When the new Intel 9-series motherboards were first unveiled it has hard to get really excited about them since the new features and capabilities were promising, but there was no way to actually take advantage of any them. MOre than a month later and the same holds true since there are no serious SATA Express devices ready for primetime and M.2 SSDs are still few and far between. However, now that Intel's upcoming Devil's Canyon chips have been fully unveiled, there is finally a tangible reason to want one of these new Z97 motherboards since they are the only ones with native support for these enthusiast-oriented processors.

With this in mind, today we will be taking a look at the second highest-end model in GIGABYTE's mainstream Ultra Durable Series lineup, the Z97X-UD5H. The UD5H comes with a 12-phase power design, which is more than any of the other 9-Series models, but with slightly less sophisticated MOSFET components than the G1 Gaming or SuperOverClocked models. There are three PCI-E x16 slots and multiple graphics cards support is present in the form of 2-Way CrossFire and 2-Way SLI.