Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H targets performance sweet-spot

Gigabyte’s Z87X lineup has been detailed by MyGaming previously, but one notable exclusion was the UD4H board. It sort of straddles the line between the lower-end UD3H offering for budget overclockers and the UD5H board for enthusiasts, instead targeting gamers who have a dire need for speed and Intel’s new Haswell processor family.

Intel’s Haswell is due for a launch at Computex Taipei this year (2013) and its expected that motherboard vendors and distributors are preparing for the flood of new devices and computers with the new chips. Haswell brings along with it a new socket and upgraded GPU graphics, a slightly higher TDP and better performance over Ivy Bridge.

The UD4H has finally popped up in a few pictures online and from what we can see, it looks fantastic.

Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H heatsinks

Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H

Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H portsd

Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H full

The heatsinks are now coloured red just like MSI’s new Gaming line and are identical to the UD5H’s design, although there’s some extra chrome edges for that little bit of shine. The motherboard is neat and it carries the same LED status lights on the top right that all the Z87 boards offer. The circuit board is coloured black and the capacitors are covered in protective metal shells and also painted black, just like the other Z87 boards.

The difference here is that only six SATA 6GB/s ports are available on the board, with what looks like two 3GB/s ports down at the bottom controlled by a third-party chipset. Some more details are revealed on the roght-hand side of the board, with a red power button next to two DIP switches, likely for switching between BIOS presets.

The rest of the board’s layout is fairly standard. Gigabyte nor Legit Review, who leaked the pics, made any mention of what speeds the PCI-Express slots are running at. Judging by the rest of the lineup’s specs though, the top two should run in x8/x8 mode in SLI or Crossfire, with the slot at the bottom running at PCI-E 2.0 speeds and with only four lanes available to the CPU.

Gigabyte is expected to release the Z87X-UD4H and more at Computex Taipai, which kicks off on 4 June 2013.