Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH: Packaging and Bundle3. Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH: Layout and Features4. Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH: BIOS and Overclocking5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: 3DMark 117. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: PCMark 79. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201211. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.512. Synthetic: Super Pi13. Synthetic: CrystalDiskMark14. Real World: Media Encoding15. Real World: MKV Playback16. Gaming: DiRT 317. Gaming: Grand Theft Auto 4 EFLC18. Technical: Power Consumption19. Closing Thoughts20. View All Pages

The colour scheme of the Z77X-UP4 is very similar to what we've seen from Gigabyte in the past.  The motherboard features a black PCB with a combination of black and grey fittings.  There are also a few blue highlights on the heatsinks.

We think that this is much more attractive than the blue and white Gigabyte motherboards of old and it makes it a lot easier to colour co-ordinate components.

Considering that the Z77X-UP4 is a mid-range motherboard, there are some fairly substantial heatsinks surrounding the CPU socket to cool the power regulation circuitry.  This is an early indicator that the board has overclocking prowess. The 8-pin CPU power connector is nestled just behind these heatsinks.

There are four RAM slots in total which are located along the right hand side of the motherboard in the usual place.  The motherboard supports up to 32 GB of non-ECC DDR3 dual channel memory modules at speeds of 1600/1333/1066 MHz.

Alongside the memory modules we find the 24-pin motherboard power and the internal USB3.0 header.

Moving further down the right hand side of the motherboard we find the six SATA connectors which are all mounted at 90 degrees to the motherboard to facilitate tidy cable routing.  The two SATA-600 ports are coloured white and the four SATA-300 connectors are coloured black.  These are all connected to the chipset and support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10.

The Z77X-UP4 also features an mSATA connector which lets the user install a low capacity SSD on the motherboard.  This is ideal for use with Intel Smart Response technology.  When an SSD is installed in the mSATA slot, the SATA2 5 connector is disabled.

Gigabyte has included a plentiful array of expansion slots.  There are two PCI Express x16 slots but these are reduced to 8x bandwidth when graphics cards are installed in both.

There is a third PCI Express x16 slot at the bottom of the motherboard which can only run at x4 and reduces the other two slots to x8 when a device is installed. This slot is only enabled when an Ivy Bridge CPU is used in the system.  The motherboard also features three PCI Express x1 slots and a single legacy PCI slot.

Most of the internal headers are located along the bottom edge of the motherboard.  From left to right we find the HD Audio, SPDIF, a 4-pin fan header, TPM, 3x USB2.0, a further 4-pin fan header, the front panel header and COM.

The rear I/O panel supports:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1 x D-Sub port
• 1 x DVI-D port
• 1 x HDMI port
• 6 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 2 x Thunderbolt ports
• 1 x RJ-45 port
• 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 5 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out, Rear Speaker Out, Line In, Line Out, Mic In)

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