# Z68X-UD7 Review- Physical



## Steven B (May 11, 2011)

_*Z68X-UD7-B3 Review-Physical*_


​This is a quick physical review of GIGABYTE’s new flagship Z68 motherboard, I would like to state that Z68 offers a few advantages over its P67 and H67 counterparts. I have kind of changed up my review style here, offering more pictures and more descriptive pictures. To begin with Z68 is supposed to be H67 + P67 + SSD Caching and Intel’s Smart Response Technology bundled into one chipset. Today we are going to take a quick look at the Z68X-UD7-B3 as well as a quick look at GIGABYTE's highly anticipated Touch BIOS! The Z68X-UD7-B3 is very similar to the P67A-UD7-B3, with some slight changes in terms of accessories, BIOS, and of course chipset and features. 

I also got some other goodies in this past week including a really nice set of Kingston DDR3 1600mhz RAM, GIGABYTE AIVIA K8100 Gaming keyboard, and GIGABYTE GHOST MX8000 gaming mouse. So I will try and show you some pics of these really cool products!

Let’s start out with the boxing and accessories for the UD7.










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As you can see we finally have black SATA6G cables, which the P67A-UD7-B3 also has but the B2 variant doesn’t. 


​This has to be the most anticipated part of the whole accessory set, the USB 3.0 front panel bracket. You can’t hook up a USB 2.0 bracket to a USB 3.0 port and expect it to run at USB 3.0 speeds. 


​Notice the black SLI bracket, it’s pretty cool. 





​The socket is pretty much the same as the P67A-UD7-B3, to be honest the whole board pretty much is the same other than the Z68 SSD Caching and the Z68 chipset. Going over aspects of the actual ICs and trace layout I was taken aback by how familiar is all looks. It’s kind of like landing on the moon and being amazed the first time, and then landing on Mars and expecting the same awe, but it’s the same as the Moon.  Still though the whole experience is pretty cool, since this board is probably the most loaded motherboard I have ever gazed upon. 



​Here we have our backpanel ports, same as the P67 variant, but a bit updated. We see the use of a different brand of USB/eSATA combo ports, as well as new Audio ports. Still this board boasts 10 USB 3.0 ports alone! I forgot to mention it also has a USB 3.0 turbo mode, for when your PCH’s 8x PCI-E 1x lanes are all crammed, you can bypass the PCH and use the CPU’s DMI bus directly. 


​Our RAM slots are just as before, placed as close as can be to the socket to maintain shorter trace length for lower trace parasitic impedance. 


​Moving over to our PCI-E layout, we have two full speed 16x slots and two 8X speed PCI-E slots from the NF200 chipset, which was carried over as well. Surprisingly we are also granted 2x PCI legacy slots, which many find useful. We also have a PCI-E 1x slot up top.


​Here we have gray colored Marvell SATA6G ports, white colored Intel SATA6G ports, and 4 black Intel SATA3G ports.
 Sorry for the tilted picture, but here you can see all the connectors at the bottom of the board. Pretty much everything you need, plus two USB 3.0 connectors which can each support up to 2 USB 3.0 ports.  



​Here are out very handy power, reset, and CMOS clear buttons. 


​Here we take the heatsinks off, as always this is where the good part begins!


​Moving to the back of the board we have our trusted screws, springs, and washers to hold our heatsink in place.  


​Trusted 8 layer PCB. 


​Here is a shot of the heatsinks alone. You can see that they used thermal paste for the PCH and NF200 heatsinks, and thermal pads for the DrMOS. There are 10 DrMOS on the underside of the board, they are cooled indirectly through the 2oz of copper in the PCB, which is double Intel’s requirement for copper in the PCB. 


​Now we are going to move to my favorite part, the ICs.


​Here is a VERY crowded picture for you, but I wanted this review to be more of a picture gallery along with explanation. Each section is outlined in a different color, and every picture below corresponds to those colored outlines. You have a guide on the left. So do try to keep up as we are going to zoom through power delivery on this board.
I should note that if something on this board is being powered by switching mode power supply it uses Low RDS (ON) MOSFETs at the least, and the CPU main Vcore uses Driver MOSFETs (DrMOS). This keeps power delivery clean, and unlike many manufacturers, it can help deliver stable power to every component that needs it.


