Test System

Initial Setup

Initial boot-up with the Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H was quick and simple, and installing device drivers off the CD was quick and painless. There is not a lot for me to say here because everything worked exactly as expected. I also noticed that the Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H runs with a rather normal Turbo profile.

Some boards have custom Turbo profiles that boost performance at "stock" settings, giving the appearance of having more performance than they really do. Gigabyte told me that they understand that some users want this function to be available, so they do offer such Turbo profiles. A boosted Turbo profile becomes available when XMP is enabled, or via a switch in the BIOS, but it can also be disabled via the same option in the BIOS. I personally feel that a coupon for Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan should be included in the box to protect against CPU failures if boards do this without giving the end user a way to turn it off, or don't explicitly state doing so. For more information on Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan, check their site found HERE.


The Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H was the first board to give me issues with the installation of the fan onto my G.Skill 2666 MHz TridentX DIMMs, for a reason other than having expansion slots close. The front panel USB 3.0 port by the DIMM slots is too close, and the plug and RAM fan want to occupy the same space. The Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H fortunately has an additional USB 3.0 header on the board's bottom edge, so that is where I plugged my case's USB 3.0 ports into the board.


Fitting everything else to the board, including the large air cooler, RAM fan, and two VGAs, went without a hitch, and there was more than adequate space for air-cooled multi-GPU configurations, as you can see by the images above.


There is a PCIe x1 slot between the two VGAs, and the MOSFET cooler has plenty of clearance for the rear-mounted fan on my CoolerMaster TPC812.

Power Consumption

We measure CPU power consumption since one of our first tasks is to truly verify system stability. I isolate the power coming through the 8-pin ATX connector using an in-line meter that provides voltage and current readings, and total wattage passed through. While this may not prove to isolate the CPU power draw in all instances, it does serve as a good indicator of board efficiency and effective VRM design. Total system power consumption is no longer reported as this figure can change depending on what VGA is installed. The sole board-only power measurements possible without physically modifying a motherboard are those taken via the 8-pin CPU connector, making it the only figure of value worth reporting. I use wPrime with eight threads selected in the options, since it provides a consistently high workload throughout the full length of the test and runs long enough for the VRM and CPU to produce a fair bit of heat. Most average workloads will draw far less than this, although distributed computing applications are quite similar. This is not supposed to test stability since I use several other applications to do so, but merely to provide repeatable power draw numbers anyone can replicate. The meter used is an off-the-shelf Zalman unit that has been on the market for some time. It provides quite similar results in my test environment when compared with a FLUKE 337 clamp meter.


Power consumption with the Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H was rather exceptional, one of the lowest results for power consumption yet, even with the seemingly small VRM section I will show you in a minute. Gigabyte's fully digital International Rectifier VRM used in many of their boards is a pretty capable design that proves its worth here.