Do yourself a favor, and stay away from cheaper Z68 Gigabyte boards!

[ibex333]

Below is a bunch of rant, so feel free to not read this if this stuff offends you. I am merely venting and trying to save other people from all this frustration.

I wanted to save some money and went for the GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard. After all, I bought Gigabyte boards before, many times, and was always happy with the quality of construction and the extra features. What was always important for me, is that Gigabyte would give me MORE for LESS.

Not any more.

I just wanted to build a new system... Little did I know how much pain, and frustration I was in for.

So here's the rundown of this crappy, crappy board....

Pros:

It works
It's cheap
One of the 1st Z68 boards that manages to work and be cheap at the same time

Cons:
Very poorly designed!!!
Requires drivers to be installed for USB ports to work properly
Horrible positioning of SATA ports
CPU power connector located way too far!
Feels CHEAP.
You really get what you pay for here. Gigabyte is not going out of their way to give you more for less.
Has enough PCI-E ports for SLI/Crossfire, but SLI is hardly possible.
Gigabyte assumes everyone has cases where the PSU is on top.


Other thoughts:

I was a fan of Gigabyte before, and always bought from them, but clearly their quality is dropping.

What kind of an imbecile decided to put SATA ports on the side instead of on top like they always were? I have a descent, fairly resent case. Cooler Master CM690. But try connecting cables to the SATA ports when they are on the edge of the mobo, and there is a 2 inch space between the ports and the case wall !!! Also, you can apply pressure on top, to push cables into their ports, but how are you supposed to do the same from the side when you have to cram your fingers in a 2 inch space?!

Looks, I understand they cannot take into consideration every case out there. But they cannot expect me to buy a new case for every new mobo either! We are talking about a BIG, SPACIOUS, case!!! I never had any problems with this case before. Just look up Cooler Master CM690 if you are curious.

USB ports work well only after driver install from CD. But how am I supposed to get into windows and launch the CD, when my Keyboard and mouse wont even work until I install the drivers?! That is, they work but I had to take out, and plug them back in like 10 times before they would be recognized just to go off again a few seconds later... After playing with them for 10 minutes, I got lucky and got them to work long enough to log into windows and install the driver CD.

Mionix Naos 3200 and Saitek Executive Keyboard... Bad/incompatible peripherals? I dont think so!

Also, the positioning of the USB ports.... Whyyyyyy?! Oh why?

On my EP45-UD3L I had 8 usb ports in the back all close to each other. Nice and simple.
Here, on this crappy mobo, you got only 6 USB ports in the back... That's it!!! To make things worse, the 2 lowermost ones are usb 2.0, the ones above them are 3.0 and finally all the way on top, far away from the other four, you got your last two, 2.0 ports... WHY SEPARATE them like that? Wouldn't it be smarter to put the USB 3.0 ports somewhere away from the 2.0 ports? After all, they are not all that common yet.

But the funny thing is that Gigabyte decided to put like FOUR external USB headers on the mobo itself. Apparently they think my case is full of external USB ports... Hell I'd like to see a case which actually has this many external USB ports!

Only 2 PCI slots... I got a sound card, and a firewire card... THAT'S IT. But what if I want to add a card that will allow extra SATA ports? Too bad. Tough luck.


NO IDE slots. That's right not a single one! Apparently people have no right to own an IDE DVD-Drive or a Floppy Drive. That's thing of the past people. Time to move on! IDE is soooooooooo yesterdays news.

How am I supposed to run two cards in Crossfire, when one XFX 4870 already takes two slots with it's huge cooler? Maybe they should state that this board only does Crossfire for non-gamers who use low profile cards?

I have a good PSU with long cables, but the CPU power connector is too short to reach all the way across the board to the header. Maybe Gigabyte assumes that all people have cases where the PSU is ON TOP?!



But wait... I should have done my homework BEFORE buying the board. Right? It's all MY fault.

But the SATA ports on the edge of the board are very easy to miss. after all, I never even seen something like this before, and never knew anyone could have the bright idea of placing them there. And the USB not working before drivers are installed? Again, it doesn't say that in the boards description, and it's the 1st time I see something like this.

Do yourself a favor, and either buy a more expensive board, or get a board from a different manufacturer. I'd return this piece of cheap garbage, but newegg charges a restocking fee, so I'll have to suffer with this thing until Z68's become significantly better and cheaper. Her's hoping I wont have to open my case again any time soon...

BUT WHO THE HELL AM I KIDDING?

