket 1156 flagship board with a large suite of innovative software titles to provide overclocking functionality, power savings and even limited system control with a Bluetooth enabled phone. On the hardware side of the fence, the P55A-UD7 is outfitted with an extremely heavy-duty 24-phase power delivery system that we’ve seen in both the X58A-UD7 and the P55-UD6 and boasts a very elaborate cooling solution to match.

Without further ado, let’s take a close look at the Cadillac of P55 boards – the P55A-UD7!

 

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Specifications

Specifications

Last September, Intel took the lid off of their new socket 1156 platform, the new Lynnfield based processors and last but not least, the P55 Express chipset. We won’t be getting too in depth about the platform but we’ll go through a quick refresher so as to best speak to the P55A-UD7’s unique implementation of this chipset and the Lynnfield/Clarkdale interconnects.

For anyone interested in an in-depth look at the P55 Express and Lynnfield architecture, please have a look at our platform review.

Intel’s main goals with the Socket 1156 platform was to get as much integrated into the CPU as possible so as to require only a low power, low cost single chip platform solution. Although the i7 socket 1156 CPUs are not all that much cheaper than their Nehalem 1366 counterparts, the total cost of the platform – including motherboard and memory – is significantly less expensive due to this.
The original i5 and i7 processors on this platform were the first processors to have integrated PCI-Express controllers, and inherited an integrated DDR3 memory controller, just like Nehalem. With both memory control and PCI-E control moved to the CPU, there was a lot less for the chipset – or “platform controller hub” – to do. The P55 is essentially what used to be considered the “Southbridge”, controlling USB ports, SATA, audio, and other on board components.

The CPU itself is able to control a maximum of 16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes, meaning a single GPU in 16X mode, or a pair of GPUs in an 8X/8X configuration. Although this is plenty for 90% of buyers on the market, there are always the select few who want to run a triple or quad GPU configuration. Considering the Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7’s top of the line status and over $300 price tag, we are certainly not surprised that Gigabyte tried to accommodate. We’ll look at the UD7’s PCI-E configuration in much greater detail in the next section.

The below listing of specifications were taken from Gigabyte’s GA-P55A-UD7 product page:

 

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Not Your Average P55 Board: P55 + NF200

Not Your Average P55 Board: P55 + NF200

While perusing through Gigabyte’s product manual and specifications, we noticed that the P55A-UD7 is advertised as having four PCI-E slots that can run in an 8X/8X/8X/8X configuration or in a 16X/16X configuration. Since when did a Lynnfield and P55 combo have 32 PCI-E 2.0 lanes to split across four slots?

Image courtesy of Gigabyte - Taken from P55A-UD7 owner's manual.​

Enter the Nvidia NF200. Originally released with the advent of the Nvidia 700 series chipsets a couple of years back, the NF200 is more than just a simple PCI-E splitter.

While it is true that there will always be a 16X bottleneck between the NF200 and the CPU, the NF200 can allow each of the cards occupying the four slots to communicate directly with each other via the NF200. This means that card-to-card traffic never needs to traverse that 16X bottleneck, only traffic destined directly to the CPU. So there are effectively 32 PCI-E lanes available for cards to talk to each other with, and 16 PCI-E lanes that are used exclusively for card-to-CPU communication. Nvidia also packs some other intelligence into the NF200 that keeps the flow as efficient as possible.

All of this wonderful PCI-E magic does come at the cost of a little bit of added latency, but in a multi-card configuration, the pros greatly outweigh the cons.

On the flip side, let’s take a look at a typical socket 1156 multi-GPU PCI-Express configuration without the NF200. Most P55 boards will employ two slots, but it’s not uncommon to find some with three as well. The two primary PCI-E slots connect directly to the Lynnfield processor’s integrated PCI-E controller. This controller can run in a single 16X slot mode if only one card is present, and splits evenly into a pair of 8X slots in a dual-GPU configuration.

In this typical configuration, all of the card-to-card traffic must pass through the CPU, along with the card-to-CPU traffic.

