The X99 UD4P: A Powerhouse of Features and Performance

As I gazed upon the X99 UD4P, my eyes were immediately drawn to its sleek and modern design, adorned with a mesmerizing yellow LED light trail that echoes the path of the various components on the board. The sound chip from other components is meticulously integrated onto this board, ensuring seamless connectivity and top-notch audio quality. I envisioned a white and yellow themed custom water cooled rig with this board, which I've affectionately dubbed "Yellow Snow." For those who prefer not to indulge in the LED lights, it's possible to disable them through Gigabyte's App Center Software.

As I ventured deeper into the board's layout, I discovered five four-pin fan headers scattered about the top left corner. The CPU fan header is conveniently located just below the socket, while the 8 Pin CPU plug and 24 Pin ATX connector reside on the far right side of the board. Below that, a USB 3 port and a CPU mode switch are situated, which theoretically grants higher overclocking headroom for enthusiasts. Along the bottom of the board, I found front panel connectors sandwiched between two more fan headers, along with a TPM header, four-pin Molex plug, and SPDIF out and HD audio connectors.

Notably, just above the bottom PCI slot lies a Thunderbolt header for add-in cards, while to the left of the top PCI slot is another fan header. This board also boasts an LED backlit rear I/O Shield, which will be showcased in a subsequent section of this article. The rear I/O offers two PS2 ports for older keyboards and mice, four USB 2 ports, six USB3 ports, an RJ45 Ethernet LAN port, optical SPDIF out, mic in audio jacks for up to 7.1 channel sound, and a metal antenna bracket for the optional M.2 Wi-Fi module.

When I began examining the board's accessories, my excitement grew as I discovered a user's manual, installation guide, funny-looking coaster, four black sleeve SATA cables (two straight and two right-angle), an SLI bridge, Crossfire Bridge (both ribbon-style), three hard PCB 3-way SLI Bridges with varying sizes for different slot configurations, an 8 Pin cable to prevent overcurrent protection, and that backlit IO Shield. The LED lights can be turned off through Gigabyte's App Center Software or by leaving the two-pin cable unplugged.

My familiarity with the UEFI BIOS was already well-established due to its similarities to the UEFI found in my personal desktop's X99 Gaming G1 Wi-Fi motherboard. Upon booting into the BIOS, I navigated through the easy menu and accessed various settings such as boot priority or SATA controller modes before making my way to the full UEFI interface. The BIOS on this board functions admirably, giving me no issues during my brief time with it.

My initial impressions of the X99 UD4P are overwhelmingly positive. While there were a few features that I would have liked to see – such as surface-mounted power or reset buttons – the absence didn't seem to detract from its overall performance or value. Instead, this board's high-quality components and Ultra Durable classification left me eager to put it through a series of benchmarks in the coming days.