​This is the back of the CPU socket area, you can see all the components on the underside. These are DrMOS & Intersil Phase Doublers, which cut down the switching frequency in half so the end result per individual phase is 1/4 the original 1.05mhz switching frequency. Surprisingly transient response is still up to Intel's standards and these boards own world records, and its for two reasons. #1 these phase doublers are designed to work with this PWM specifically, and since its an interleaved PWM, it theoretically can allow us to multiply the bandwidth across all phases. Interleaving allows for the use of less and less output capacitors since output ripple current can be multiplied across 24 phases thus reducing actual output ripple. It also allows us to turn all phases on at once. #2 a 264khz effective (I measured it) switching frequency at the DrMOS allow for more current output at MUCH higher efficiency, which lowers temperatures and should help stabilize the output current. This board supports MultiLevel LLC which incorporates 10 steps, as well as normal LLC, but that is for GIGABYTE diagnostic purposes to tune LLC. So this board has 33 combos of possible LLC programmed in the iTE GPIO in the picture below. As far as I know those are all the possible combinations, so its up to GIGA to tune their LLC over time, but do realize that LLC can and probably will vary across BIOSes. 


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BTW GIGABYTE says its a TRUE 24 Phase VRM, they designed it and they even showed a waveform:


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You can see all the components and what they do. All of the components have been proven on past boards, and the PWM is probably the most advanced mixed signal analogue PWM. Its much more digitalized than its previous ISL6336G on the GIGABYTE X58 boards. This board can output easily 480A of power, multiply that by voltage and you have max wattage output. Of course its totally overkill. 


​Here we have our simple single stage CPU PLL output VRM. I really didn't have time to see what this VRM outputs too, but the CPU PLL read point is right in the path of its output, and everything else has its own VRM, so it has to be for one of the MANY voltage inputs the CPU requires. 



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Our 2 phase RAM VRM. 



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The NF200 is controlled by a single phase PWM, same as the CPU PLL and the PCH, except the end user cannot control it. 



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PCH VRM, which can be controlled through BIOS. 



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Here we have our last VRM(Switch Mode Power Supply) Its for the QPI/VTT and System Agent Voltages. 



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Here is how the PCI-E system on this board works. As you can see I went from the back of the board, because that was you can see physically what each port supports in terms of 16x/8x pins. 



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Our SATA6G support.



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Our VERY complex USB 3.0 and USB 3.0 Turbo System. 



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Here are all the other ICs and SMD components that weren't covered!


Now we are going to move on to some of the other goodies I have in, as well as the installation of parts!



​We have a really cool Kingston high performance triple channel DDR3 Kit.







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I love playing around with RAM:











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Three sticks:


​or Two:







​Heatsink installed.



​GPU installed, and you can see even though the RAM has very high heatsinks, it still works well. 



​System up and running with the Touch BIOS!!!!!



​There is my new cool keyboard! Its a travel keyboard, in which it can store up to 5 profiles, through really easy to use software, and then it has on board memory so it can store them computer to computer. 

Really cool mouse!


​Same profiles and storage. A ton of customization. Its a dream for gamers to have both this keyboard and mouse, they are really great to use while I play BFBC2! When you snipe you can turn the sensitivity down on the fly, and change profiles on the fly for different weapons. Then change back to normal operation after the game is over. I play either with a shotgun or a sniper rifle, and well they have to use different sensitivities. 







​Lights on the side show sensitivity levels. Different colors for different modes as well.



​Here we have again mode selection, but on the keyboard this time. 



​The keyboard has TOUCH volume control!



​You can see the red lights light up as you touch them!



​The setup!



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The new stuff!

Again the setup since we will now move to look at the new TOUCH Bios!!!!!

The Touch BIOS!!!!

As you guys may have seen the youtube video with Colin from GIGABYTE showing off their new Touch BIOS. It is time for me to explain and explore what is not in the video, because its not a simple BIOS. It is a EFI shell, in that it is firmware based, and you have to have it working with the BIOS. Many extreme tuners will be happy to hear that the old DOS style BIOS is still in tact, but this EFI shell is an in-Windows BIOS. What does that mean? It means you can set ALL BIOS settings through windows. 


​Why did they do this opposed to the UEFI of other manufacturers?
I have gathered that they wanted to use EFI to appeal to those who are too scared to enter BIOS, and those who want a better looking BIOS at the same time. *So they bypassed integrating it into the normal BIOS level, and instead put it at the OS level.* This means that users who are new to OCing and tuning can just enter Windows and make BIOS changes from there. The BIOS is now software in a sense. While many wanted to have BIOS be at the BIOS level, the general consensus from consumers was that something like 90% of them DON'T want to touch the BIOS upon start up and would be much more inclined to use software. So here you have it.

