The Motherboards

GIGABYTE has released nineteen motherboards based on the Z68 chipset. All of these products support Smart Response Technology with SATA SSDs. A select few GIGABYTE Z68 motherboards support Intel's mSATA 311 Series model SSD. Today we'll be testing two motherboards, one with mSATA and one with an Intel 311 Series 20GB SLC SSD.

The first board we are looking at is the GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD. The iSSD portion of the name comes from the onboard 20GB mSATA SSD that is bundled with the motherboard. GIGABYTE also sells a GA-Z68XP-UD3 board that ships without the Intel mSATA SSD. Newegg lists the iSSD model at 239.99 at the time of writing and the non-iSSD model for 149.99. Both packages are identical outside included SSD and the amounts of features included are more than what most mainstream users will utilize.

GIGABYTE also sells a budget motherboard that is capable of accepting an Intel mSATA SSD, the GA-Z68P-DS3. This product is also available at Newegg and currently sells for 99.99.

It should be noted that when using the built in mSATA that you lose a standard SATA port on the motherboard.

As we stated before, GIGABYTE has released nineteen motherboards based on the Z68 chipset. It would be impossible for us to cover each board here today, but we are an enthusiast site and want to showcase some of the higher end offerings as well.

Above we see the GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD5, a premium motherboard that currently costs 269.99 USD at Newegg and includes several features not found on the mainstream targeted motherboards like the UD3 variants listed above.

In order to break down the cost of getting a working Intel SRT system together, let's first see the SSDs.