Package and Contents

You know what they say about guys with big feet? They wear big shoes.

When I first unpacked the UD9 from that rather large shipping box, the above thought came to mind. It is a big box and of course it is covered with logos to let you know all of the extras you are going to get with the X58A-UD9.

As with almost all top of the line motherboards these days, the UD9 has a front flap that gives you a glimpse of the actual board and more hard sell items. These two panels show that the UD9 is a board crammed with some great features. The unlocked 24 phase power design should provide enough power to run the CPU and memory even at high clocks while the quad SLI/Crossfire support will give you some of the best 3DMark scores out there.

The back of the box looks like it is a repeat of the inside flap, but there is a little bit more information here.

Inside the outer box is a clean black box that contains what you are really interested in; the X58A-UD9 and all of the accessories needed to get it working.

Speaking of accessories; there are quite a few inside the box, including an eSATA bracket, multiple SLI bridges and a pair of Crossfire bridges.

GIGABYTE has also included their familiar SilentPipe II passive cooling system. However, there is a problem with this extra cooling. If you use the extra four-pin Molex connector above the PCIe slots for power, this cooler will not fit on the board. The power connector prevents its installation.