The third slot is an entirely different story though. Since there are only sixteen lanes to the CPU, the lanes for this slot must come from the P55 chipset. Many of the P55’s lanes are already used for network interfaces, on board audio, SATA controllers and the like, so we’re limited to a 4X – and not even PCI-E 2.0 - operating capacity. But that’s not the only issue – all traffic has to traverse not only the P55 chipset, but the DMI bus back to the CPU, which will introduce additional latency. This is definitely not an ideal triple card configuration as the third card – especially if a higher end card is used – will be quite performance impeded.

So as you can see, the NF200 is almost a necessity to run more than two cards on the socket 1156 platforms. Two cards are really not a problem in an 8X configuration, but any more requires a bit of PCI-E help from a controller such as the NF200.

 

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Not Your Average P55 Board: P55 + PLX8608 PCI-E Switch

Not Your Average P55 Board: P55 + PLX8608 PCI-E Switch

Unfortunately, the P55 platform poses some other challenges that required some innovation on Gigabyte’s part. With the PCI-E limitations of the Lynnfield processor dealt with, Gigabyte looked toward other bottlenecks on the board to address – namely the first generation PCI-E limitation of the P55 PCH.

As we mentioned earlier, the P55 PCH provides a total of 8 first generation PCI-E lanes that can be used by devices such as on board NICs, storage controllers and the like. With 250MB/s of throughput on a single PCI-E lane, this is not normally a problem. But as you’ve already seen, the P55A-UD7 is not your average board. Next generation USB 3.0 connectivity and especially the SATA 6Gbps controller need a little more “oomph” than a single first generation PCI-E lane. Both the NEC USB controller and Marvel SATA 6Gbps controller are really designed to be used with a PCI-E 2.0 lane, with around 500MB/s of throughput. In fact, a single SATA 3Gbps SSD can easily max out that 250MB/s PCI-E lane, making SATA 6Gbps connectivity essentially useless without more bandwidth back to the PCH/CPU.

Unfortunately, Intel provided only first generation lanes on the P55, and after Gigabyte connected up the two LAN PHYs, and the two SATA2 controllers, the P55A-UD7 was left with only four PCI-E lanes. But despite being only first generation lanes, those four lanes are good for around 1GB/s of throughput. This is where the PLX8608 PCI-E switch comes into play.

As you can see, Gigabyte puts those four first generation PCI-E lanes to good use, as it provides a nice 1GB/s pipe to the PEX8608 PCI-E bridge. Because the PEX8608 is a second generation part, it provides 1X PCI-E 2.0 lanes to the NEC USB 3.0 controller, the Marvell SATA 6Gbps controller and the 1X slot on the board. Each of these devices gets about 500MB/s via their 2.0 lane, meaning a maximum theoretical throughput of 1.5GB/s. Since the up-link back to the P55 tops out at 1GB/s, it is possible that the link could become saturated, but it is very unlikely that all three of these lanes will be topping out at 500MB/s simultaneously.

As with any bridge chip, or PCI-E controller, there is a small amount of latency that is introduced by the PEX8608 in order for it to do it’s job. The benefits of PCI-E 2.0 connectivity – especially for SATA 6Gbps – far outweigh the disadvantages though.

With that said, we can summarize by saying that the P55A-UD7 and P55 PCH will not bandwidth bottleneck SATA 6Gbps connectivity, nor will it bottleneck USB 3.0 connectivity.

Now let’s take a look at the P55A-UD7’s long list of features.

 

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Features

Features

With the market beginning to become saturated with P55 boards at all price points, manufacturers like Gigabyte are working very hard to differentiate their products with all sorts of unique features. As we saw earlier, the P55A-UD7 utilizes the NF200 and PLX8608 chips to provide a much more potent PCI-E configuration, but that that certainly isn’t where the noteworthy features cease.
As expected, the flagship P55A-UD7 is absolutely packed with features. We’ll be speaking to many of these features throughout the course of the review, but below you’ll find a concise list of the ones we thought stood out and Gigabyte’s description of each.
All of the below features were taken from the P55A-UD7 product page:

So as you can see, the P55A-UD7 is adorned with a very impressive list of features. Of primary interest is the 24-phase CPU power design that has graced both the P55-UD6 and X58A-UD7 and has proven to be extremely potent. That coupled with high quality capacitors, copper PCB a long list of overclocking features makes the P55A-UD7 a very tweak friendly board.