*So what benefits does this give us?*

#1 It is easier to tune our systems, we can tune through the normal BIOS, but also copy other users settings through windows. So you can have your xtremesystems window open and enter in recommend OC settings at the same time, without two computers!
#2 This gives EFI nice look to those of use who want it, and the basic look to those of us who don't (I don't). 
#3 We can now take screenshots of our OC settings!
#4 We can save to CMOS straight from windows!
#5 We don't have to reboot to save to CMOS, so we can set it and forget, and then on reboot have our settings.

I tried over and over to try to get the BIOS application settings to stick through windows, but you do have to reboot to get them to stick!



​Here we have all the settings from in the BIOS, its pretty easy to navigate!


​Multiplier change up to 59X:


​We can monitor PC health through windows!


​Save to CMOS through Windows:


​Multi Level (10 Step LLC)







​
In conclusion yes this board is the same as the P67A-UD7-B3, the VRMs are the same. The only thing different are some accessories, the chipset, features, and BIOS is also different, and A LOT of consumers want this. This board probably wont be priced too much more than the current P67A-UD7-B3, but it will be priced high like the current UD7. The main benefit for those changing over from P67 to Z68 are SSD caching and Intel Smart Response Technology. A lot of users wanted the IGP functionality as well come Z68. The truth is that this board and many of the rest of GIGABYTE Z68 lineup do not have this. GIGABYTE didn't leave those who want it high and dry, they do have many IGP and Luci Virtu enabled and capable boards at much lower price points. So what is the deal? Maybe there is something that GIGABYTE knows and that we don't? I recommend that we wait and see what Virtu has in store for us, because other than power and money saving features, I don't see performance increases. 



Stay tuned for that review, as well as the performance review for this board! I will be focusing very hard on USB 3.0 Turbo mode, SSD Caching and Smart Response technology, as those seem to the be largest benefits of this platform!

I have a few words to say about this board, and I have said them before; GIGABYTE LOVES to over engineer systems, from the CPU VRM to the USB 3.0 system and USB 3.0 turbo mode, GIGABYTE really over engineers its products to the benefit of its consumers. They have a long history of being innovative and they take initiatives with ground breaking technology. They were a bit late with the EFI BIOS, but they really did their research and I feel they nailed their target market. To have a product which is so packed with features you gotta look to GIGABYTE which "makes and bakes" all their boards (themselves) in Taiwan:


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_I would like to thank those at GIGABYTE who made this review possible!!!! Thank you!_

So I wanted to try a new style where I make pictures that try to explain better than words, because I know time is of the essence. So If you like or dislike this method let me know!


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## cheesy999 (May 11, 2011)

Steven B said:


> I forgot to mention it also has a USB 3.0 turbo mode, for when your PCH’s 8x PCI-E 1x lanes are all crammed, you can bypass the PCH and use the CPU’s DMI bus directly.



great, now all we need is some sort of software that will let us do USB Raid


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## ERazer (May 11, 2011)

ohh my, i just wet my pants


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## Steven B (May 11, 2011)

yea I just got word that GB is incorporating mSATA for Intels SRT for their new 20GB SLC NAND flash drives that they are releasing just for Z68.


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## map01ch (May 12, 2011)

Dame... this looks good, better than ASUS one


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## cadaveca (May 12, 2011)

Kinda useless without performance numbers, and the Lucid logos and stuff blurred out.

Seems to use alot of the same part as the P67A-UD4 I just reviewed, which kinda surprises me for such a "high-end" product. Hopefully the dual-phase memory power helps in clocking 4 sticks.

Hopefully Gigabyte will send me one.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (May 12, 2011)

Easily half the feature differences between models on the big names like gigabyte and asus come from stripped down bios features. Why I like biostar's approach. When you've got two models and the top one is $140 you've got no financial justification to hold back. Also why I really miss ketxxx


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## Steven B (May 12, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> Kinda useless without performance numbers, and the Lucid logos and stuff blurred out.
> 
> Seems to use alot of the same part as the P67A-UD4 I just reviewed, which kinda surprises me for such a "high-end" product. Hopefully the dual-phase memory power helps in clocking 4 sticks.
> 
> Hopefully Gigabyte will send me one.



ill hva e a performance review soon between P67A Z68X and one of GB's UD3Hs


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## FreedomEclipse (May 12, 2011)

i was planning on getting an asus p8p67 deluxe. however im now looking at getting the asus p8z67 pro instead. the z67 is a little cheaper. which one would be the better option?

_______

sorry for the hi-jack btw


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## Steven B (May 12, 2011)

id go with teh Z68 to be honest b/c its new tech ther are still bugs with virtu, but they will be fixed soon.