In conclusion, my experience with the X99 UD4P has been nothing short of impressive. Its well-designed layout, robust features, and exceptional performance make it an attractive option for those seeking a reliable and powerful platform for their systems.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys welcome back to the channel so a few weeks back my x99 ud5 Wi-Fi board that was in my main test bed tragically passed away after a freak liquid cooling accident coping with the immeasurable loss forced me into a downward spiral marked by an unkempt appearance and poor personal hygiene I think we're still in the spiral but the kind folks over at gigabyte heroically came to my Rescue by sending me a shiny new x99 ud4p so I could continue scratching my incessant benchmarking itch before I screw it down to my test bench and let the dust pile up begin however I figured I'd conduct a brief overview on the board for those of you considering a system build on Intel's Enthusiast platform so what we have here is an x99 board with a 2011 V3 socket for your Haswell ecpu that currently retails for about $270 aboard the matte black PCB you get eight dim slots with quad Channel ddr4 memory support for kits up to 3,333 MHz with a Max Capacity of 128 gigs which is sure to make us drool over the thought of readily available 16 GB ddr4 modules above the socket is your vrm covered by a modest heat sink with tasteful gold accents and some Ultra durable branding a heat pipe exiting the right side makes its way down and connects to the heat sink of our x99 chipset also sporting some gold flare and a yellow LED that stays lit when the board is powered on though you do have the option to turn it off by and plugging the LED's two- pin wire from the PCB you'll find plenty of sata 3 connectivity in its usual location with six ports natively controlled by the x99 chipsets that support rate 0 1 5 and 10 and to the left are four additional ports which support ahci and IDE only giving us support for a total of 10 SATA 6 GB per second drives we also get a single SATA Express Port for such devices rounding out the storage Department gigabyte has included a dual m.2 slot that supports either a SATA or PC pcie m.2 SSD although we're still limited by the number of pcie m.2 drives available the generous number of pcie lanes on Haswell e assures us that this board will be well equipped for their mainstream arrival the m.2 slot accommodates m key drives measuring 60 or 80 millim long but bear in mind that occupying this slot will render your SATA Express and two of your x99 SATA ports unavailable right beside the m.2 slot is an additional slot intended for an m.2 Wi-Fi module if you wish to add one in the future as you can see here here I was able to use the surviving module that came with my now deceased ud5 Wi-Fi zooming out a bit we see that both m.2 slots lie right in the middle of our PCI Express gen 3 slots four of which being x16 slots allowing for up to four-way Crossfire or SLI configurations the first and third slot run at x16 speeds while the second and fourth operate at X8 this bottom slot however does share bandwidth with the top slot forcing it to run at X8 when both slots are populated if you're doing a two-way on this board you're going to want to use slots 1 and three with three-way configurations using slots 1 3 and four I should also mention here that having a 5820k installed changes the operating speed of that second slot to X8 and the fourth slot to X4 due to the cpu's lower number of pcie lanes shuffled in between the x16 slots you will also get three pcie by one slots though I won't be pumping much audio out of this board once it's in the test bench Gamers and some content creators May benefit from the onboard real Tech sound chip with built-in rear amplifier which supports stereo for 5.1 and 7.1 Channel audio as we've seen on other similarly priced motherboards a trace outline helps to eliminate noise and interference by separating the sound chip from the other components on the board the trace also plays an aesthetic role when the various LEDs lining its path glow yellow when the system is running I'm already envisioning a white and yellow themed custom water cooled rig with this board I'm going to call it yellow snow if you'd rather not have the LEDs you do have the option to disable the lighting in gigabytes App Center Software moving on to the smaller connect scattered about the board in the top left corner is the first of five four pin fan headers with the CPU fan header located just below the socket to the left of your vrm heat sink is the 8 Pin CPU plug and on the far right you'll find your 24 pin ATX connector just below that is a USB 3 port and a CPU mode switch that switches between the standard 2011 and 283 pin socket modes which theoretically grants you higher overclocking Headroom along the bottom of the board are your front panel connectors sandwiched between two more fan headers a clear seamos jumper two USB 2 connectors TPM header a four pin Molex plug that can be used to deliver more pcie power to your multi-gpu setups for added stability and spdif out and HD audio connectors just above the bottom PCI slot you'll find a thunderbolt header for add-in cards your Coss battery and two chips indicating a dual bios a main bios which boots on default and a backup bios in case the other one gets damaged or becomes corrupted finally to the left of the top PCI slot is the last fan header and a two- pin connector for the LED backlit rear iio Shield which I'll show you guys in just a moment on the rear IO you get two PS2 ports