The “A” in P55A-UD7 denotes that this is a “next generation” board supporting both USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps. Although these features are not natively supported by Intel’s P55 chipset, Gigabyte has implemented NEC’s USB 3.0 IC as well as Marvel’s SATA 6Gbps IC via PCI-E lanes. USB 3.0 devices and SATA 6Gbps drives are still pretty scarce today, but if you are one of the few who absolutely, positively have to have the latest and the greatest, the P55A-UD7 has you covered.

 

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Packaging and Accessories

Packaging and Accessories

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Gigabyte ships the P55A-UD7 is a larger than usual box, covered in feature logos and sporting graphs and long lists of specifications. To give an idea of the size, a 120mm fan was placed next to the box in the first photo.

The front cover of the package opens up like a book to give a glimpse of the board itself and even more feature logos and specifications on the inside cover. The entire package is covered by a reflective material that gives it a holographic appearance.
We’d certainly say that Gigabyte didn’t spare any expense on the packaging of the P55A-UD7.

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Once we had the outside covering removed, we were greeted by a simple cardboard box containing the board and accessories. The board itself sits in a high quality plastic clamshell of sorts, with all of the accessories sitting in the box below.

Although a static bag is standard fare for most motherboard manufacturers, Gigabyte went with this more elaborate solution that provides better protection for the board and allows it to be seen clearly through the packaging window. Considering the high price of this motherboard, we were pleased to see this.

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As with most Gigabyte motherboards, an eSATA expansion bracket and cabling is included. Using this adapter, you can run any hard drive outside of the case – even without an enclosure. Also included is four of the characteristic Gigabyte orange locking SATA cables. We were pleased to see that these were of the locking variety and that two of the cables have ninety degree connectors that are useful in tight spaces.

Also included is a single PATA ribbon cable, but no floppy cable is included despite floppy support on the board. Considering how few people actually use floppy drives these days, this is likely not going to be an issue.

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Since the P55A-UD7 officially supports SLI and Tri-SLI, Gigabyte includes both types of bridges. Since you don’t have any say as far as which slots are used for Tri-SLI, the bridge is of the fixed PCB variety. On the other hand, the standard SLI bridge is flexible so that you can use a variety of slot combinations.

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And of course, Gigabyte includes a thorough product manual - that is also available online - a utility and driver DVD and the rear I/O plate.

One strange looking accessory that Gigabyte includes with the P55A-UD7 is the Silent-Pipe heatsink module. We’ll be taking a closer look at this later in the review, but it is essentially a replacement for the attached waterblock. Although it is not mandatory, Gigabyte claims that it improves the standard cooling system on the P55A-UD7. We’ll be putting this claim to the test, as we can’t help but feel that this module looks a little overkill.

 

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A Closer Look at the P55A-UD7

A Closer Look at the P55A-UD7

At first glance, the layout of the P55A-UD7 is excellent. The 24-pin ATX power connector and 8-pin CPU power connector are in their ideal locations at the edge of the board, as is the IDE connector. All ten of the SATA ports are ideally located at ninety degree angles at the edge of the board and will not be blocked by very long video cards.

The USB, COM and 1394 headers are located in their usual bottom of the board location, but we’d hate to have to connect a floppy cable in that location as it would get in the way terribly. Thankfully, a floppy drive is a rare thing these days so this is not at all a concern to us.

Although the 24-phase power delivery system occupies a fair footprint on the board, we were pleased to see that the components are positioned as far away from the socket area as possible so as not to interfere with large CPU coolers. We’ll check for any clearance problems in the “Hardware Installation” section of the review.

We should also mention that there are five fan headers on the P55A-UD7, conveniently located at all corners of the board.

