Hardware Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 Motherboard Review

Gigabyte's brilliant micro-ATX P55M-UD2 offers a bag-full of features and overclocking potential for its modest £85 asking price. Read on to see why this is one of the best motherboards ever made.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/03/25/gigabyte-ga-p55m-ud2-motherboard-review/1

 

Thats a sweet product!

 

I'm building a £600 PC for a friend at the end of this month. Looks like I'll be using this motherboard.

 

I like this board, with the F8 BIOS it becomes a decent board for Clarkedale CPUs rather than being restricted to Lynnfield as it was before. Probably my favourite P55 board, definitely the price/performance winner, go for it unless you need loads of expansion slots and USB/SATA3.

 

Um, I ended up having to skip to the end to work out that it was a LGA1156 board, any chance this information could be on the front page (maybe next to the price) on reviews?

 

still got a P31-DS3L purring along after 2-3 years here, its been running a Q6600 @ 3.2 for all that time too. gigabyte have always been best at the budget overclocker to my mind and when i do finally feel the need to upgrade i'll probably go with them again. having had an asus die on me and having to deal with their uk customer services, wont be bothering again.

 

Ah yes, we should have included a Feature List. This was forgotten

However in our defence, it is P55 and has several photos of the CPU socket

 

About time you got this review up! It's pretty much the only board I'm considering, with the H55-UD2H as the alternative if I can't splash for the i5 750

 

Got this board the other week with an i5-750. cracking board.
Was it also not on the enthusiast over-clocker build for "what hardware" guide?

::EDIT::
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/buyers-guide/2010/03/09/pc-hardware-buyers-guide-march-2010/3

Yep. There is it

 

Hi, can anyone tell me if a pci card in the UD2 would ruin the airflow for the graphics card. If it's an issue then I'm going for the GA-P55M-UD4 as that board's slot configuration would give me a wider space.

 

I coulda sworn you guys have reviewed this board before... I bought it a few months ago because of it's recommendation on this site.

 

How cna the P55M-UD2 have an improved layout over the H55M-UD2, if the P55M is older? Or is there a new revision out (which doesn't seem to be the thing).

 

What exactly makes this one of the greatest motherboards of all time? It costs the same and performs the same as the Gigabyte H55M-UD2H, and loses onboard graphics capability. Why wasn't the H55 variant given the same distinction, when they cost the same, and perform and OC almost identically?

I got an Gigabyte H55M-UD2H from newegg in the united states for 70$ just a few weeks ago.

 

Seems a nice motherboard but the review does not mention the lack of VRM cooling.

This thread mentions how a Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 user manage to fry the motherboard as the VRMs overheated:

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=181448

 

Put one of these in a box for a pal a few weeks ago; nice to see one's decisions confirmed.

 

We've never done it and we've thrown dozens of CPUs at our board with overclocking tbh. It's more likely a bad MOSFET popping than having too few phases - ala MSI P55 budget motherboards, of which we've blown up two and have seen other publications do the same.

 

Tell me about it. I'd never bought a mobo or built a system before I bought this board to go with my i5-750 in November. Lo and behold about two weeks later the combo started appearing in the What Hardware guide and is still there now.

I love myself. Haven't even tried overclocking it yet.

For any other first-time buyers considering the board, I can report the size of the board did not pose me any problems when installing it or the other components - I've got it in an Antec 300 case.

 

It's good to see that you've had good reliability with the one your using i wasn't so lucky,
mine died 3 days ago i've rma it to ocuk, i think the MOSFET popping you mention went on mine,every time i ran prime 95 (with the oc settings artical in issue 77) i had a hissing/ buzzing noise when all cores were 100%, when not running prime it was fine though. I've had stability probs recently so run prime the hissing/buzzing was still there but only ran for approx 10mins then pc just shut right down,would'nt start or even post (tried swapping memry sticks and removing components one by one,cmos reset no luck) it's just stuck in a looping start for two seconds then shutting down then doing same again.

One query i have is the online article running 4.1ghz: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/03/25/gigabyte-ga-p55m-ud2-motherboard-review/2


The voltage settings in the bios are the same as oc settings artical in issue 77 for 3.8ghz,
I'll trust your judgement that this is required for 3.8ghz oc