 

[Roy2001]

You got bad taste chicken and want us all quit eating chicken?

 

[Athadeus]

I don't think a single one of those things bothers me. However, I would like to make my own rant about how every non-premium priced Gigabyte socket 1155 motherboard has an ugly as sin color scheme. Seriously, I would really have liked to buy a Gigabyte 1155 motherboard, but even the P67/Z68 UD3P which look nice are a total ripoff compared to the models above and below them in price per features.

 

[dx11101]

i almost got the GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 but instead went with the GIGABYTE P67A-UD3-B3 because the embedded video was eating up a lot port real-estate that I would rather see used on ports I use.

BTW they are starting to stick sata ports out to the side to keep it out of the way of the videocards. I probably would have been equally happy with the Z68 except that I dont need the embedded video. Its a plus for diagnostics though if your videocard went bad or something like that.

 

[Meghan54]

What kind of an imbecile decided to put SATA ports on the side instead of on top like they always were? I have a descent, fairly resent case. Cooler Master CM690. But try connecting cables to the SATA ports when they are on the edge of the mobo, and there is a 2 inch space between the ports and the case wall !!! Also, you can apply pressure on top, to push cables into their ports, but how are you supposed to do the same from the side when you have to cram your fingers in a 2 inch space?!

Looks, I understand they cannot take into consideration every case out there. But they cannot expect me to buy a new case for every new mobo either! We are talking about a BIG, SPACIOUS, case!!! I never had any problems with this case before. Just look up Cooler Master CM690 if you are curious.


Also, the positioning of the USB ports.... Whyyyyyy?! Oh why?

On my EP45-UD3L I had 8 usb ports in the back all close to each other. Nice and simple.
Here, on this crappy mobo, you got only 6 USB ports in the back... That's it!!! To make things worse, the 2 lowermost ones are usb 2.0, the ones above them are 3.0 and finally all the way on top, far away from the other four, you got your last two, 2.0 ports... WHY SEPARATE them like that? Wouldn't it be smarter to put the USB 3.0 ports somewhere away from the 2.0 ports? After all, they are not all that common yet.

But the funny thing is that Gigabyte decided to put like FOUR external USB headers on the mobo itself. Apparently they think my case is full of external USB ports... Hell I'd like to see a case which actually has this many external USB ports!

Only 2 PCI slots... I got a sound card, and a firewire card... THAT'S IT. But what if I want to add a card that will allow extra SATA ports? Too bad. Tough luck.


NO IDE slots. That's right not a single one! Apparently people have no right to own an IDE DVD-Drive or a Floppy Drive. That's thing of the past people. Time to move on! IDE is soooooooooo yesterdays news.

How am I supposed to run two cards in Crossfire, when one XFX 4870 already takes two slots with it's huge cooler? Maybe they should state that this board only does Crossfire for non-gamers who use low profile cards?

I have a good PSU with long cables, but the CPU power connector is too short to reach all the way across the board to the header. Maybe Gigabyte assumes that all people have cases where the PSU is ON TOP?!



But wait... I should have done my homework BEFORE buying the board. Right? It's all MY fault.

But the SATA ports on the edge of the board are very easy to miss. after all, I never even seen something like this before, and never knew anyone could have the bright idea of placing them there. And the USB not working before drivers are installed? Again, it doesn't say that in the boards description, and it's the 1st time I see something like this.

Do yourself a favor, and either buy a more expensive board, or get a board from a different manufacturer. I'd return this piece of cheap garbage, but newegg charges a restocking fee, so I'll have to suffer with this thing until Z68's become significantly better and cheaper. Her's hoping I wont have to open my case again any time soon...

Misguided rant.

The positioning of the SATA ports on the motherboard are what most are moving towards, and I wouldn't have it any other way after living with both types.

2"? Seriously? You cannot plug in the cables with that much space? Fat fingers?

Actually, I've found that the side mounted are much easier to deal with after the build is completed....no video card interference, always accessible. The top mounted, like on your mb......bitch to get to the top two when a large video card mounted and the cables are butting up against the back of the card. Horrible design.


About the USB slots. The way those two are separated and positioned like they are is pretty much convention now.....to replicate where the PS/2 ports would locate for your kb and mouse. And I find it keeps the confusion about what cord is the kb and mouse and what's the printer, scanner, backup, etc.


And the rant-ette about no IDE port.....what rock have you been living under? That's no recent development, by any stretch of the imagination.

