GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD5 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Fantastic motherboard!

Supports 3 way SLI

32GB Ram

Plenty of PCIe slots

The list goes on

Cons: Not a darn thing!

Pros: Excellent for overclocking, NB/SB, and Mosfet heatsinks are far better than the UD3, Great board for Crossfire/SLI, plenty of room around CPU block and DIMM slots for aftermarket cooling solutions.

Cons: AwardBIOS somewhat limits OC tweaks and DualBIOS can be tricky to work with, some voltage droop at higher overclocks (though fairly negligible), CrossFire/SLI limited to a (x16, x8) or a (x16, x8, x4) configuration, limited space of PCIe 1 slot (most commonly used for a wireless adapter card) due to proximity of NB heatsink.

Other Thoughts: The cons are mostly personal preferences that have very little bearing on the overall performance of the board, aside from the PCIe 1 slot being almost right on top of the NB heatsink, and none of them deserve knocking down this board an egg. Other than that, the UD5 is a great board for the price that will give you excellent performance out of AM3+ CPUs, despite the 990FX chipset not having support for PCI Ex 3.0. If you like Gigabyte boards, than get this board over the UD3. Some of my friends have UD3s and have had many problems with the board warping and/or the Mosfet heatsinks being poorly designed and loose, causing dangerous temp issues.

Pros: Great looking board, great performance when its working.

Cons: Hit 2 month mark and bam. Dead. Wont power on, no beeps, nothing. Reset CMOS, replaced power supply, memory, everything but the board with working components, dead. Junk board.

Other Thoughts: Gigabyte should pull these boards...frustrating after a successful build and dead after 2 months.

Pros: The negatives for my purposes outweigh any "Pros".

Cons: This motherboard does not support booting linux from USB. I really need to do this!! I feel ripped off.

Other Thoughts: I want to boot Linux on this off USB like I can with MSI and many other motherboards! This is very inconvenient, and therefore I am very _unhappy_ with this purchase.

Pros: Great looking board. More then enough USB's. Got to love the color cordinated pin heads, and case plate. heat sink set-up around the AMD3+ slot is a nice idea. Nice room for an aftermarket CPU cooling fan.

Cons: I was pleased when I got this home and after my quick overview of my unboxing, I noticed the PCIe slot and how impossible it would be to try and stick a soundcard in it with the heat sink in the way. Soundcards do not have cut-outs to accommodate MOBO heat sinks, and most soundcards require this slot to use. Very unfortunate indeed. The DIMM slots look to closely placed togeather for people that use memory sticks with heat shields. I think the sticks will eventually get to warm being that close and possibly touching, Thus heat being shared with all the memory sticks.

Other Thoughts: As an AMD user, I was planning to go down the new AMD3+ route. The choices are narrowed down to MOBO's that use the AMD3+ are Gigabyte, MSI, ASUS, ASRock, and a couple others that I never heard of, so your choices are limited. I personally once had an ASUS and the board fried out on me. This was a stock board with no overclocking whats so ever sitting in a well ventilated case. So I will never go ASUS again. So be sure to do your research on MOBO's before you decide.

Pros: Nice bios interface with UEFI. Cool and configurable. All black PCB.

Cons: Some of the selections in the bios are obtuse. Future releases will hopefully clear this up.

Other Thoughts: I would buy this motherboard again.

Pros: Very nice looking board

Cons: I had to RMA this board once before because of it frying one of my memory sticks, and they claimed it was because of a bad BIOS install. After I got it back, I upgraded from the FX8150 to the FX8350 and begun to notice that it would randomly shut down and freeze. I thought this was my new processor, so I sent it back and got a new one. Once I got the replacement back I saw that there was no difference. A few days after that while I was setting up my computer all of a sudden it just shut off and would not turn back on. SO upset right now about the whole situation! I even asked them if there was any way that I could pay a few dollars more for a REV3 instead of the REV1.x that I have and they told me no. Not very happy about that either.

Other Thoughts: BEWARE!! You will have to pay for shipping, so on top of paying $!*) for this board, add $15 x 2 to that!! PLUS my ram that it fried once before! If it damaged anything else I might have to smash it to pieces and just buy the ASUS Crosshair V Formula! Should have just went that route anyway.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your comments. We apologize for your difficulty with your GIGABYTE product. Please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyteusa.com with the case number 95882 in the subject line. We will provide personalized service and analysis to help solve your issue ASAP. If the matter is urgent, please send us your contact number, and we will contact you.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: Very nice looking MOBO! Matches my theme and everything nicely! Seems like it could run well.