for older M and keyboards four USB 2 ports and six usb3 ports the white one takes advantage of gigabytes Q flash feature for easily updating your BIOS with a thumb drive you get an RJ45 ethernet landport an optical spdif out and mic in audio jacks for up to 7.1 Channel sound lastly there's a metal antenna bracket for that optional m.2 Wi-Fi module just when you thought the list was over it's time for accessories you get a user's manual installation guide a funny looking coaster four black sleeve SATA cables two of them straight the other two right angle an SLI bridge and Crossfire Bridge both ribbon style two hard PCB 3-way SLI Bridges with varying sizes for different slot configurations a hard PCB SLI bridge for four-way setups an 8 Pin cable to prevent overcurrent protection and that backlit IO Shield that lights up neon blue so you can easily see your ports when messing around with cables behind your case like the audio Trace LEDs you do have the option to turn this off through gigabytes App Center Software or by simply leaving the two- Pin cable unplugged I was really glad to find out that I already knew my way around the board's UEFI since it is the same exact one on board the x99 gaming G1 Wi-Fi that lives inside my personal desktop it has everything you need for a basic bios and there's even an Enthusiast mode with boatloads of additional settings for advanced CPU and memory overclocking after getting a good look at the board I finally popped it into the test bed and did some overclocking myself I was quickly able to take my 5960x to 4.3 GHz at 1.26 Vols on air using a be quiet Shadow Rock slim why am I cooling on air and not liquid you ask no reason when booting into the BIOS the board does boot into an easy menu where you can quickly access things like boot priority or SATA controller modes but I always find myself hitting F2 right away to get into the full and familiar UEFI overall the BIOS on this board functions as it should and gave me no problems from my brief time with it my initial impressions of the x99 ud4p are that it's good and that it'll perform well for what I need it for but there were a few things missing that I would have liked to see given the current price point I mean for one I was kind of surprised at the absence of any surface mounted power or reset buttons as there seems to be plenty of space on the PCB for them to fit and though the board does come with a seamos battery and clear seos jumper it just would have been nice to see a dedicated clear seos button for enthusiasts who would utilize it frequently but that being said this is a beautifully crafted board using high quality parts that make it worthy of its Ultra durable classification and I'm definitely looking forward to start using it to conduct many many benchmarks from here on out you guys let me know what you think of this board in the comments and also which x89 motherboard is currently at the top of your list and whywhat's up guys welcome back to the channel so a few weeks back my x99 ud5 Wi-Fi board that was in my main test bed tragically passed away after a freak liquid cooling accident coping with the immeasurable loss forced me into a downward spiral marked by an unkempt appearance and poor personal hygiene I think we're still in the spiral but the kind folks over at gigabyte heroically came to my Rescue by sending me a shiny new x99 ud4p so I could continue scratching my incessant benchmarking itch before I screw it down to my test bench and let the dust pile up begin however I figured I'd conduct a brief overview on the board for those of you considering a system build on Intel's Enthusiast platform so what we have here is an x99 board with a 2011 V3 socket for your Haswell ecpu that currently retails for about $270 aboard the matte black PCB you get eight dim slots with quad Channel ddr4 memory support for kits up to 3,333 MHz with a Max Capacity of 128 gigs which is sure to make us drool over the thought of readily available 16 GB ddr4 modules above the socket is your vrm covered by a modest heat sink with tasteful gold accents and some Ultra durable branding a heat pipe exiting the right side makes its way down and connects to the heat sink of our x99 chipset also sporting some gold flare and a yellow LED that stays lit when the board is powered on though you do have the option to turn it off by and plugging the LED's two- pin wire from the PCB you'll find plenty of sata 3 connectivity in its usual location with six ports natively controlled by the x99 chipsets that support rate 0 1 5 and 10 and to the left are four additional ports which support ahci and IDE only giving us support for a total of 10 SATA 6 GB per second drives we also get a single SATA Express Port for such devices rounding out the storage Department gigabyte has included a dual m.2 slot that supports either a SATA or PC pcie m.2 SSD although we're still limited by the number of pcie m.2 drives available the generous number of pcie lanes on Haswell e assures us that this board will be well equipped for their mainstream arrival the m.2 slot accommodates m key drives measuring 60 or 80 millim long but bear in mind that occupying this slot will render your SATA Express and two of your x99 SATA ports unavailable right beside the m.2 slot is an additional slot intended for an m.2 Wi-Fi module if you wish to add one in the future as you can see here here I was able to use the surviving module that came with my now deceased ud5 Wi-Fi zooming out a bit we see that both m.2 slots lie right in the middle of our PCI Express gen 3 slots four of which being x16 slots