All told..... -1/10 rant and you shoulda done your research!

 

[ibex333]

Misguided rant.

The positioning of the SATA ports on the motherboard are what most are moving towards, and I wouldn't have it any other way after living with both types.

2"? Seriously? You cannot plug in the cables with that much space? Fat fingers?

Actually, I've found that the side mounted are much easier to deal with after the build is completed....no video card interference, always accessible. The top mounted, like on your mb......bitch to get to the top two when a large video card mounted and the cables are butting up against the back of the card. Horrible design.


About the USB slots. The way those two are separated and positioned like they are is pretty much convention now.....to replicate where the PS/2 ports would locate for your kb and mouse. And I find it keeps the confusion about what cord is the kb and mouse and what's the printer, scanner, backup, etc.


And the rant-ette about no IDE port.....what rock have you been living under? That's no recent development, by any stretch of the imagination.

All told..... -1/10 rant and you shoulda done your research!

I never, ever found any problem with the SATA ports on top. They never got in the way of video cards.

Funny how you state that it's ok that missing IDE is NORMAL, but they actually included a PS/2 port on top that barely anyone uses. And why would they need to "replicate" the positioning of PS/2 with USB? Apparently they think I have a problem telling between the two, or reaching down a few inches for that matter? Surely, it's not more important than having an extra two USB ports in there?!

Fat fingers in a 2" space? I'd seriously like to see how you'd be able to accomplish the same task. I'll take a picture later and post it here, so you can see just how limited the space is.

Interesting how it was mentioned that Gigabyte had to remove some extra USB ports to make space for the Z68 video... But then it looks like this board is having a serious identity crisis... It wants to be an SLI board, but it's really a board designed specifically, and only for Z68 video... but it is still an SLI board... because.. It can be... But actually it is not... But it still is!! At least on paper... Arrgghhh... *slaps himself on the forehead*

 

[Skott]

Whenever you buy a budget board you do get what you pay for. Not a lot of features. A very very basic mobo. They have their place though for those wanting enough to get into it on the cheap. There are tradeoffs. Just like any high end mobo you need to research each mobo model before buying. I often wait for the reviews before even considering a buy. Saves me a lot of frustration and provides wonderful info on top of that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Misguided rant.
All told..... -1/10 rant and you shoulda done your research!

This.

And here I thought the rant was going to be about Z68 mobo video failure, there's a significant number of newegg reviews about Gigabyte Z68 mATX boards and video failure. It kind of makes me afraid to buy one.

Lack of IDE ports? Really? What about parallel ports, serial ports, heck, analog game ports?

 

[Zap]

I fail to see a problem. Cheap board is cheap. You want "better" features, you gotta pay for them. True with any brand.

Never seen SATA ports like that before? Looking for IDE? Socket 478 called. They miss you.

 

[you2]

From the reviews folks have been very happy with the asrock pro-3(m). Also there is the intel board for $130.
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Some designs are lemons; avoid them.

 

[IndianScout]

my 750i board has sata on the side like that, I love them, as far as the other rants that's a matter of personal preference

I happen to like this board a great deal..

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

this isn't a cheap board...

The H67M-EVO by Asus costs just as much and is their top H67 board without going into ROG land.

Once upon a time $130-$140 boards were king. Remember the Ultra-D by DFI? That was a $135 board, and it did everything but SLI. People saying "you get what you pay for" isn't really saying much. This is a solid board. If you said that for a $65 board, I'd understand but this is not a budget board by any means. Just because motherboards can easily push $300+ nowadays for enthusiast boards doesn't mean much.

I think the OP just messed up with his USB stuff. You shouldn't need drivers for it to work. Maybe USB 3.0 but that's now all by the Intel chipset so you shouldn't either. For my X58 board where USB 3.0 wasn't native and they bundled a 3rd party chipset you do need drivers to make it work. I can understand that.

I don't like right angle SATA connectors but this is how they are on all Gigabyte boards. I have to feel up the board and get my hands in an awkward position to install stuff on my X58 board, but oh well. How often do I do that? I now just leave a dangling SATA cable when I need to plug in a spare drive to do backup or to swap drives.

