Gigabyte integrates SSD to its motherboards

Intel’s new smart response technology allows users to improve the speed which their mechanical hard drives operate at by using a small SSD to cache the mechanical drive. However, buying a small SSD can seem to be a bit of a drag considering you will have to use one of your sata ports and additional space in your hard drive bays which can be frustrating if you only have a small mid tower case.

Therefore an integrated SSD is a great idea it allows the smart response technology provided by the Z68 chipset to make your mechanical hard drives function much much faster giving better operating system load times amongst other things. The integrated SSD however is only 20GB so will not be usable for much more than the operating system and commonly used processes (it will not be able to pre cache games, large media files etc).

In response to this gigabyte have released the Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3-iSSD motherboard (the iSSD indicates the integrated SSD). This board comes with a 20GB intel 311 series SSD integrated onto the centre of the motherboard as shown below:

Other than the integrated SSD this Z68 UD3 is no different in specification to the other Gigabyte Z68 UD3 coming with the following features:

CPU:

• Support for Intel® Core™ i7 processors/Intel® Core™ i5 processors/ Intel® Core™ i3 processors/Intel® Pentium® processors/Intel® Celeron® processors in the LGA1155 package
• L3 cache varies with CPU
• (Please refer “CPU Support List” for more information.)

Chipset

• Intel® Z68 Express Chipset

Memory

• 4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 32 GB of system memory
• * Due to Windows 32-bit operating system limitation, when more than 4 GB of physical memory is installed, the actual memory size displayed will be less than 4 GB.
• Dual channel memory architecture
• Support for DDR3 2133/1866/1600/1333/1066 MHz memory modules
• Support for non-ECC memory modules
• Support for Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) memory modules
• (Please refer “Memory Support List” for more information.)

Onboard GraphicsIntegrated in the Chipset:

• 1 x HDMI port, supporting a maximum resolution of 1920×1200

Audio

• Realtek ALC889 codec
• High Definition Audio
• 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel
• Support for Dolby® Home Theater
• Support for S/PDIF Out

LAN

• 1 x Realtek RTL8111E chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)