360-Degree Motherboard
Gallery:
Care of the Intel Z68 Express chipset, the
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 serves up the full compliment of integrated
graphics options at the rear I/O. The
HDMI port is good to resolutions of 1920x1200, DisplayPort to 2560x1600, DVI-D to 1920x1200
and the Analog VGA services older CRT monitors. The board can handle dual displays which is especially nice
for users with twin LCD displays.
The HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) port
provides an all-digital audio/video interface to transmit uncompressed HDCP compliant signals.
The DisplayPort, located just below the HDMI output, delivers digital video/audio and supports bi-directional audio
transmission. DisplayPort is DPCP and HDCP compliant.
The Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard features two
physical PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots. A single videocard runs in x16
mode. Two-way nVidia SLI or ATI CrossfireX configurations will split the bandwidth equally and
run both videocards in x8/x8 mode. Remaining expansion slots include three PCI Express 2.0 x1
slots and two legacy PCI slots.
Spacing between the two videocard PCI Express 2.0 x16
slots is good. A single dual-slot wide videocard will only block
the second PCIEx1 slot. If you opt for SLI or CrossFireX, it will
cost you the second PCI slot. With either videocard scenario there is lots of space to
go around. The PCI Express slots are clearly marked with bandwidth values too.
Along the bottom edge of the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 motherboard are
numerous headers; the board has (4) USB 2.0, (1) USB 3.0, (1)
firewire header. In short, there's a lot of connectivity here, but not even
one USB bracket is supplied. Bummer.
Next to the front panel IO headers are four 6Gb/s SATA
III ports (white and grey) and three 3Gb/s SATA II jacks (black). RAID 0/1/5/10 can be configured across any of these ports.
The Intel Z68 Express chipset is hiding under this low profile passive aluminum
heatsink, as you'll see right after the jump...