What else? SLI isn't possible because they didn't space stuff out enough? You can put a 2 slot card in there. Your problem is with 3 slot solutions that use a 2 slot cooler. Okay, so I have the same problem on my $250 X58 board. I wrote about this before and I said that very few people use SLI to begin with. Of the people who use SLI, fewer people use tri SLI or 3 way crossfire. Thus, the first 2 slots should be spaced such that you can use dual slot coolers. OR, you could be allowed to use slots 1 and 3 (leaving the middle slot empty) for 2-way SLI. In the event you want 3-way SLI, then you need to go low profile. So if this is a problem on my X58a board, I'm not surprised they designed the Z68 this badly.

With that said Asus' Z68 offerings have 2 slots in between the PCI-e x16 slots... at least someone was thinking there -_-

Edit: Nothing wrong with IDE ports btw. USB keyboards have been the norm since like 2002 or something. IDE drives were still around til 2007 at least. IDE OPTICAL DRIVES are still used today. I have no reason to swap out a perfectly good 2007 Optiarc Burner. Plus, with only 6 or 8 SATA ports on some of these mobos, I can't even run a NAS without buying in an add-in card for additional SATA ports just for my DVD drive. Not to mention I'd have to buy a new SATA DVD brive. I see more reason to include IDE ports than PS/2 ports. However, from a business perspective I understand. They'd need a 3rd party chip to include IDE support. Odd that Asus did it on the P8H67-M EVO though. 6 SATA + IDE port on an m-ATX board too!!!

 

[FordGT]

I'm running the D3H-B3 right now with a 2600K and it rocks! OK, it isn't for everyone but it is by no means a "cheap" board. At least compared to the other choices in this price range. I compared it to my older Gigabyte EP35-DS3L before installing it and it is almost identical in terms of build quality and materials.

The location of the USB 2.0 ports on top is because they are the ones used for the 3X power charging(iPad, iPhone,etc.) They are marked red because of this reason also.

The lack of an IDE port bugged me at first because I have been using an older 40GB IDE drive for file transfers for the past few years. I guess it's time to buy a new drive. Or a USB thumb drive

My Microsoft wireless keyboard and mouse both worked right away without drivers. Not sure what caused the issue you had. I did need drivers for the USB 3.0 ports though since all SNB mobo's still use third party USB 3.0 controllers.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

My Z68X-UD4 just took a crap after 12 days of having the cold boot loop issue. Now it's just an eternal loop and nothing can fix it. Have to RMA or return to newegg. If I return to newegg I'd lose my combo discount, but at least I wouldn't be stuck with Gigabyte...
http://www.overclock.net/intel-motherboards/1034724-gigabyte-p67-z68-boot-cycling-problem.html

So even their better boards aren't that good it seems. No GUI with the BIOS is just lazy given every single other vendor has it. They have TouchBIOS, but how much of their consumer base has a touch display, seriously? Most of their 1st Z68 boards didn't have iGPU support, now they've released new boards with it.

Giga is slipping.

 

[BababooeyHTJ]

Yeah, when looking at P67 boards I noticed that it looked like they cheaped out on the P67UD3 quite a bit compared to the P55 version. The little things like the lack of an upper mosfet sink and sata placement add up a bit.

 

[vailr]

Something is definitely defective if a USB 2.0 port mouse and keyboard aren't working (for bios setup) without any drivers installed.
Edit: It's not unusual that: for proper functioning, the mouse and keyboard must be plugged into the rear USB 2.0 ports adjacent to the PS/2 ports.

 

[stahlhart]

I wish I had the luxury of two inches of space to work with for the SATA ports. Only about half that with the Maximus in a 690 -- scraped knuckles everywhere. :'( But I know where you're coming from.

The bigger issue for me actually are those spring locking clips they're putting on SATA cables now -- they work great with it's a single, isolated port, but when you have two piggy-backed on top of one another, they get in the way and you end up with the connectors jammed in at an angle. I'm probably going to have to remove the clips on mine, as I'd prefer to use black ones but can't find any without the spring clips.

 

[Dribble]

Having used asus quite happily for years I took some advice and bought a fairly expensive gigabyte motherboard a few years back (X38 one for my Q6600). It over the course of the year slowly died - various problems concluding in it *loosing* the c: drive after a random amount of time.

Binned it and bought another (asus) board. Everything worked fine - so it was that gigabyte board. Anyway never again - there's nothing worse then an unreliable motherboard as very hard to pin down the source of problems and it's such a hassle to replace.

 

[stevech]

My Z68X-UD4 just took a crap.

Can't you be a bit less dramatic and a bit more technically specific? This is a technical forum!
:wub:

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Can't you be a bit less dramatic and a bit more technically specific? This is a technical forum!
:wub:

 

[ibex333]

This.