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## LAN_deRf_HA (May 13, 2011)

Are there any behind the scenes changes like microcode or w/e it's called? In relation to sleep support with pll overvoltage and other obscure things that weren't considered bios issues, at least not on the board maker's end.


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## Steven B (May 13, 2011)

yea that is really an AMI failure as it happens across all boards, but i can check for you because of course Z68 has a different microcode.


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## 15th Warlock (May 13, 2011)

Thanks for the review mate 

I see it's the exact same design as my old GA-P67A-UD7-B2, a solid board, and very pleasing on your eyes, but I also see the same design flaws as the P67A: useless PCIe 1x slot and poor placing for the PCIe 16x slots being next to each other... Still, nice looking board and system, it's nice they finally decided to get with the times and use an UEFI interface 

Too bad GB royaly screwed me over with the P67 B2 exchange fiasco, but this still looks like a nice, high performance board.


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## streetfighter 2 (May 13, 2011)

Excellent review.  I'd love some high res photos though.


Steven B said:


> Many extreme tuners will be happy to hear that the old DOS style BIOS is still in tact, but this EFI shell is an in-Windows BIOS. What does that mean? It means you can set ALL BIOS settings through windows.


The best part of a BIOS/EFI is that it loads before the OS does.  This is a complete copout by Gigabyte and only reveals how immature their UEFI implementation is.  There is no reason tuners, myself included, can't get all the options they want without relinquishing the mouse and eye candy offered by EFI.  [IMO.]


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## 15th Warlock (May 13, 2011)

streetfighter 2 said:


> Excellent review.  I'd love some high res photos though.
> 
> The best part of a BIOS/EFI is that it loads before the OS does.  This is a complete copout by Gigabyte and only reveals how immature their UEFI implementation is.  There is no reason tuners, myself included, can't get all the options they want without relinquishing the mouse and eye candy offered by EFI.  [IMO.]



Man, I must've missed that part, I thought GB had finally caught up to the rest of the industry, and those were actual UEFI shots... You're absolutely right, I don't believe all this PR BS about "extreme tuners" being happy with an old DOS style BIOS, I didn't believe back in January, and I don't believe 5 months later, that's like saying extreme OCrs also hate the GUI interface for their OS.

My board has a fully functional UEFI BIOS that offers me all the advanced settings I need with the ease of navigation afforded by a full GUI and mouse support, I don't see why that should be any different for other boards in 2011.


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## cadaveca (May 13, 2011)

15th Warlock said:


> Man, I must've missed that part, I thought GB had finally caught up to the rest of the industry, and those were actual UEFI shots... You're absolutely right, I don't believe all this PR BS about "extreme tuners" being happy with an old DOS style BIOS, I didn't believe back in January, and I don't believe 5 months later, that's like saying extreme OCrs also hate the GUI interface for their OS.
> 
> My board has a fully functional UEFI BIOS that offers me all the advanced settings I need with the ease of navigation afforded by a full GUI and mouse support, I don't see why that should be any different for other boards in 2011.



Gigabyte does allwo for OC without Turbo, so maybe this is part of the reason thier BIOS differs so much.


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## 15th Warlock (May 13, 2011)

cadaveca said:


> Gigabyte does allwo for OC without Turbo, so maybe this is part of the reason thier BIOS differs so much.



My current board also allows for OC without turbo  dunno if that counts as a reason...  and it also allows me to access my BIOS settings in Windows through the A.I. software suite... why not offer both options as most manufacturers do?

Still, my P67A-UD7-B2 was a solid performer, (allowing for 5.2Ghz with my current CPU) as I'm sure this board is, sharing most of its design features, and its good looks as well (I most confess I liked how it look better than my current board)

But being burned by GB's support a few months ago, and hearing this PR nonsense about the UEFI BIOS, just makes it loose a few points in my book... I hope GB also fixed the Dual-BIOS glitch that would force the board to flash the default BIOS image on the slightest system crash, forcing you to flash the most recent BIOS and manually entering all your settings each time this happened


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## LAN_deRf_HA (May 13, 2011)

Steven B said:


> yea that is really an AMI failure as it happens across all boards, but i can check for you because of course Z68 has a different microcode.



Well I can think of a lot of people that would appreciate it. Came up a lot in bios support threads but have yet to see a Z review mention it.