Twenty four power phases in all their glory. It really is hard to believe that just a few years ago, a three or four phase power delivery system was considered ample for a highly overclocked system. If you look closely at the above image, you’ll notice that there are no less than 27 power chokes surrounding the CPU socket – twenty four for the standard CPU power delivery and an additional three phases for the VTT.

Although a greater number of power phases usually equates to cooler and more stable power delivery, one can’t help but wonder just where the law of diminishing returns comes into play. These extra power phases have undoubtedly added a significant cost to the P55A-UD7, but if you absolutely have to have the best, this is it.

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As discussed earlier, the P55A-UD7 is equipped with no fewer than four full-length PCI-E 2.0 slots. All four of these slots connect directly to the NF200 controller. It is possible to tell the 8X slots from the 16X slots by their retention clip. The 8X slots use the little white spring-loaded push-clips, while the 16X slots use the standard blue clips. If all four slots are used, the board will operate at 8X across all slots.

The layout of the slots is pretty good considering how many full length slots there are on the board. Although the second full length slot is not double spaced, it will likely never be used as it’s an 8X slot and will be blocked by the first video card. If you pretend that slot doesn’t exist, the spacing is quite good for Tri-SLI, as each card can be two-slot thickness and the last card is not at the very bottom of the board, which can pose issues in many enclosures. Unfortunately, you’ll loose all of the standard PCI slots in a Tri-SLI configuration, but in a dual card configuration, the bottom most PCI slot remains accessible.

For more information on the PCI-E configuration supported by the P55A-UD7 and the NF200 controller, please see the “Not Your Average P55 Board: P55 + NF200” section of the review.

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The P55A-UD7 employs the standard pair of alternating dual channel DIMM slots. Unlike the P55-UD6 that featured six DIMM slots, the P55A-UD7 has reverted back to four. Although a very unique feature for the UD6, it undoubtedly confused quite a few buyers as the memory controller within the socket 1156 CPUs is limited to dual channel regardless of the number of sticks installed. We wouldn’t be surprised if there were all sorts of compatibility issues with six sticks as well, so we’re pleased to see that Gigabyte returned to the standard four-slot layout.

Power delivery to the DIMMS is provided by a three-phase delivery system. Most quality boards will utilize a two-phase solution, so we were pleased to see the theme of heavy-duty power delivery maintained beyond the CPU.

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We were pleased to see Gigabyte include some convenience switches on the P55A-UD7, although we’re not quite sure why they positioned the power switch behind the ATX connector. Usually, switches of this sort are located at the bottom-right hand side of the board, near the case header connections. None the less, it is mostly out of the way in this location and is easily accessible with the board on a test bench.

Another nice feature on the P55A-UD7 is the post code indicator. Instead of having to recognize patterns of beeps from the PC-Speaker, buyers can simply look up the two character code displayed on the little display. Two additional convenience switches are located in this corner of the board. One is used to clear the CMOS and the other as a reset switch.

No fewer than ten SATA ports – not including the two eSATA ports on the rear I/O panel - can be found at the edge of the board. The two white ports on the left are connected to the Marvell SATA 6Gbps controller, while the blue ports are connected via the P55 PCH. The other two white ports are connected to the “Gigabyte SATA2” controller, just in case you didn’t have enough!

At the rear I/O section of the board, we find four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, a shared PS/2 connector for a mouse or keyboard, both regular and mini 1394 ports, optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors, dual gigabit LAN ports and the usual analog audio connectors. Talk about one packed rear I/O panel!

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Flipping the board over, we see that Gigabyte’s 24-phase power delivery system has resulted in a multitude of components on the other side of the PCB. Thankfully, these MOSFETs and protruding pins are well away from the CPU socket backplate and shouldn’t interfere with after-market CPU coolers.

 

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A Closer Look at the P55A-UD7 pg.2

A Closer Look at the P55A-UD7 pg.2

The centerpiece of the board is undoubtedly the shiny black nickel plated waterblock that can be found above the NF200 controller. Although the board comes with this waterblock affixed out of the box, it is not a requirement to watercool this board. As you can see, it is a bit of a hybrid solution. Buyers can run the cooler without the waterblock, with the waterblock, or with the Silent Pipe module.

