Single review: GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-D3H LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-D3H LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Intel Z87
4th-Gen Intel Core i7 / i5/ i3 (LGA1150)
DDR3 2933(OC)/1600

buggy POST and mediocre BIOS user experience 01/11/2014

This review is from: GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-D3H LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros:

Good performance reported in Anandtech reviews.

Cons:

My primary complaint with this board is its buggy POST performance. It frequently hung on ACPI reboots; recovery required power cycling the machine with the switch. Replacing this board with an ASUS Z87-PLUS (with all other components remaining) yielded reliable rebooting.

Additionally, my Linux system would reboot weekly on average under normal load and without overheating. I can't blame the board specifically, but I was moved to replace it and haven't observed the behavior since.

The BIOS upgrade procedure is archaic: Gigabyte distributes Windows executables rather than BIOS binaries or other non-Windows friendly options. Competing vendors like ASRock have sophisticated BIOSes that can download BIOS updates directly from the internet. Less sophisticated and almost as convenient is ASUS's BIOS update utility that can read a binary from a USB stick.

Another annoyance is a slow UEFI BIOS interface. The older-style ncurses-like BIOS mode is an improvement, but still not as performant as BIOSes from generations ago.

Overall Review:

A little research on my part would've caused me to avoid this purchase. I suffered its failings for a month or two and then replaced it with an ASUS Z87-PLUS which has none of the failings of this board. I have found the Z87-PLUS stable under load (and performant) most hours of the day for the past 3 weeks. I am using it with Linux kernel v. 3.12.6 with the following components at stock settings:

Corsair Professional Series HX 750
Mushkin Enhanced Redline 16GB DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Intel i7-4770k
Noctua NH-U12 S
Intel 520 SSD
MSI N760-2GD5/OC

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 104612 in the e-mail 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

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michael d.
Verified Owner
Owned For: 1 month to 1 year

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