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Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £156
inc VAT

If you need a motherboard with Thunderbolt, this is one of the most cost-effective options around

Specifications

LGA1155, ATX, Intel Z77 chipset, supports: 2nd/3rd Generation Intel Core i3/i5/i7

http://www.scan.co.uk

The Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH ATX motherboard is one of the few on the market to have Thunderbolt ports, the high-speed transfer and display standard that’s most commonly found on Apple Macs.

Alongside its pair of Thunderbolt ports, the motherboard has six rear USB3 ports, plus a header for another two, along with three USB headers. There’s also a PS/2 port, which is rather unusual to see nowadays, plus the usual integrated graphics outputs (HDMI, DVI, RGB and DisplayPort) and both digital and analogue audio outputs at the back. There are also headers at for an optical S/PDIF input and a serial port. Audio is supplied by a Realtek ALC892 codec.

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH

The motherboard has three PCI-E x16 slots, the lowest of which is actually a x4 slot that only works if you’re using an Ivy Bridge processor and is designed for expansion cards rather than graphics. The main PCI-E x16 graphics slot runs at full speed, but this drops to x8 if the second slot is populated in dual-card SLI or CrossFireX mode, as they share bandwidth. There are also three PCI-E x1 slots, one of which will be blocked by most graphics cards, and a PCI slot.

There are two SATA3 connectors and four SATA2 connectors, one of which becomes inactive if you instead use the mSATA connector further up the motherboard. You may want to do this, as mSATA is a useful way to add a small SSD for caching to improve hard disk performance.

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH

The motherboard’s performance was very slightly above average for the Z77 chipset, producing an overall score of 102 in our benchmark tests. However, unlike rival boards, the Z77X-UP4 TH doesn’t have an automatic overclock option either on the board or in its UEFI interface. The UEFI itself is fairly easy to use, although not as glossy as some of its rivals. There are plenty of options to configure and overclock your system, but no handy pull-down menus, so you’ll have to enter everything manually.

At a bit over £150, the Z77X-UP4 TH is inexpensive as far as Thunderbolt motherboards go, but if you don’t need that technology, the excellent Asus Maximus Y Gene is a better choice.

Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor socket LGA1155
Form factor ATX
Size 305x244mm
Processor support 2nd/3rd Generation Intel Core i3/i5/i7
Processor external bus 100MHz (DMI)
Chipset north bridge Intel Z77
Chipset south bridge Intel Z77
Passively-cooled north bridge yes
Integrated graphics Yes
Supported memory type DDR3
Maximum memory speed PC3-22400
Memory slots 4
Maximum memory 32GB
Dual-channel support yes

Buying Information

Price £156
Supplier http://www.scan.co.uk
Details www.giga-byte.com

Internal Ports

Power connectors 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 8-pin ATX
PCI-E x16 slots 3
Dual graphics architecture SLI, CrossFireX
PCI-E x4 slots 0
PCI-E x1 slots 3
PCI slots 1
Fan headers 3
Floppy ports 0
IDE ports 0
Serial ATA ports 4
RAID chipset (max disks) Intel Z77 (2x SATAIII, 4x SATAII)

Features

Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Sound (ports) Realtek ALC892 (5x analogue out, optical S/PDIF)
USB2 ports / headers 6/4
Firewire ports / headers 0/0
Legacy ports serial header
Other ports 2x Thunderbolt, 6x USB3
Cables included 4x SATA
Brackets included none
Software included driver disc

Setup and Overclocking

Voltage adjustment CPU/RAM/Chipset
CPU clock max adjustment 6,300MHz

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