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Once again, we were disappointed to see a suboptimal interface between the waterblock and the heatsink. Although it is slight improvement over the design that we criticized heavily in our reviews of both the EP45T-Extreme and the GA-X58A-UD7, it is still inadequate. As you can see, more than half of the waterblock sits atop a thin piece of the heatsink that is carved out underneath and the half that is on solid material is sitting too high and away from the heat source to be effective.

Since the Silent Pipe module sits atop of this heatsink in the same way, we can only suspect that only a small portion of the heat load will actually make it’s way into the optional adapter. We’ll test our theory later on in the review.

Gigabyte could have easily improved this design by recessing the waterblock down as closely as possible to the base of this heatsink and ensuring that there is only a thin, flat piece of material separating the waterblock from the heatpipes.

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The P55 PCH is covered by what can only be described as a heatsink shaped like a race car. Cool appearance aside, we must say that we’re pleased with the large size of this low-profile heatsink. It is also spread across several onboard components, such as the Marvell 9128 storage controller and a couple of MOSFETs.

A black nickel plated heatpipe protrudes from the top of this heatsink into the larger heatsink at the center of the board that we just discussed. This is a positive thing, as some of the heat will be transferred from the low-profile PCH heatsink up the board into the NF200 heatsink, where it can be dissipated more readily. This is especially important in multi-GPU scenarios where the PCH heatsink will be covered by toasty video cards.

Now let’s take a look at the many component ICs on the board.

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First and foremost, we see the NEC SATA 3.0 controller that has found it’s way into many of the new SATA 3.0 enabled motherboards on the market today. This chip is a proven performer as we saw in our USB 3.0 feature test of the X58-UD7 recently. This controller interfaces with the PEX8608 PCI-E bridge via a single PCI-E 2.0 lane as described in detail earlier in the "Not Your Average P55 Board: P55 + PLX8608" section of the review.

Underneath the edge of the PCH heatsink, we see a Marvell 9128 storage controller that is responsible for SATA 6Gbps connectivity. Unlike the new 800 series chipsets from AMD, Intel does not yet natively support SATA 6Gbps, so this third party solution is used. This controller also interfaces with the PEX8608 PCI-E bridge to ensure second generation PCI-E connectivity. Up to 500MB/s of throughput can be expected from this chipset – plenty for those shiny new Sandforce 1500 series SSDs.

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Next up, we have the very popular Realtek ALC889 CODEC that is responsible for all things audio related. This is pretty full featured 7.1+2-channel High Definition Audio CODEC, which can be found on a large number of mid-range to high-end boards.

Moving on, we also see a large Texas Instruments controller beneath the lowest PCI-E slot. This controller is responsible for all of the 1394 Firewire services on the board. Interestingly, Gigabyte decided to interface this controller via the 33MHz PCI BUS. This was likely done so as not to use up all of the PCI-E lanes that are at a premium on the P55. The PCI BUS should allow for around 130MB/s of throughput – plenty for 1394 devices.

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There is definitely no shortage of storage controllers on the P55A-UD7. Right next to the IDE port, we find a “Gigabyte” branded storage controller that is used to provide the lone IDE channel on the board, as well as two additional SATA ports at the edge of the board.

Interestingly, rather than just using the two SATA ports off of the “Gigabyte branded” controller for eSATA duties, Gigabyte includes yet another SATA2 controller for this purpose. This one is a JMicron JMB362 controller connected via the 1X PCI-E on the P55 PCH and provides two eSATA ports on the rear I/O panel.

All-in-all, there are a total of twelve SATA ports on the P55A-UD7. If that isn’t enough for you, then you definitely have some excessive storage requirements!

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Network connectivity is provided by a pair of RTL8111D PHY controllers. These are pretty run-of-the-mill 1Gbps Ethernet controllers that are commonly found on a wide variety of boards at all price points. Because there are two Ethernet controllers, Gigabyte allows buyers to configure “Teaming” so that both ports can be used for a single redundant connection. This is really not terribly useful in a home environment, but is a feature commonly used in high availability servers. None the less, we would expect no less than two Ethernet controllers on a board at this price point.

