I picked up a GA-X58A-UD3R v2, i7 930, Cooler Master V6 GT, 12 gigs of Patriot memory (3x4 DDR3 1600 EL) and a GTX 460 1 gig card. It fired right up and has been stable as a rock at stock speeds. The trouble started when I tried overclocking. I found anything over 160 BCLK was a black box or at best totally unstable no matter what I tried. I was using this guide.
http://www.overclockers.com/3-step-guide-overclock-core-i3-i5-i7/I started doing some research on the v2 board and found a review at Bit-tech, here.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/08/19/gigabyte-ga-x58a-ud3r-rev-2-review/1 They were having similar problems with a v2 board.
They had previously tested a v1 board and could overclock the piss out of it. They contacted Gigabyte and were given beta FB16 bios and it fixed the overclocking problems. Since Gigabyte released the final FB bios I gave it a shot and it fixed it for me also. I was able to get to 190 BCLK x 21 so easy it was not funny. First I loaded optimized defaults. Then changed setting such as AHCI mode etc. as needed. I then disabled turbo boost, set the CPU voltage to 1.3 and the BCLK to 180 and she booted right up no problem. It will pass 5 passes of IntelBurn test set to 8 cores on high. Windows Memory Diagnostic passes. I'm going to run Memtestx86+ overnight when I'm out of here. See screen shot below. I'm sure there is more in her if I tweaked more settings myself, we will see. Temps are getting kinda high though the AS5 is still new.
Other thoughts: The only thing I do not like about this board is with EIST and C1E enabled in the bios the board will not lower the CPU voltage when it lowers the CPU clock ratio. My MSI P35 Neo2 FR/ Q6600 could do it and did for 2+ years. My Q6600 was overclocked to 3 Ghz and EIST would cut it down to around 2 Ghz and drop the voltage also. This saved about 25 watts of power. Because the GA-X58A-UD3R v2 can't seem to do the same no power is saved. I might as well disable EIST.
At stock speed the new system draws about 150 watts at idle. Measured using a P3 Kill a watt meter. My old Q6600 was about 170 at idle. Running 190 BCLK x 21 at 1.3 volts the new system idles around 200 watts. I'd guess it would be at or below 170 watts if it dropped the voltage when it dropped the clock ratio?
Bill
