Gigabyte Z87X-UD5 TH Thunderbolt Motherboard Review

The new standard styling for Ultra Durable motherboards is to have a matte black PCB and let the accent colors show on the various heatsinks.  For the UD5 the accent color is a dark candy apple red with a grey secondary color.   From a design standpoint this motherboard resembles the UD4 in color and layout however; the feature set is where the distinction is made.

Expansion slots still follow the black color scheme and are unchanged from previous designs.  You may notice the paddle style PCI Express card locks, for a mainstream motherboard these work great though still have a soft spot for the side clip type as they tend to be easier to operate.

Flipping a motherboard over can tell you a lot about its construction.  Here we can see that the back of the motherboard is virtually devoid of any surface components and features only minimal circuitry.

Moving to the CPU we can see the dark chrome CPU socket hardware positioned next to the array of PWM components.  One of the first things to be downsized on a mainstream motherboard is the size of the power delivery system and the Z87X-UD5 TH will not disappoint.  The board features an IR Digital Power design consisting of 16 power phases.  International Rectifier has created a new digital PWM design that replaces the multi chip driver MOSFET design with a single chip solution that is extremely efficient and can deliver more power per module than anything currently available.

Dual channel memory comes standard on the Haswell processor and the Z87X-UD5 TH supports standard speed DDR3 modules up to 1600Mhz.  A maximum of 32GB is addressable however a 64-bit OS is required to access it all.  24pin ATX power is located in the traditional location near the upper edge of the motherboard and out of the primary airflow.