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A pair of ITE ICs can be found on the P55A-UD7. Although we’re not quite sure what the smaller of the two does, we'd wager a guess that it has something to do with the power saving features of the board. The larger IT8720F is responsible for voltage, temperature and fan monitoring, as well as floppy drive connectivity.

Now that we’ve taken a close look at the P55A-UD7’s layout and components, let’s start plugging some hardware into it!

 

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Hardware Installation

Hardware Installation

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Since we won’t be using the P55A-UD7 in a watercooled environment, our first order of business was removing the waterblock from the center heatsink assembly. As you can see, only a small amount of thermal paste was spread across the surface of the heatsink. Although this would be a great application on a CPU heatspreader, a wider spread is necessary to transfer as much heat as possible from the lower assembly to the waterblock. Again, we are a bit skeptical that anything attached to this heatsink would be of significant benefit, but we’ll install the Silent-Pipe module regardless for our testing.

The Silent-Pipe module was very easy to install using the four included screws. Simply apply thermal paste, and tighten down.

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Once installed, the Silent-Pipe is an incredible looking piece of kit. It certainly takes the definition of motherboard cooling to the next level. We only hope that it is as effective as it is impressive looking.

It is unfortunate that the 1X PCI-E slot has to be sacrificed in order to use the Silent-Pipe, but with four full-length PCI-E slots, a PCI-E sound card or RAID controller can be used in one of those locations instead.

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We then proceeded to install our i7 860 processor into the P55A-UD7. Upon releasing the retention mechanism, we discovered that Gigabyte utilizes a Foxconn brand socket. There were some incidents in the past surrounding this type of socket under extreme sub-zero overclocking, but the odds of anything happening to even heavy overclockers are slim to none. We certainly wouldn’t hold this against the P55A-UD7 in any way.

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Once we had the CPU installed, we moved onto installing our Thermalright TRUE Black heatsink. Although the TRUE Black does not support socket 1156 out of the box, we purchased the Thermalright Rev.B 1156 mounting kit to use for this review.
The top mounted retention brackets cleared all components, although just barely. One of the capacitors was quite literally resting against the bracket, but there was no pressure being put on it and it fit like a glove.

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We encountered no clearance issues at the rear of the board either, despite the many VRM components mounted in this location.

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The TRUE Black fit with the Silent-Pipe module installed, albeit just barely. Once again, it was as if this board was designed with the TRUE in mind. The heatsink quite literally sits directly beside the Silent-Pipe module with almost no clearance between them!

Those with abnormally large heatsinks will likely have to give up their Silent-Pipe module, or be forced to mount the heatsink in the less ideal “vertical” orientation, exhausting air upward.

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Memory clearance is not any more problematic than it would be on any other P55 board. Large coolers often overhang the slots depending on the fan thickness used, but any “standard” height memory modules, like the OCZ Platinum kit we used shouldn’t pose an issue.

We should note that we installed our memory in the blue slots for the above photos, only to be greeted by a failure to post. When using only a pair of DIMMs, the white slots should be used on the P55A-UD7.

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At the other side of the heatsink, we ran into no clearance issues, and the +12V connector remained fully accessible.

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Packing the P55A-UD7 full of video cards won’t be an issue. None of the critical components will be blocked, aside from the convenience reset button and perhaps the SPDIF header connections. Thankfully the last slot is not at the very bottom of the board, so dual thickness cards can be used in a Tri-SLI or 3-Way Crossfire configuration.

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We were a little bit concerned about the proximity of the Silent-Pipe to the first PCI-E 16X slot – especially considering it’s 100% aluminum construction. If it contacts the video card, it will most certainly short out many of the surface-mount components on the card. Buyers will have to be extremely careful when installing a card in this slot, and we’d go so far as to recommend installing it in the lower 16X slot in a single card configuration.

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Thankfully, all ten of the P55A-UD7’s SATA ports are accessible regardless of the cards used. It may be necessary to remove video cards to access the ports, but none of them will be rendered unusable regardless of the cards installed.

