PROS:
USB3, Easy overclocking for novices, Reasonable legacy device support, Fan speed control, Good manual
CONS:
Adapters for parallel and serial ports and floppy drive cable are not included. Only one PS2 port for either keyboard or mouse. Some minor issues - see below.
COMMENTS:
I bought this board in April 2010 and installed the i5 750 CPU and two SATA disks in an Intel RAID mirror. The entire process went smoothly, including the installation of Windows XP, which required the RAID driver from the Gigabyte DVD on an F6 floppy. When the OS was running, I found that I could not write or format a floppy disk, but reading was OK. The problem was caused by the F4 BIOS that shipped with the board, which assigned a conflicting address to the floppy drive. Any BIOS more recent than F4 solves this problem. Another issue was a short beep from the PC speaker that occurred randomly at 10 to 15 minute intervals. This seems to be an Intel problem with the CPU, which emits a false high temperature alarm when switching power states. The solution is not to enable the over temperature alarm in the BIOS, or else to disable the C3/C6/C7 state support. These are minor issues, but they can be vexing for anyone who is unaware of them.
I would have given this board a five star rating, but I subtracted one star because of the extra effort needed to get this board working satisfactorily. Gigabyte should publish "release notes" that detail these issues.
Get more detail about Intel Core i7/i5 LGA1156 4DDR3-2200 CrossFireX/GBE/Raid/SATA3/USB3.0/7.1-CH ATX Motherboard GA-P55A-UD3.
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