allowing for up to four-way Crossfire or SLI configurations the first and third slot run at x16 speeds while the second and fourth operate at X8 this bottom slot however does share bandwidth with the top slot forcing it to run at X8 when both slots are populated if you're doing a two-way on this board you're going to want to use slots 1 and three with three-way configurations using slots 1 3 and four I should also mention here that having a 5820k installed changes the operating speed of that second slot to X8 and the fourth slot to X4 due to the cpu's lower number of pcie lanes shuffled in between the x16 slots you will also get three pcie by one slots though I won't be pumping much audio out of this board once it's in the test bench Gamers and some content creators May benefit from the onboard real Tech sound chip with built-in rear amplifier which supports stereo for 5.1 and 7.1 Channel audio as we've seen on other similarly priced motherboards a trace outline helps to eliminate noise and interference by separating the sound chip from the other components on the board the trace also plays an aesthetic role when the various LEDs lining its path glow yellow when the system is running I'm already envisioning a white and yellow themed custom water cooled rig with this board I'm going to call it yellow snow if you'd rather not have the LEDs you do have the option to disable the lighting in gigabytes App Center Software moving on to the smaller connect scattered about the board in the top left corner is the first of five four pin fan headers with the CPU fan header located just below the socket to the left of your vrm heat sink is the 8 Pin CPU plug and on the far right you'll find your 24 pin ATX connector just below that is a USB 3 port and a CPU mode switch that switches between the standard 2011 and 283 pin socket modes which theoretically grants you higher overclocking Headroom along the bottom of the board are your front panel connectors sandwiched between two more fan headers a clear seamos jumper two USB 2 connectors TPM header a four pin Molex plug that can be used to deliver more pcie power to your multi-gpu setups for added stability and spdif out and HD audio connectors just above the bottom PCI slot you'll find a thunderbolt header for add-in cards your Coss battery and two chips indicating a dual bios a main bios which boots on default and a backup bios in case the other one gets damaged or becomes corrupted finally to the left of the top PCI slot is the last fan header and a two- pin connector for the LED backlit rear iio Shield which I'll show you guys in just a moment on the rear IO you get two PS2 ports for older M and keyboards four USB 2 ports and six usb3 ports the white one takes advantage of gigabytes Q flash feature for easily updating your BIOS with a thumb drive you get an RJ45 ethernet landport an optical spdif out and mic in audio jacks for up to 7.1 Channel sound lastly there's a metal antenna bracket for that optional m.2 Wi-Fi module just when you thought the list was over it's time for accessories you get a user's manual installation guide a funny looking coaster four black sleeve SATA cables two of them straight the other two right angle an SLI bridge and Crossfire Bridge both ribbon style two hard PCB 3-way SLI Bridges with varying sizes for different slot configurations a hard PCB SLI bridge for four-way setups an 8 Pin cable to prevent overcurrent protection and that backlit IO Shield that lights up neon blue so you can easily see your ports when messing around with cables behind your case like the audio Trace LEDs you do have the option to turn this off through gigabytes App Center Software or by simply leaving the two- Pin cable unplugged I was really glad to find out that I already knew my way around the board's UEFI since it is the same exact one on board the x99 gaming G1 Wi-Fi that lives inside my personal desktop it has everything you need for a basic bios and there's even an Enthusiast mode with boatloads of additional settings for advanced CPU and memory overclocking after getting a good look at the board I finally popped it into the test bed and did some overclocking myself I was quickly able to take my 5960x to 4.3 GHz at 1.26 Vols on air using a be quiet Shadow Rock slim why am I cooling on air and not liquid you ask no reason when booting into the BIOS the board does boot into an easy menu where you can quickly access things like boot priority or SATA controller modes but I always find myself hitting F2 right away to get into the full and familiar UEFI overall the BIOS on this board functions as it should and gave me no problems from my brief time with it my initial impressions of the x99 ud4p are that it's good and that it'll perform well for what I need it for but there were a few things missing that I would have liked to see given the current price point I mean for one I was kind of surprised at the absence of any surface mounted power or reset buttons as there seems to be plenty of space on the PCB for them to fit and though the board does come with a seamos battery and clear seos jumper it just would have been nice to see a dedicated clear seos button for enthusiasts who would utilize it frequently but that being said this is a beautifully crafted board using high quality parts that make it worthy of its Ultra durable classification and I'm definitely looking forward to start using it to conduct many many benchmarks from here on out you guys let me know what you think of this board in the comments and also which x89 motherboard is currently at the top of your list and why\n"