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Once we had the board powered up, we were greeted by an impressive light show, but were stopped in our tracks by a no-post code of “C1”. After looking in the manual quickly, we determined that this was memory related. A quick move of the DIMMs from the blue to the white slots did the trick, and we were off to the races.

There are LED lights in several locations on the P55A-UD7, and they do everything from alert of temperature problems to overclock level and even an “OC-Alert” that displays the overall stress on the system based on CPU, NB, PCH and Memory voltage.

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We were also pleased to see a pleasant blue glow emanating from the convenience power switch.

 

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BIOS Rundown

BIOS Rundown

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The P55A-UD7 features a nice and colorful full-screen logo to hide all of those post messages. As a nice added bonus, Gigabyte actually provides software that allows this logo to be customized from within Windows.

As is no surprise, the P55A-UD7 features the very popular Award BIOS. Although all of the “fun” tweaker settings are located within the “MB Intelligent Tweaker” section, we’ll let the suspense build as we go through the more pedestrian menus first.

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We had to laugh at the sheer number of integrated components that could be enabled or disabled within the “Integrated Peripherals” menu. There are so many on board components on the P55A-UD7 that you actually have to scroll down to a second page to view all of the options. Those who are not interested in using all of the storage controllers on the P55A-UD7 can disable them so that they won’t show up in Windows or consume any system resources.

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The “PC Health” status page gives us some basic voltage, temperature and fan readings, and allows the configuration of temperature warning thresholds and fan control. The list of readings available here is pretty decent, although it would have been nice to see QPI/Vtt voltage readings included along with the PCH voltage.

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Under the “MB Intelligent Tweaker” menu, we were pleased to see that Gigabyte logically organized the parameters into sub-menus. Although it means having to navigate another level into the tree, everything feels a lot more manageable in this manner. Frequency and multiplier settings are found in one menu, while memory and voltage settings are in separate ones. Some basic “at a glance” vitals are available on the main page, including CPU temperature and Vcore.

One great tool included in the BIOS is the “Current Status” view. This not only shows the current multiplier selection for the CPU, but also individual core frequencies, current memory timings and even individual core temperatures. Never before have we seen this level of detail available in the BIOS!

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Under the frequency menu, the BCLK can be adjusted, along with the CPU and QPI multiplier. The memory menu allows the memory multiplier to be selected, but the majority of the memory timings can be found in the “Timing Settings” sub menus. The timings can be set for both channels A and B independently, but setting “Timing Selectable” to “Quick” ensures that whatever is set for channel A is automatically set for B as well.

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All of the essential memory timings can be adjusted, as well as quite a few that even advanced tweakers will leave alone.
Under the “Voltage” menu, we see a healthy selection of voltages that can be adjusted, although buyers will be most interested in CPU Vcore, QPI/Vtt and DRAM. As an added plus, Gigabyte allows very fine adjustments to be made so that hardcore tweakers will be able to dial in very specific voltages.

Here are the minimum and maximum voltages that can be set on the P55A-UD7:

CPU Vcore: 0.50V – 1.90V
QPI/Vtt Voltage: 0.80V - 1.94V
PCH Voltage: 0.85V – 2.08V
CPU PLL Voltage: 1.50V – 2.58V
DRAM Voltage: 1.30V – 2.60V
DRAM Termination Voltage: 0.530V – 1.235V
Channel A/B Data Vref Voltage: 0.530V – 1.205V
Channel A/B Address Reference Voltage: 0.720V – 0.980V

As you can see above, not only can the P55A-UD7 thoroughly cook your hardware at the upper end of the spectrum, it can also greatly under-volt components if that is something a buyer is interested in. This range of selectable voltages will cater even to the hardcore overclocker.

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The P55A-UD7 – like most modern Gigabyte boards – features “Q-flash”. As you’ve probably guessed, this is a built-in BIOS utility that allows flashing from a USB storage device instead of having to rely on floppy disks and archaic methods. You simply browse the folder structure on the flash drive, and select the BIOS ROM you’d like to apply. We took the opportunity to flash our BIOS from F2 to F4 using a simple 4GB thumb drive, and the process went very smoothly.