360-Degree Motherboard Gallery:
Gigabyte's LGA1155 GA-Z77X-UD4H motherboard comes equipped with two PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots. The
board supports single videocards at x16 mode and two-way ATI CrossfireX / nVidia
SLI set ups in x8/x8 mode. The third physical videocard slot actually runs at just PCI
Express x4. All graphics slots are PCI Express 3.0 compliant. Remaining expansion
slots include three PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots and a PCI slot.
Spacing
between the two videocard PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots is wide; a dual-slot videocard will only block the second PCIEx1
slot. If you opt for SLI or CrossFireX, it will cost you the PCI slot as
well.
Along the
bottom edge of the
GA-Z77X-UD4H motherboard are headers for front panel audio, Trusted Platform Module,
(3) USB 2.0, a PORT80 card, two fan headers and a BIOS switch (to change
between A or B BIOS).
Next to
the front panel IO headers we find the PORT 80 display, (2) 6Gb/s SATAIII
ports (grey) from the Marvell controller, (4) 3Gb/s SATAII (black) and (2) 6Gb/s SATAIII jacks (white) from the Intel Z77 chipset which support RAID
0/1/5/10. Next to the SATA ports is a SATA power connector (delivers more
juice to the videocard slots) and a USB 3.0 header. No USB 3.0 bracket is
supplied, however.
The Intel Z77 Express chipset only needs a simple passive heatsink
for cooling. Since all the duties of the Northbridge (memory controller, integrated graphics,
PCI Express lanes) has been off loaded to the processor,
the Z77 chipset is not a whole lot more than a glorified
Southbridge.
Gigabyte's GA-Z77X-UD4H motherboard supports 32GB of DDR3-1600/1333/1066 non-ECC
memory in a dual channel configuration, though DDR3-1600 memory is apparently only
supported with a 22nm Ivy Bridge CPU in the drivers seat. The four 1.5v
DIMMs support XMP.
The board's power button is
big and red and illuminated so it's easy to spot in a dark case. Next
to the power button are Reset and CMOS reset buttons, the latter being a little
too close to the others for our liking. Enthusiast overclockers get a set of
voltage read points for Vcore, CPUVtt, VSA, CPUPll, VDimm, DDRVtt and PCIIO.
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Intel Socket LGA1155 for Intel 2nd/3rd-Generation
Core i3/i5/i7 CPUs.
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Like all Intel Z77 platforms, the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD4H
supports both 32nm 2nd Gen. Intel Core i3/i5/i7 'Sandy
Bridge' processors and 22nm 3rd Gen. Intel Core i3/i5/i7 'Ivy Bridge' socket LGA1155 processors.
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Socket LGA1155
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Another
cool feature Gigabyte tacked on is something called '3X USB' Power. Briefly,
while standard USB 2.0 ports are limited to 500mA power loads and USB 3.0 to
900mA, the motherboard is capable of delivering 1500mA per USB 2.0 socket and up
to 2700mA per USB 3.0 port. On top of that, each USB
port is individually fused.
Here we find
a USB 3.0 header for front panel USB 3.0 ports; USB 3.0 expands bandwidth
to 4.8Gb/s - much quicker for moving 8GB movie files around! Next up, PCSTATS tries its hand overclocking a
Core i5 processor on the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD4H motherboard, but first a
quick look at the BIOS features and overclocking.
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