Planning to buy GA-X58A-UD3R - Potential Hardware Issues?

[quixotic68]

I am builing my new PC after building the first one 7 years ago, and find it's become a lot more complicated!  I have had my eye on the GA-X58A-UD3R motherboard for some time, having seen it recommended by several sites.  I finally have the funds to make my dream system come true, but a lot of what I've been reading in further digging has possibly dampened my plans.  Ideally I want to use:

SATA 6Gbps port for a 256GB SSD (recommendations?)
USB 3.0 for my new external 3.0-based hard drive
12 GB of memory: 4GBx3
RAID 0 for two standard SATA 3Gbps 1GB hard drives (for data)
Two Nvidia cards in an SLI configuration

In other posts I am hearing about issues using the SATA 6Gps port with an SSD, USB 3.0 not working right all of the time, and that any two-card configuration totally disables BOTH USB 3.0 AND SATA 6Gbps.  Is this all true, or are these problems for only a minority of folks?

If there is a better motherboard for what I'm looking to do, feel free to mention.

Thanks for any input!

[w_tanoto]

Coincidentally X58A-UD3R was the motherboard I wanted (it was my first choice), and now I am using it (X58A-UD7 has specs that is too high).

There is no problem with SATA ports. Only from the operating system side, if you connect it to the port that supports SATA 6Gbps and set it to AHCI, it will appear in SAfely Remove Hardware as if it is external device (as the nature of AHCI: hot swappable). If this is annoying for you (I found this annoying too) It can be solved by running commands in cmd / adding registry.

USB3.0 is working OK for me.

I am using 12GB, but my config is 2GB x 6

About RAID, I never use it since I don't think I need it, but from reading the manual, setting it up is easy.

This motherboard supports SLI for two or three cards. the bridge for both 2 and 3-cards configuration is included. I currently use one GTX 465. I would advice against this motherboard if you plan to use PCI since you have to choose between PCI or your second graphic card. In this case, probably you have to choose either UD7 or UD9.

Which other posts you are talking about for issues with SSD on SATA 6Gbps port?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

The faults you mentioned are fairly accurate but do not happen on Gigabyte's boards alone. The Marvell 9128 chip which is on all SATA3 boards just didn't match up to the hype.

Personallly I would be looking at purchasing a Sandy Bridge platform as they are great value for the power. Have a look at the P67 boards and the i5 1155 CPUs. If you are interested in overclocking go for the K series chips.