GIGABYTE GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI LGA 2011 Intel C606 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: holds 64 gb RAM

Cons: SAS/SATA ports aren't recognizing my sata drives. this is completely irritating. i have a bunch of hard drives that i put in this computer that i can't even use because the SAS/Sata ports aren't working. they recognize the drives in the BIOS but then nowhere else. i can't choose them to boot from. OS won't mount them either.

i've read many reports of others with the same problem..

i've read one needs a xeon to use these, but Gigabyte support have told me it shouldn't matter & that they should work.

it has very few 6 gb/s ports. that's just terrible. i really shouldn't have bought this board on those grounds alone. it has 8 sas/sata ports but what good are they if they don't work? such a waste. :(

Also, the board takes really long to boot.

I seriously wish i didn't throw the box away for this thing. I would have returned it. I've contacted gigabyte support and can send it in but i'm not sure that's going to work, and worse, i don't have time to wait for them to work on it then send it or another board back. i need to use my computer in the meantime. this is terrible. :(

this is my second gigabyte board & i'm not happy at all.

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 96980 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: Cant really comment on it since it since it doesn't POST

Cons: D.O.A. Trying to figure out if its the board or something else but it wont post.

Pros: It works. Loaded with features and looks great; none of those childish gun-shaped heatsinks on some other boards. Lots of SATA connectivity and 8 DIMM slots are awesome.

Cons: While I think the board looks fine as it is, I would have preferred to see a black/grey theme like on the X79-UP4. One of the reasons I didn't get the Rampage V Extreme was the color scheme didn't match at all. In high end builds people care a lot about the look of their rigs and it annoys me sometimes when an otherwise good board alienates some potential customers because of the color. Black and grey goes with pretty much anything. Wasn't a problem for me, but something to think about. One thing that bothers me though is the Red power button. Just looks completely out of place. Last is the PCI Express layout which could be better. It's not a direct issue (or I wouldn't have bought it lol) but it does limit my expansion options a little. I don't see the need for a legacy PCI Slot, surely anything using that interface likely won't have drivers for W8 anyway, and only some for W7. For an ATX Board, I think a much better layout is:
x16
x1
x16
x16
x16
x1
x16
(Cont. in Other)

Other Thoughts: That PCI Express Layout gives you the most flexibility, as you can do 4-way dual slot graphics, or 3-way triple slot, or 3-way dual slot with a slot of space in between each for breathing room or for two single slot cards (x8 RAID card in slot 3, x1 audio card in slot 6? etc. lots of options). And I know there aren't enough lanes for five x16 slots, just run them in x8 mode when you have triple graphics, but they should at least all be wired for x16 so you have more flexibility in placing your cards. Also I know this board only has 6 slots to make more room for the DIMM slots and heatpipe. It'd be nice to see an XL-ATX version of this board with 7 slots in that layout (filling slots 2-8 on a case, so a 9-slot case can fit a GPU in the bottom slot) and also with a black/grey theme. Lastly it would have been nice to have a right-angle USB 3.0 header, and a SATA 6Gbps LSI controller. Anyway, no eggs off for any of this. Just offering my two cents for future improvement.

Pros: I have no clue how I lived without this board before! I mean the X79 Chipset was made for workstations but there are always key parts of the chipset that is lacking. I believe Gigabyte makes up for all of it on this board. I've had it for a good while now and this board is for enthusiasts if you are into highend specialized products get this board. I haven't had to deal with any issues and not only that this board can function just as a regular computer with CFX/SLi and the included bluetooth and wifi.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Ultimate PC!!

Pros: • Makes for a very stable and versatile single-socket Xeon workstation.
• Solid design and build quality.
• Plenty of SATA/SAS connectors.
• Provision for multiple PCIe 3.0 graphics cards.
• Everything onboard supported under FreeBSD. Note, however, I have not tested the included WiFi card.

Cons: • Takes a long time to POST, but not really that odd for a server/workstation board.

Other Thoughts: Examining this board, it looks like what can best be described as "over-engineered." Since I don't overclock, I have an extra measure of confidence that these circuits can more than handle all the current/heat I am throwing at them. I've been running with an Intel Xeon E5-1660 3.3GHz CPU, 4 x 8GB Kingston ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1600MHz RAM, and it performs exceptionally well, with perfect stability.

This is my first Gigabyte motherboard, and so far I'm impressed.

Pros: You can tell Gigabyte had ambitious goals designing this motherboard.

Build quality

Works great with my 5 year old EVGA 9600GT

Cons: 2 new GA-X79S0 Mobo's
5 nVidia video cards
2 new 38930k CPU's
2 new PSU's
3 different brands of RAM
=
No go for me with this product

Other Thoughts: Well, I have had this board for 4 days now and it had been giving me nothing but issues with POST. I have basically swapped out the hardware twice over at this point (With the exception of the CPU HSF) and the issue is still there when running a nVidia 600 series or GTX560 GPU:

With a new MSI TF GTX 680 installed, the screen comes up and it sits there on the logo for 20 seconds (No resoponse from setup key or others) then video signal is lost and the comp sits there and does nothing.

