GIGABYTE are one of the first names that crop to mind when anybody asks who make the best motherboards. Indeed, these days GIGABYTE are not only a top motherboard manufacturer but also hold sway in the graphics card department too. They have been ridiculed in the past for their gaudy multi-colour motherboard designs but clearly listening to enthusiast feedback they have upped their game and released some stunning pieces of hardware. This kicked off with the X58 chipset which was one of the first chipsets to see this aesthetic change and despite being an excellent motherboard range regardless of the colour scheme chosen, the X58 UDX range were extremely powerful and feature packed motherboards. It should come as no surprise then that these motherboards sold very well.

Fast-forward to the advent of X79 and GIGABYTE dropped the ball a little in the QC department because of a 'bad firmware'. Some suggested it was a poor quality PWM components which resulted in motherboards VRM failing. Thankfully our X79-UD5 that we reviewed upon X79 launch suffered none of these problems despite pushing it to its limit. GIGABYTE's reputation did however suffer a media backlash because of these failure rates, not least because their Ultra Durable range were anything but! A new BIOS sorted the issue by simply crippling overclocking on the boards which is perhaps not the answer people were looking for having shelled out their hard earned cash for a quality and it has to be said, expensive motherboard.