Gigabyte Z87X-UD5 TH Thunderbolt Motherboard Review

We have always liked to have easy visual access to the debug LED as this is one of the leading indicators used when overclocking.  As you can see from the photo Gigabyte has placed the debug LED behind the 24pin power connector which can make it difficult to see from certain angles. 

A great feature found on the Z87X-UD5 TH is the inclusion of some benchtop controls including power, reset and CMOS clear.  These come in handy when the motherboard is used outside of a chassis or when you are troubleshooting an issue.  Another feature is the ability to check the various system voltages in real time, and you can do that using the test pads located under the power button. 

You will notice two small switches near the power button that can override the default dual BIOS features allowing you to save different BIOS images and boot to each one independently.  These appear to be a common feature on most Ultra Durable Z87 motherboards.

Behind the PWM cooler you'll find the 8 pin CPU power connector with plenty of room to access install and remove the plug when needed.

Internal SATA connections number eight and follow the new SATA6 connection standard.  The black ports come directly from the Z87 chipset while the grey ports come from a Gigabyte branded Marvell SATA controller.  These secondary SATA6 connections that can be used for additional drives or dedicated to RAID 0/1 independent of the chipset.   

You may notice a SATA power connection to the right of the SATA ports, this provides extra power to the PCI Express slots which can be helpful when running more than one graphics card or when the cards happen to pull extremely high amounts of power.  

The Z87X-UD5 TH I/O panel is very well rounded for a mainstream motherboard.  You will find a single combined PS/2 keyboard and mouse plug, six USB 3.0 ports (blue), a single gigabit Ethernet connection and 8 channel analog audio with digital connections over optical.  Onboard video is handled by 1x DVI-D and 1x HDMI.  Some of the not so familiar connections include the onboard wifi antenna connections and 2x Thunderbolt plugs soldered directly to the motherboard.