With a new (EVGA) GTX 560 installed, no screen output at all.

With a used (EVGA) GTX 560 pulled from a working computer, same as above. No video at all.

With a new (Gigabyte) 660ti installed, same result as the GTX 560 above

On a whim, I installed an older EVGA 9600GT and it POSTs normally and I can access the UEFI. I took the opportunity to update via QFLASH to the latest, non beta F3 revision on the Gigabyte site. (Board came with F1) To my dismay, this still did not solve the issue.

Here are the build specs:

Corsair D550 case
Intel 3930K (C2)
CM 212EVO socket 2011 CPU HSF
GA-X79S-UP5-WiFi (Now running F3 UEFI)
Corsair Vengeance 10600 RAM 4x8GB QC kit
MSI GTX 680 TF
2 Samsung 830 256GB SSD's
PC Power and Cooling Silencer MK2 950w

In troubleshooting:

I have already swapped out the motherboard for another new Gigabyte GA-X79S-UP5 and still the same issue.

Went and bought a second 3930K CPU. No change.

Tried it with the new Corsair RAM mentioned above and also new Kingston Hyper-X Genesis DDR3 10600 (using 2x4GB in the recommended slots) and used (From another computer) OCZ 3G1333 10666 2X2GB modules.

Swapped the 950W for a new 750W PC PnC Silencer MK2 and still no change.

Also I did the initial troubleshooting with all peripherals unplugged. (Just mobo, PSU, vid, and RAM connected in all the allowed slot permutations)

I even tried the vid cards in the second PCIe 16x and the PCIe 8x slots.

I have yet to try an AMD based card. I might pull one of the 6950's from the comp I'm typing this on but I think I've lost the will to troubleshoot this product anymore after already blowing 3 nights on this.

I have been building computers since 1995 and this has to be in the top 5 of most challenging (and frustrating) hardware issues I've run into. The issue would appear to be with this mobo and nVidia PCIe spec 2.0/3.0 cards but I see others on here running 600 series nVidia GPU's on this board without the same problems (albiet different ones) so I'm stumped on this one. I really thought the second new mobo was going to fix the issue.

I bought this board for the SAS functionality and wanted a stable, near WS quality build. (I just want a rock steady build, no overclocking.) Looks like there will be a lot of hardware being returned tomorrow. (I dont even want to look at my CC bill from the damage I've done in the last few days)

Am I missing something? (Other than my sanity at this point)

Manufacturer Response:

Dear customer:

We're sorry to hear that you're having difficulty with the GIGABYTE board. Please contact our support team at newegg-support@gigabyteusa.com with the case number 91495 in the email subject line and we'll work with you on the no display issue.

Thank you.

Pros: - Excellent stock performance.
- Excellent board layout.
- Overclocks up to 4.6 GHZ, but it's not easy.
- Solid board, no flex during install.
- Marketed as a Workstation board, but works good for gaming.

Cons: - UEFI has issues with some input devices, works great with keyboard though.

- Board is hard to overclock, you basically have to set everything manually. I experienced the frequency drops on my first attempt to overclock.

-Board seems to currently have an overclocking limit of 4.5 - 4.6 GHz.

Other Thoughts: No board is perfect for everybody. Just do some research before you decide if it's for you. I always check tech reviews, YouTube, and some forums. Forums can be great for solving problems, but take the complaining with a grain of salt.

There are plenty of people that have overclocked this board like AnandTech, Overclock.net, and Legion Hardware. I personally got mine to 4.4 GHZ on air, testing with Prime95, AIDA64, CPU-Z, and RealTemp GT. But I dropped it to 4.2 GHz to keep my system quite.

Issues overclocking memory are usually caused by the memory itself or the memory controller on the CPU. However, if you were able to get say, 2133 MHz on another motherboard with the same CPU and memory. You should be able to get 2133 MHz on this board. I manually set my 8 sticks at stock; 1600MHz, 8-8-8-24, and 1.5v with no issues.

Most people are not going to set up more than one RAID array. So, I don't see only being able to use one of the onboard controllers a problem. I might be wrong but I think it said you could only use one at a time in the manual. Besides, if they're really into RAID, They're going to use a RAID card instead of the onboard controllers.

Conclusion:
If you just want a stable LGA2011 board or you'll like the challenge of overclocking, then you'll love this board. But if you want a gaming board that's easy to overclock, you'll hate this board.

"I've been employed in the IT field for almost 22yrs. I feel I know what I'm doing. But I don't consider myself an expert. There's always more to learn."

Pros: 1. Feature wise a well rounded board.
2. Hardware build quality is good.

Cons: Oh boy, where do I begin...