Cons: Had it for a few months then all of a sudden it fried one of my memory modules. I sent it back and they stated that the BIOS installation was corrupt. They "fixed" that problem and sent it back. After a hand full of months again I finally got my water cooling system, and upgraded my 8150 for an 8350 and all of a sudden I started getting random crashes and reboots. After troubleshooting everything I could think of (as well as updating to the latest Bios) my computer just shut down for good! Pretty sure the board fried. Not very happy about this!! Didn't even BEGIN to overclock!!!!

Other Thoughts: Be VERY VERY careful of this board!! Try not to get the REV1.x!!

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your comments. We apologize for your difficulty with your GIGABYTE product. Please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyteusa.com with the case number 95797 in the subject line. We will provide personalized service and analysis to help solve your issue ASAP. If the matter is urgent, please send us your contact number, and we will contact you.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: Gigabyte boards I have used in the past have always went well. Not this one.

Cons: I purchased This MB to run with the AMD FX 8150. I have built computers from high end to low end and know the ones in the middle last the longest and are the most stable. I don't know everything but this is far from my first build.
I RMA'D the first board and processor together because I knew on or the other was DOA. Newegg replaced the MB but sent the processor back with "physical damage". One pin, closest to the little arrow was bent. I know well that bending one pin perfectly and not the one next to it is something I did not do. But given the contract agreement, I sucked it up and bought another processor. Same make and model to put in the new board.

This time around I was able to load an OS. I was getting blue screens with different codes every 4 hrs or so. I took the processor out to examine and found the MB melted at the bores where the pins are of the processor are places and a cooked processor with broken pins toward the center. Board and Processor 2 out the window. I'm a carpenter and know that if the hole and pins don't match up perfect, or the clamp lever pinches onto the processor unevenly, then we have a problem.

Called Newegg. Newegg told me to get lost at first. Told me to contact AMD and Gigabyte. I did... They both told me basically that it wasn't they're problem and to go back to Newegg. I did. Newegg agreed to the second RMA.

New MB arrives. Put new processor in it. Computer runs fine till the blue screen about memory management. Work through to find out timing set to auto is not auto. Check and make sure "profile1" isn't your ram timing.

Today bios power management errors. Computer sleeping won't wake up. Fans and power on, no hard drive, no OS, no nothing until I removed the battery.

This has been the worst build of my life. I used to love building PC's and hated Apple. But after this, I want to take this thing out back, drop it in a fire and fill it with 12 gauge shot, and call it a loss. At this point the fun of the build is gone, and I have too many hours dealing with problems. Too much money spent and time wasted. I have an old LanParty NF4 board running Win 7 that is more stable and reliable than this garbage.
See ya later Gigabyte... Never again

Other Thoughts: Thanks Newegg for working with me even though it was like pulling teeth. If all was the way it should be, I wouldn't have had to buy 2 processors. That's just not right. I haven't even sent the other one back because I'm just so sick and tired of the mess that I can't take it anymore. If I could, I would accept an equal or lesser build to replace this headache of a mess

Pros: Larger and better than typical motherboard heat sinks for the north and south bridges. Also heat sink and heat pipe over the CPU power ICs.
10 SATA ports via AMD SB950 and Marvell 88SE9172, 2 built in eSATA on the back panel
Configurable cooling fan monitoring makes it simple to have the largest CPU heat sink you could want and route the fan power cable to desired header.
Noctua NH-C12P-SE14 fits with Crucial Ballistix reduced height heat sink DDR3 memory
BIOS allows configuration of pretty much all you could ever want. Have not found one thing yet where I am thinking, "Why can't I adjust that?"
SATA chipset speed detection and drive communication performs very well. Using Crucial 256GB M4 SSD SATA III and 1 TB Caviar Black SATA II internally. The SSD has so far tested at 250 MB/s, whereas the Caviar Black is right at its limit of 107 MB/s. For fun and backup purposes, using an Anker external drive system for an odd 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4, which touts connecting with SATA II, but has only ever achieved SATA I on two different computer systems. Even so, the Seagate achieves its limit of about 82 MB/s.
2x USB 3.0 ports on the back panel, and 2 more USB 3 headers on the motherboard.
Could never use all of the USB 2.0 ports (14 total available)

Cons: 1x 1394a port on back (Firewire 400)
1x 1394a header on board (Firewire 400)
For faster Firewire, plan on purchasing your favorite PCI Express x1 card. I have a SYBA SD-30009 on order from Newegg as of yesterday (4/8/13) afternoon.
Be thorough when planning for that large CPU heat sink. Depending on the heat pipe design, the system memory slots may be blocked by the CPU heat sink pipes. If there are tall heat sinks on the memory, there will be a clearance problem.
Auto detection of memory settings not perfect. Be sure you know what the memory timing settings are before getting too far into start up. You will thank yourself later.

Other Thoughts: I used the Gigabyte rebate offer through Newegg. To save some money, I suggest looking for the current one and take advantage of it.