Welcome to my unboxing and first look at a product that is actually very
exciting. Now, the whole performance microATX
motherboard thing, I guess I'd have to say, was really started by EVGA back in
the socket 939 days. So they had their
SLI motherboard which was
using shoot what chipset was
that? Wow. It fails me at this point but whatever. Okay. So they they had a truly
performanceoriented um microATX motherboard which was later
sort of the concept of which was later copied by DFI and then uh and then ASUS
got on board with their Gene series of motherboards and now finally Gigabyte
has a truly legitimate high-end MATX
board. So this has all the usual features. So we'll start with what they
got on the front here. So, this is a Z77 board, which means we do have support
for Virtue MVP, third generation Intel
Core series processors, i3s, i5s, and i7s, including support for PCI Express
3.0. It is SLI and Crossfire X ready,
meaning if you're running a 7970, which I happen to have one of over there, or a
GTX 680, which I happen to have one of over there. Those are PCI Express 3.0
ready graphics cards that will run in SLI and Crossfire with double the usual
bandwidth. So PCIe 38X and 8X will be
equivalent to PCIe 2.0, 16X, 16X. We've
also got their patent pending 3D power as well as 3D BIOS. So that's their dual
UEFI BIOSes. So that's two independent chips. And then their 3D power is their
all digital power delivery system that they're using on this board. What else
we got here? Super Speed. So we're using Intel Gigabit
Ethernet. We have SATA 3, USB 3, and 3X
power. This has been a popular marketing scheme for Gigabyte since they
introduced it. And I think it's awesome because yeah, it means you got all the
highest speed interfaces. And the three times power thing is cool because it
means that you can deliver up to three times the amount of power through a single port as you can with a standard
port, which allows you to run more devices off of a single port, which is
cool. Okay. Super Hearing Creative Sound Core 3D. So, they do have a dedicated
section of the PCB for their uh for their headphone amplified
sound. What else we got here? Super Shield. So, four smart fan connectors,
multiple GPU support, Lucid Virt Lucid Virtue MVP. So, Virtue MVP is the
upgraded version of Lucid Virtue that comes with the Z77 platform. So, you've
got their um Virtual VSYNC as well as some
performance improvements and less of a performance hit when using Virtue uh
versus just using a dedicated graphics card card compared to previous
generation products. All right, we got so we got the poster I showed you.
Here's some, you know, stickers that I guess you might think are cool. Uh,
here's a user's manual as well as an installation DVD, which you can not use
and download latest off the Gigabyte website as find as well as finally a
multilingual installation guide book. We've got six SATA cables, uh, three
right angle and three straight. We have a black flexible SLI cable, the very
best kind, and we have an IO shield with everything conveniently labeled. Next we
have the motherboard itself. Gigabyte has done a fant seriously like the old
Gigabyte is just out of sight, out of
mind for me at this point because the
new Gigabyte which seems to be all about
wicked awesome color schemes, great aesthetics, as well as their stable
highquality design is just yeah way very
much improved and I love it. So check out this board. It looks fantastic.
We've got a stylish looking heat sink. No guns, no bullets, just a sleek
overall look. Four pin power connector up here. Now, some people have uh in our
assembly department actually commented on the four pin power connector in spite
of this being a performance board to which I said, "Come on, guys. The
platform the highest TDP CPU on it is a
95 watt TDP CPU. We're not talking, you
know, high power consumption here." And I thought it was silly back when we were
putting dual eight pins on 1155 boards. Anyway, a four pin is going to be just
fine. Don't worry about it. All right, so there is your digital power delivery,
uh, your four pin power as well as your four DIMs supporting dual channel
memory. So remember guys, with Z77 as
well as third generation Core series processors, we do find it easier to
overclock the memory and get high frequencies out of your memory. So, if you wanted to invest in a higherend
memory kit, I guess now's as good a time as any. Your 24 pin connectors in its
ideal location along the right hand edge and your front USB 3.0 header is right
about here. Remember guys, this is running off the dedicated Intel USB 3
that is built in to the Intel chipset. These are no longer running off of
third-party chipsets. Here we have two SATA 3 6 Gbit per second ports running
off the Intel chipset as well as three SATA 2 3 Gbit per second ports also
running off the Intel chipset. The sixth one running off the chipset is right
there on the back panel. And yeah. Okay.
Uh we'll cover the fan headers later. Here's your front panel connectors as
well as your um increased power front
USB 2 header. So, you want to plug that into your front USB 2 as opposed to the
other ones here because it'll allow you to quickly charge even a high draw
device such as an iPad. Here are two regular USB 2 front panel headers as
well as the trusted platform module and front panel audio. You can see the
dedicated section of the PCB is right over here, which is good. Okay. PCI
Express slot layout. So, this is a 16x slot. This is an You got to be kidding
me. Really? Oh, that's a very strange layout. Okay. Well, this is a PCIe 16X
slot that is only wired for 4x. So, this is going to be the one that is not
preferable to use. Um, especially if you
aren't running a third generation processor. This one is wired for 8x. So,
if you're running Crossfire or SLI, these two are going to give you the
ideal bandwidth split. This guy's running at PCIe 1x. I never actually
covered the socket. So whether you're running Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, or
even um yeah, Sandy Bridge or Ivy
Bridge, this will have full support including the onboard GPU, which brings
us around to the back of the board where we've got 1 2 3 4 USB 2.0 ports, a PS2
port. I still do like to see this VGA,
DVI, DisplayPort, as well as HDMI
output. So you have the full range of outputs. Remember the uh the IGP on the
third generation core processors actually supports three monitors out
which is very very cool. E SATA, two more USB 3.0 ports uh provided by the
Intel chipset, a an Intel gigabit Ethernet as well as 7.1 audio out
including optical audio out. On the back of the board, we find your typical back
plate and that is a matte black PCB. I know I've stopped commenting on it as
much these days, but that doesn't mean I like it any less. matte black PCB is
still the way to go. Aha, the fan headers. So, we've got 1 2 3 four four
pin PWM fan headers. And I think that pretty much covers it. So, if you're
putting together an MATX performance rig with the new IV Bridge CPU and some kind
of combination of high-end graphics and an SSD and all kinds, oh, right, Intel
SRT technology. If you don't want to run a dedicated SSD for your boot drive, you
can still use your SSD as a cache. that is supported as part of the Z77
platform. And I don't even see anything about it on the box. Oh, yeah, there it
is. See, easy smart response. Gigabytes
way of setting up smart response is actually easier than anyone else's by a
long shot. It's basically like a one-touch setup to get everything
running. So, thank you for checking out this unboxing and don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more
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