1. Despite what previous reviews on here may say and what you may read in supposed "official" and "independent" reviews on-line the board has serious firmware problems that prevent basically any overclocking without experiencing throttling issues. The board cannot overclock any chips successfully and causes throttling as soon the power draw in Watts exceeds an arbitrary level (appears to be a hard limit somewhere around 190W - 200W). Unfortunately, those that have reported supposedly that they are able to overclock actually do not know how to test their overclock correctly. I have reported this issue to Gigabyte over 1.5 months ago and continue to try to get them to fix the problems but despite providing a tremendous amount of proof, measurements, even video evidence Gigabyte is yet to fully even acknowledge the problem, let alone fix anything. This was even confirmed to be the issue with some high-profile overclockers/editors (one of them being massman from MadShrimps dot be).
2. The board cannot run 8 banks of memory at a clock higher than 1866MHz. This is due to incorrectly implemented memory timings, and in particular the inability to manually set tRC to a value higher than 32 (much to low for high speed DRAM with 8 banks used). Gigabyte has not acknowledged this problem either despite being informed of it 1.5 months ago.
3. The CPU Power Limit (Watts) and Core Current Limit (Amps) settings in the UEFI BIOS do not work. To be entirely correct, they work to lower the wattage and amperage, but their supposed upper limits of 1200 Watts and 300 Amps are meaningless and have no effect. Gigabyte has not acknowledged this issues either.
4. There is not enough UEFI BIOS shadow memory to be able to run any two RAID option ROMs at the same time. This means that you can have RAID set up only on IRST/RSTe, SAS, or Marvell at any given time, but not any combination thereof. One cannot set up a bootable RAID in RSTe and SAS at the same time.
5. Turning on Marvell RAID at the same time as IRST/RSTe RAID will cause the board to not POST successfully and it will require a full CMOS clear just to be able to go back into the UEFI BIOS settings.
6. Setting XMP profile cannot set correct VTT when using 8 banks of memory (always defaults to 1.05V).
7. Numerous other firmware problems, such as non working input devices, lag, etc.
8. High DPC latency (>1000us) which is bad for AV editing/streaming.

If you want to read upon all of the issues with this board, especially the throttling problems just search for the threads on Tweaktown and Overclock dot net.

Overall, a board not ready for release, not even by a long shot. To make matters worse, Gigabyte support is extremely unhelpful, their testing methodology is inconsistent when testing a problem (they do not even keep the same test control parameters, such as OS, patches, etc.), they do not follow up properly, and do not read what is communicated to them in suffi

Other Thoughts: Extremely promising hardware with an extremely amateur implementation of firmware that completely ruins the potential of this board. Gigabyte support leaves a lot to be desired. After being a Gigabyte customer for many years I am afraid that their quality control and their commitment to their products and customers has suffered to a point where I can no longer recommend their hardware to anyone.

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 91266 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: One of the most fully featured boards available on the market, ON PAPER at least. Price is not terrible. Nice layout, and suitable for use as a workstation board or gamer running tri-SLI.

Cons: I have had the the same experience as reported by James in an earlier review. As of today, Dec 13, 2012, THE BIOS REMAINS BROKEN. I believe this to be purely a software bios coding problem, not a problem with the hardware. Here are the issues:

1. The UP5 has what appears to be a hard limit of about 190W for CPU power usage coded into the BIOS. This means that your high dollar 3930K will be throttled down to stock speed or a little bit higher every time the CPU power draw hits about 190W. None of the BIOS options to change the current/power limits work. The board is capable of safely delivering much higher power to the CPU, but the Gigabyte engineers chose to lock it down to an absurdly low value, either deliberately, or through error. Ironic, since their advertisements specifically target enthusiasts who will likely try to get the most out of their "enthusiast brand" high dollar hardware.

2. The board has issues running 8 dimms of memory at speeds above 1866 MHz.

3. There are issues with the way the RAID feature is implemented on the SATA and SAS ports (cannot have bootable raid volumes on SATA and SAS ports simultaneously).

Other Thoughts: Check out the thread on OCN overclock dot net on problems people are having with this board. I have had mine for a week and have exactly the same issues as several other people have reported (I found the thread only after I expereinced issues). Gigabyte has apparently known about these issues for some time, and has acknowledged the throttling/power hardlock issue, but has NOT provided a fixed BIOS to date. I am going to hold on to this board for a couple more weeks and then return it to the other site where I bought it if Gigabyte has not issued a fix by then.

If you are not going to be using using the board to run an overclocked SB-E hexa-core processor, or running 8 dimms above 1866MHz, this board MAY be all that you need. Only you can decide.

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 91158 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: Near server class set of features and quality. Using C606 i/o virtualization we have built a Virtual Host with 64G of Ram. Using Ubunutu and Virsh. The Virtual Machines are crazy fast on this motherboard. Impossible to tell the difference between the host and the VM.

We were able to pull 7, 4 year old hp servers and consolidate to one workstation.

I have now built about 20 systems around Gigabyte motherboards. No other manufacturer even comes close.



If you just want to build a rockin system and have boot first time you have to go with Gigabyte.

Cons: doh! - For a second system build, I forgot to buy two ram chips, this motherboard requires ram to be installed in pairs.

Other Thoughts: I would love to see an all SATA version of this board. I realize SAS is supposed to be better for server/high end work stations. But we do just fine with SATA drives.