PCB Design and Functionality

The PCB layout of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard, just like the layout of all other contemporary Gigabyte boards, looks very convenient and well thought-through. However, you can immediately notice the features indicating that this solution is the junior one in the family: four DDR3 DIMM slots instead of six.

I don’t think that the availability of only four memory slots is a serious drawback, because most of you will use only three of them utilizing thriple0channel memory mode, which is standard for Intel Core i7 processors. Besides, all other features typical of Gigabyte LGA1366 mainboards remained intact. There is enough free room around the processor socket to accommodate large CPU coolers, all power supply connectors are in very convenient spots. The processor voltage regulator circuitry uses only high-quality components and supports four-stage algorithm for changing the number of active phases depending on the operational load at the time.

This way you can get a good look at the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard cooling system built with aluminum heatsinks of pretty sophisticated shape. The heatsink over the chipset North Bridge uses secure screw-on retention that goes through the PCB to the metal plate on the back of the board. All other heatsinks use traditional plastic push-pin retentions.

The expansion card slots located on the lower part of the mainboard PCB include two PCI Express x16 slots for the graphics cards, one PCI Express x4 slot, two PCI Express x1 slots and two regular PCI slots. Intel ICH10R South Bridge provides six Serial ATA ports with RAID support. Two more SATA ports and a Parallel ATA supporting up to two devices are implemented via Gigabyte SATA2 controller. Only the floppy and PATA connectors are in a little inconvenient spots; however, these outdated interfaces become of lesser significance day by day.

The back panel of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard carries the following connectors and ports:

• PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors;
• Optical and coaxial S/PDIF and six analogue sound jacks provided by Realtek ALC888 codec;
• Eight USB ports, four more ports are implemented as onboard pin-connectors;
• Two IEEE1394 (FireWire) ports implemented via Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 controller, the third port is available as an onboard pin-connector;
• Local network connector (network adapter is based on Realtek RTL8111C Gigabit controller).

The quality components layout from the user manual accompanying Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard will give you a complete picture of the layout advantages. You can see six fan connectors, two of which are four-pin ones, two BIOS chips, a COM port, and a row of LEDs indicating the number of active phases in the processor voltage regulator circuitry.

The list of technical specifications from the official company web-site will sum up everything we know about Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R:

Among numerous advantages of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R we can only find three small drawbacks:

• Only four memory DIMM slots;
• Inconvenient location of FDD and PATA connectors;
• No LED indicating that the mainboard receives power.