GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Nice solid board. Plenty of connectors for pretty much anything you could want.

Supports 2x graphics cards. Supports usb 3.0. Supports high watt cpus.

f12 on boot lets you select a 1 off new boot device. handy.

All heatsinks were solid and not loose. Seem fairly heavy too.

Comes with 4 sata cables. 2 straight. 2 angled.

Cons: The board does NOT recognize 1600 memory. It defaults it back to 1333. You must manually force it by setting ALL the settings. And it may take several trys as it won't 'save' the setting as it should. Finally got it to save and work properly at 1600.

The memory slots are backwards. The manual and board printing claims its 4 thru 1 from the cpu to the edge of the board. This is incorrect. Slot 1 is closest to the cpu.

SATA connectors face the edge. Not out straight up. Makes it very difficult to use multiple connectors in the same line.

The bios really kind of sucks. Lots of standard features missing. Lots of useless features included. Spelling mistakes. Unclear what some of the unique settings do. And the manual is no help at all.

No way to have information displayed from bios on boot. You can have their logo. Or their logo. Nothing useful.

Has bios settings for a com port. (there is no com port anywhere)

Several bios settings took multiple trys to 'save' and actually work as set.

Be VERY careful putting the cpu in. There is no keyed corner showing on the motherboard socket. The manual claims there is. The manual shows the proper way at least. But the socket has no 'triangle'.

Other Thoughts: Overall a good board for the price. I'm happy. (it's only been running for 1 day tho)

This came as revision 3. bios version: FB
Released on 2013/01/22

FC is available for download. Have not attempted to update as i don't see any real reason from the update descriptions.

Pros: This board seems sturdy for the most part. I think this is a great value for the the $139 price tag at the time. I received revision three.

Cons: This motherboard has issues with sleep mode. Either it will immediately turn back on even with nothing but the power cable plugged in, or it will not be able to boot back up from sleep mode.

Other Thoughts: I will be contacting Gigabyte to fix the problem. If they have good customer support I will add that to my review.

Pros: great speeds for RAM and processor. I used this one with my old amd1100t. so far after almost 1 year running at top speed.

Cons: BIOS has good features but way to cluttered and could use some better arrangements of features.

Other Thoughts: UEFI?

Pros: Attractive and well-built board. Feels very sturdy. Booted up perfectly the first time with an FX-8350 installed.

Cons: Where do I begin? Powers on for a split-second, powers off, and then powers back on on a cold boot. Apparently, this is normal behavior. Not a big deal but it's still mildly annoying.

Discovered that one of the CPU cores would randomly idle under load. Did some research and found that HPC (High Performance Computing) must be enabled in BIOS to prevent that from happening. Easy enough to fix.

Voltages are set using offsets rather than dialing in the precise voltage you want. On other boards, this might not be a problem, but on this one, you might as well be blindfolded throwing darts at a board with random voltage numbers posted on it. While 0 offset might give you 1.368-1.416V for the CPU V-core under load (more on why that's a range instead of a fixed voltage in a second), + 0.25 gives you 1.392-1.440V (about right), and +0.50 gives you 1.404-1.452V (wait...what?). On top of that, LLC does not work as intended. LLC is normally intended to counteract V-droop under load. Not on this board. LLC just adds additional voltage while the V-droop persists. For example, on my 8350 0 offset with LLC set to Regular gives me 1.416V under load with random droop down to 1.368V. With LLC set to Extreme and the same offset, the voltage increases to 1.464 under load with random droop down to 1.416V. Yes, that's right. Regardless of the LLC setting, the V-core still droops as much as .048V (as reported by CPU-Z) under load and all increasing LLC does is raise the maximum voltage before it droops. It's absolutely maddening. As most are probably aware, it takes less than .048V to separate a stable overclock from an unstable one. So you can imagine my frustration trying to fine-tune my overclock while dealing with such an irritating variance in load voltage. My system would be perfectly stable while running IBT or Prime95 until the random voltage drop would hit, causing it to become unstable and fail the test. I had to give up trying to perfect my overclock and settle for a mediocre 4.5 GHz @ 1.404-1.452V. Going much higher would mean I'd have to risk the maximum voltage going to unsafe levels just to make sure the minimum voltage was enough to maintain stability. No thanks.

All of that said, this board still does what it's designed to do at its most basic level. A non-enthusiast who doesn't care about overclocking and doesn't pay attention to voltages and randomly idling cores under load will never know anything is wrong. However, if you're as meticulous as I am when it comes to "tuning" your overclock, then stay far away from this board. It will drive you mad.

Oh yeah, and the Northbridge on this thing produces enough heat to warm a small room under load. If I place my hand over the top exhaust fan on my case, I can feel the hot air being pulled straight up from the NB. The 880G NB on my old board never got anywhere close to that warm.

Other Thoughts: I don't know how Gigabyte let such a mediocre board out into the market when its other boards, old and new, are so good. Prior to this, I had a GA-880GMA-USB3 that was absolutely flawless and ran like a champ despite being burdened with an unlocked 960T pushing 4.0 GHz that likely exceeded its maximum TDP by a good margin. Oh, and despite the lack of LLC, that board had ZERO V-droop. If I set it to 1.45V in BIOS, it would read 1.452V in CPU-Z all day long running Prime95. That despite only having a 4+1 phase power design and no cooling on the VRMs. This new board has 8+2 power phase design and heat-sinked VRMs. What's its excuse?

