It is the Christmas week and Sim Lim Square had been pretty quiet on new arrivals this weekend. Most distributors are closed during this festive seasons and perhaps due to this reason, new arrivals had been slow and few to come by.

Nevertheless, VR-Zone had managed to grab a few interesting new arrivals to entice readers like you. First up, it's the Gigabyte EX58-UD3R. Last week and the week before, we've featured the EX58-EXTREME, EX58-UD5 and the EX58-UD4P. The EX58-UD3R completes the family of Intel X58 family of motherboards Gigabytes offers. Like what it's model name suggests, the EX58-UD3R is the lowest end and cheapest of the pack.

The difference between the UD3R and the UD4P is the amount of PCIe x16 slots and DDR3 RAM slots. Instead of 3 PCIe X16 slots on the UD4P, the UD3R comes with only 2 slots, effectively voiding any possibility of running triple SLI graphics. Also, the UD3R comes with only 4 DDR3 RAM slots, instead of the 6 found on the UD4P.

Apart from these physical differences, the EX58-UD3R had managed to break the $400 mark for an Intel X58 board and is currently the cheapest X58 motherboard anyone can find in Sim Lim Square.

The Gigabyte EX58-UD3R can be found at Fuwell or Cybermind at $349

 

The packaging of the EX58-UD3R looks cheap, without a doubt. But hey, it's the contents that count!

 

An overview of the EX58-UD3R. Unlike the UD4P, the UD3R doesn't have a heatpipe running from the Northbridge down to the Southbridge. But seriously, it doesn't matter much as the heat output from the Southbridge barely affects anything.

 

Pretty much run off the mill I/O port configuration. However, it's interesting to note that Gigabyte had included a mini Firewire 400MBps port on top of the standard Firewire port (4th row, top most port).

 

The Northbridge heatsink had been shrunken by a tiny bit on the UD3R. As again, this slight difference wouldn't make much impact to the operation of this motherboard.

 

Being cheap, it also means cutting down on optional items. The UD3R comes with just these cables, but seriously, you could afford many SATA cables with the $100 saved...