On the storage front there are two 6Gb/s SATA III and four 3Gb/s SATA II ports from the Intel Z68 chipset; RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 modes are supported across these ports. A Marvell SE9172 controller adds an extra pair of 6Gb/s SATA III ports into the mix

SATA II and SATA III ports.

Gigabyte's GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard supports DDR3-1066/1333/1600/1866/2133 memory in a dual channel configuration. The largest memory density for 64-bit operating systems is 32GB, for Windows 32-bit you're capped at 4GB max. The four 1.5v DIMMs support Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP) too.

Four DDR3 memory slots are available for population on the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard.

Socket LGA1155 for Intel 2nd-Generation Core i3/i5/i7 2xxx-series processors.

Like all Intel Z68 platforms, the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD accommodates Intel socket 1155 2nd Generation 'Sandy Bridge' Core i3/i5/i7 processors. It is not compatible with socket 1156 CPUs. Socket 1155 heatsink mounting holes are different than socket 775 and socket

1366 platforms, but mercifully compatible with LGA 1156 thermal solutions. If in doubt, just look at Frostytech's Top 5 Heatsink chart.

Videocard slot spacing: extra wide.

Spacing between the two videocard PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots is wide. A single dual-slot wide videocard will only block the second PCIEx1 slot. If you opt for SLI or CrossFireX, it will likely cost at least one PCI slot. With either videocard scenario there is lots of space to go around. The PCI Express slots are clearly marked with bandwidth values.

Intel Z68 Chipset

The Intel Z68 Express chipset is located off to the side of the expansion slots under a low profile aluminum heatsink that won't block long videocards. Gigabyte's trademark dual-BIOS' is tucked away in this region as well.

Etron EJ168 USB 3.0 controller.

A pair of Etron EJ168 controllers connect over PCI Express x1 bus' to the Intel Z68 chipset to supply four USB 3.0 ports. While USB 2.0's 480Mb/s maximum bandwidth was quick enough for smaller flash-memory based devices in the past, USB 3.0 expands that bandwidth to a whopping 4.8Gb/s!

Next up, PCSTATS tries its hand overclocking a Core i5 2500K processor on the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard, but first a quick look at the BIOS features and Gigabyte Touch BIOS.