I also have a new GA-Z77X-UD3H that's absolutely flawless. For about the same price as the 990FXA-UD3, it packs a ton more features including a power button, clear cmos button, reset button, LED diagnostic readout, and best of all, a BIOS that actually lets you set voltage. Oh yeah, and it has LLC that actually works as intended. Set the LLC to Turbo on the Z77X-UD3H and you'll get no V-droop. Set the LLC to an equivalent setting on the 990FXA-UD3 (very high) and you risk frying your processor due to overvoltage while still experiencing random V-droop. Way to go, Gigabyte!

What? Did they have their A-Team design the Intel board while they let a group of interns design the AMD board? Sheesh. The difference in execution between the two boards is polarizing to say the least.

Based on the overwhelming number of positive reviews for this thing, maybe it's possible that I got a dud. Then again, I haven't seen any of the throttling issues that others have been reporting. Unless that random .048V drop is throttling, only much less severe than what others have seen. Who knows, and I doubt I'll ever find out.

In the end, I don't think I'm going to even bother trying to RMA this board. I'll probably just sell it for dirt cheap and get the board I should've gotten all along, the ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0. It doesn't seem to be plagued by as many issues as the 990FXA-UD3, most of which are inherent design flaws rather than reliability concerns. I'm going to lose money on this deal but that's the price you pay for buying blindly into a company's reputation and your own past experiences with their products. I'll know better next time. In the mean time, I can't wait to get my first ASUS board...

Pros: Great Features

Cons: Northbridge gets extremely hot under loads board died 3 to 4 days later.

Other Thoughts: if you want a Good AM3+ board like this one go with

ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.0 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
Model #:SABERTOOTH 990FX R2.
Item #:N82E16813131877

and if money is a issue then go with
ASUS M5A99FX PRO R2.0 AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
Model #:M5A99FX PRO R2.0
Item #:N82E16813131851

Both rated better then Gigabytes board under loads.

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 96982 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: I'm running a FX-8350, two EVGA GTX560 ti 2GB in sli, a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Champ series sound card, and could not be happier!

Cons: None really, PCIE x 16 rev 2.0 is'nt a bottleneck. I can wait for rev. 3.

Other Thoughts: I've got the rev. 1.1 board. Updated the bios to F9 with my P II 955 installed, loaded Windows 7 pro 64, chipset drivers, lan drivers, updated chipset, lan, video driver, and finally windows. Shut her down, installed the FX-8350 and the Sound Blaster X-Fi (I prefer sound cards over on board).
Easy Peasy.
I'm running 16 gigs of Corsair Vengeance 1600 'C9 @ 1T 9-9-9-24. If you leave it on auto 1T/2T it will default to 1333.

Pros: Looks cool that is it.

Cons: VRM cooling is HORRIBLE cannot overclock my fx8350 past 4.5ghz on water cooling. Mobo Temp sensors DO NOT work, Northbridge is too hot to touch even at 4.5ghz but monitors display 42c, voltage throttling at anything past 4.5ghz. This is more than a "bad apple" every rev3.0 board is JUNK. Pointing a fan directly on NB is the only way I can overclock this board. Overpriced garbage. Even cheap boards OC better.

Other Thoughts: Google this board.. Gigabyte's quality has gone down hill. Nothing but problems with this board even on small overclocks.

Pros: -Simple to set up
-Very durable
-Nice budget board
-good aesthetics
-Newegg's outstanding speed of packing!!

Cons: For what ever unknown reason every time I turn it on I get the gigabyte screen with the keys to enter BIOS etc. and it will not boot until I hit a key. Once I hit a key then it gives me my post beep and boots right up. Don't know why it does this. No big deal just frustrating to me.

Other Thoughts: Great Mb I would always recommend Gigabyte or Asus. Never had a problem with either. I do prefer the Asus UEFI vrs. gigabyte UEFI

Pros: Lots of features, plenty of USB ports, I like the little feature of some USB ports remaining powered even if the computer is shut off or in sleep mode, holds up to 32gb of RAM

Cons: I come to find out after purchasing that this board has issues with the Northbridge overheating due to a poor/low quality heatsink design which can ruin the board if the system is used under heavy load. Check out the various tech forums before buying this board.

Other Thoughts: Make sure to check out your processor's recommended specifications for RAM configurations. This board lists that it supports 1866mhz RAM, which is true but misleading at the same time. In my case I bought 32gb of 1866mhz RAM and I'm not able to run it at that speed due to the memory controller of my processor (AMD FX8350) can't support that speed for that much total RAM. This isn't the board's fault really, but for the novice builder out there it's worth noting that just because the board supports higher speed RAM doesn't mean you'll actually be able to run at that speed

Pros: -Board looks great, I like the black finish.
-Plenty of inputs.
-UEFI bios

Cons: I had 16gb (2x8) of gskill ddr3 1866 8-9-9-24 loaded onto this board in dual-channel and could never get it to function properly with the bios. When speeds were set any higher than 1333mhz my rig would power up, immediately shut off, then power on again. I received several error messages in bios about potentially faulty configurations. When left alone at the slower default settings for RAM, i had no problems out of this board. But as soon as I started adjusting any of the RAM settings I started having problems. I filed an RMA and will be returning this board in favor of a Asus Sabertooth gen3. If ram speeds are not an issue I would recommend this board. But if you have fast ram and want to the full performance out of it you would be better off with something else.