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## Steven B (May 13, 2011)

15th Warlock said:


> My current board also allows for OC without turbo  dunno if that counts as a reason...  and it also allows me to access my BIOS settings in Windows through the A.I. software suite... why not offer both options as most manufacturers do?
> 
> Still, my P67A-UD7-B2 was a solid performer, (allowing for 5.2Ghz with my current CPU) as I'm sure this board is, sharing most of its design features, and its good looks as well (I most confess I liked how it look better than my current board)
> 
> But being burned by GB's support a few months ago, and hearing this PR nonsense about the UEFI BIOS, just makes it loose a few points in my book... I hope GB also fixed the Dual-BIOS glitch that would force the board to flash the default BIOS image on the slightest system crash, forcing you to flash the most recent BIOS and manually entering all your settings each time this happened


I am sure your current board M4E allows OC with turbo multipliers , GB incorporated two ways to OC their boards, without the need for the multis and TDp/c. Did they finally fix the need for EIST on the M4E?

But yea I have to say I hear too many of those GB support stories, you should hear what their tech support tells people! its nuts!



LAN_deRf_HA said:


> Well I can think of a lot of people that would appreciate it. Came up a lot in bios support threads but have yet to see a Z review mention it.



Yea it was a problem with every board, not being able to resume from S3 sleep with CPu PLL Overvotlage, I bet its Intel's problem as much as AMI's. but then there was the problem of not being able to resume period with any OC regardless of overvoltage, and that was fixed a while back on the UD7-B3, but then ppl had problem in another  later final BIOS. i think the real trick to all these boards is finding the best BIOS.


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## 15th Warlock (May 15, 2011)

Steven B said:


> I am sure your current board M4E allows OC with turbo multipliers ,



I disable turbo from my BIOS and enter my desired multiplier (45x), and get constant 24/7 4500Mhz, no reduced clock even when CPU is idle, I can do that also when OCing over 5Ghz for benching, and the CPU doesn't go bellow the max clock for one second 



Steven B said:


> GB incorporated two ways to OC their boards, without the need for the multis and TDp/c. Did they finally fix the need for EIST on the M4E?



Well, apparently they did, as of my current BIOS (Ver. 1204) I have no need to enable EIST whatsoever, in fact, it's disabled as I type this  I think my previous BIOS allowed me to disable EIST as well AFAIR  The one that came pre-installed in my Rev. 3.0 board I mean. I remember having to enter the desired multiplier for the UD7 in the BIOS also, is it any different now? Dunno what you mean by no need for multis...



Steven B said:


> But yea I have to say I hear too many of those GB support stories, you should hear what their tech support tells people! its nuts!



Yup... tell me about it  you really don't wanna hear my story 

So did GB fix the Dual-BIOS issue for the new Z68 boards? Man it sure was a royal P-I-T-A having to flash my old UD7 to the newest BIOS after every crash when OCing  I'm pretty sure that must have been fixed, I remember that was driving everybody nuts back in Jan~Feb when using the B2 boards


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## bbmarley (May 15, 2011)

one thing i really like and starting to see more and more of now is sata ports facing outwards to the side of motherboard instead of upwards, its great for nice tidy cables.it looked like only ASUS was doing this but others now are following =D


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## Funtoss (May 15, 2011)

the future of gigabyte looks nice!!!


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## Steven B (May 16, 2011)

That is interesting its nice to know ASUS fixed those things! I was wondering when some manufacturer was going to , because really OCers they don't like the idea of turbo, at least i don't. not unless i need it. The M4E is a great board. 



bbmarley said:


> one thing i really like and starting to see more and more of now is sata ports facing outwards to the side of motherboard instead of upwards, its great for nice tidy cables.it looked like only ASUS was doing this but others now are following =D



Its expected that the SATA ports are slanted on any board over $150. But yea i think its a great thing that needs to be on all boards.


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## cadaveca (Jun 29, 2011)

> Stay tuned for that review, as well as the performance review for this board! I will be focusing very hard on USB 3.0 Turbo mode, SSD Caching and Smart Response technology, as those seem to the be largest benefits of this platform!




Any updates?


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## bpgt64 (Jun 29, 2011)

cheesy999 said:


> great, now all we need is some sort of software that will let us do USB Raid



....linux raid anyone?


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## Steven B (Jun 30, 2011)

Hey cadaveca, i got the second part to it, but its pretty long. 

It has:
pics of spacing of devices like GPUs,
LLC report as well as power reports (8-pin, and wall)
SSD Caching report
Benchmarks Galore (versus P67)
And some other smaller things.

Should I make a new thread? I do it on other forums, i make on physical review and one performance review, i was wondering if I can do that here? 

This is actually the last split review I am doing, from now on I am doing one piece reviews like the A75-UD4H + A3850 review i posted  here last night.


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## cadaveca (Jun 30, 2011)

up to you man; it's your review. I jsut wanted to see the numbers!


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## Steven B (Jun 30, 2011)

alright give me 1 second  id like to make another thread if that is cool


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