Gigabyte's Z97X-UD5H might be sitting in the sweet spot for those looking for a Z97 board, at $190 it is in line with the price the previous models launched at. You can also pick up it's brother the Z97X-UD5H-BK which has undergone a week long stress test; however Gigabyte is charging an almost $50 extra for the Black Edition. There are three PCIe 3.0 slots which can run x16/x0/x0, x8/x8/x0 or x8/x4/x4, M.2 and SATAe ports though using the M.2 will disable the dual 6Gbps SATA ports. From the testing done at The Tech Report this is not a board for beginners, there are some rough edges which an experienced user will easily overcome but for a less experienced system builder they may lead to a negative experience. Check out the benchmarks and full review here.
"Another Z97 motherboard has worked its way through our test suite. Today, we take a detailed look at Gigabyte's Z97X-UD5H, which is loaded with PCIe x16 slots, next-gen storage interfaces, and a high-definition firmware interface."
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