And here I thought the rant was going to be about Z68 mobo video failure, there's a significant number of newegg reviews about Gigabyte Z68 mATX boards and video failure. It kind of makes me afraid to buy one.

Lack of IDE ports? Really? What about parallel ports, serial ports, heck, analog game ports?

PLEASE, let's not go overboard! Parallel, serial and analog game ports are in fact a thing of the past. But IDE is still very widely used, and for some people can be a necessity if they are using Windows XP for the floppy drivers... (XP is still very widely used also) At least one IDE port is a necessity, not a luxury or an extra feature one must pay more for.

I wish I had the luxury of two inches of space to work with for the SATA ports. Only about half that with the Maximus in a 690 -- scraped knuckles everywhere. :'( But I know where you're coming from.

The bigger issue for me actually are those spring locking clips they're putting on SATA cables now -- they work great with it's a single, isolated port, but when you have two piggy-backed on top of one another, they get in the way and you end up with the connectors jammed in at an angle. I'm probably going to have to remove the clips on mine, as I'd prefer to use black ones but can't find any without the spring clips.

Yesss... Those damned clips. I actually forgot to mention that. I noticed it was very annoying, but only now realized that didn't even exist before!

Something is definitely defective if a USB 2.0 port mouse and keyboard aren't working (for bios setup) without any drivers installed.
Edit: It's not unusual that: for proper functioning, the mouse and keyboard must be plugged into the rear USB 2.0 ports adjacent to the PS/2 ports.

Well at least after driver install they work.... I may have plugged the peripherals into other usb ports, but I definitely only used the ones in the back, and I am pretty sure I tried those adjacent to PS/2 as well. (although it's difficult to remember now)

 

[stahlhart]

Yesss... Those damned clips. I actually forgot to mention that. I noticed it was very annoying, but only now realized that didn't even exist before!

It's almost as though the companies making the cables have not caught up with the motherboard manufacturers all switching over to these right-angle SATA ports off of the back edge of the board. The cables with the clips appear to have been designed for the older style ports that terminate perpendicular to the board surface.

And those nicer round SATA cables? Forget it -- they not only have the clip, but the connector housing is flared out and round in back, about twice as thick as the connector is in front at the business end, and you'll probably end up breaking the ports on the board trying to stack one on top of the other, if the ports are in the right-angle piggy-back arrangement.

About all that will work in this port arrangement are the plain, unclipped cables, like the inexpensive red ones that you sometimes get for free in the box with SATA components.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Think all the motherboard vendors have good and bad times quality wise.

Know someone who hated asus for years and swore by msi and gone back to asus.

Hard to make anyone happy about motherboards but we are consumers we can complain i guess or do research.

Not anti gigabyte but iv'e used asus mobos and not a single one failed on me.

 

[schmutz06]

I am just about to upgrade to a 2600K build my final shortlist is right here

The Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 was my number one candidate. I've always got excellent stability and performance from my gigabyte mobo's in the past I currently use the GIGABYTE EP45-DS3R in my Q6600 build running at 3.0Ghz and it is as solid as a rock.

Should I be considering a different motherboard over the GA-Z68A-D3H-B3? I really want a "high end" and stable performance out of my upgrade and I do not want to miss out on extra performance/stability because I've went with the wrong motherboard.

 

[you2]

I don't know the two boards I'm considering are gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 and asrock extreme 4. They seem similar; different chips for ethernet and audio - not sure how the 889 compare tot he 892 for audio. The asrock has an extra pci x16 slot (it won't run x16 if you have an x16 card in) the gigabyte has an extra x1 slot. THe asrock has an fdd connector if that is your style (useless for me).
-
The asorck has an extra sata port so I'll probably go with that board. Am very curious how the alc-889 compare to the alc-892.
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The asrock has a few more goodies in teh box (from braket for usb 3.0) and cost $20 more. Beyond that they seem very similar (same chip for audio, same set of display ports, ...)

I am just about to upgrade to a 2600K build my final shortlist is right here

The Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 was my number one candidate. I've always got excellent stability and performance from my gigabyte mobo's in the past I currently use the GIGABYTE EP45-DS3R in my Q6600 build running at 3.0Ghz and it is as solid as a rock.

Should I be considering a different motherboard over the GA-Z68A-D3H-B3? I really want a "high end" and stable performance out of my upgrade and I do not want to miss out on extra performance/stability because I've went with the wrong motherboard.