Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH Dual Thunderbolt Motherboard Unboxing
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,082 words · ~10 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Gigabyte z77x up5 th this is one of the first
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boards with the allnew ultra durable five which is Ultra Cool Ultra efficient
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Ultra performance and finally Ultra current cap High current
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capability should be ultra current capability because check this out
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they're using an all new Power delivery
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system that is basically as expensive to implement on a motherboard as like
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building another cost motherboard and like giving it to you at the same time
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as you buy this motherboard is extremely expensive on Gigabyte side but it is
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unprecedented in terms of the power delivery that it can achieve there's no
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coil lne it runs cooler which should achieve better overclocking because
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having those hot vrms all you know up in your CPU socket area is not helping
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things stay cooler on more traditional power Delivery Systems so let's go
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through some of the other stuff you got all support for all the latest Intel core I3 i5 i7 processors their UEFI 3D
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uh 3D BIOS as well as their 3D power which is all digital power for the CPU
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the memory as well as the um the uncore
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this board supports Thunderbolt so we'll talk more about that later and it comes
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with a 300 megabit per second dualband Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 card because it
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is ultra durable in general it has their 2x copper PCB as well as their glass
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fabric PCB which offers humidity protection if you live somewhere very
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humid such as in Southeast Asia for example where you know just general
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humidity in the air can eventually cause problems for some computer components so
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here we can see what Gigabyte has to say about their single package design with
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their industry-leading 60 amp rated power stage which is a phenomenal amount
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of power to be able to deliver to a CPU
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I mean you might even go as far as to say totally unnecessary but if you want
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to get the best overclocks every little bit helps so traditional mosfets are hot
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lower RDS on mosfets are cooler and their new power stage mosfets are the
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coolest so this is all taken with thermal imaging
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configuration okay overclocking stability okay good and excellent so if
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you overheat ah yes this is interesting so if the power delivery system runs
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cooler it actually also runs more efficiently and more stably so uh that's
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that's just a general function the fact that it can deliver more power stably of
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the fact that it does run cooler dual ufi BIOS means that even if you have
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some kind of a failure while you're flashing the BIOS you can recover it quite easily using their utility uh
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you've also got power failure protection so they build this into the board itself
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so that even if there's some kind of a problem with a short they have fuses
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built in that will potentially protect the parts dual thunderbow is built in
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with dual 10 GB per second capability so if you want to plug in like you know a
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dozen Thunderbolt devices Daisy chained all over the place and have 20 gbit per
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second uh data to the whole thing then you can go ahead and do that sound
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blaster xfi is built and that pretty much does it for the Box
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let's open this bad boy up and I just love gigabytes styling these
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days I mean honestly some of their uh
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some of their G1 series stuff doesn't really do it for me with like guns and
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whatnot on it but they uh they're uh
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they they're just their UD series boards
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are just oh they're just like look at this matte black p PCB every possible
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feature without overdoing it on the PCB SI so this is a standard ATX
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configuration they also have built in the full Seven slots of expansion in
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spite of all the extra functionality that's on this particular board let's
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start unpacking some of the accessories here so you guys can have a look at them
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great accessory package including that fabulous Gigabyte sticker flexible black
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SLI Bridge the very best kind clean IO
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shield with color cating on the appropriate part a
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USB cable it's probably for something I
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think it's for this guy actually all right let's go ahead and open this up
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and then we are ready to go through it so we've also got a users manual with
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driver disc for a variety of things just download the latest off the Gigabyte
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website as well as a uh users manual for
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what is presumably the wireless card setting up the software and a
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multilingual installation guide book that you probably won't need if you
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watch the Linus Tech or rather NC Tech tiits video on how to how to uh build
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your new pc so yeah that's USB right there so that can plug into any one of
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the PCI e1x slots and here's something cool about gigabytes implementation of
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their Wi-Fi Bluetooth module this is just a Wi-Fi Bluetooth
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module I've seen ASUS do this before where they include some kind of a module
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that fits on the board but they actually put all the logic on the board itself so
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that you can't just take the card as an extra value add in install it in one of
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your other PCS if you want so kudos to Gigabyte for giving users the
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flexibility to you know maybe in 5 years when they're not using this board
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anymore to still have you know a Wi-Fi Bluetooth module you know that they can
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continue to use also nice finishing touches black PCB even on the add-in
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card so many times I've seen you know like a gorgeous looking board like this
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and they include like an ugly Brown SLI Bridge or they include like little addin
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card that's got like a green or brown PCB on it nope not Gigabyte they are not
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about that these days six SATA 3 6 GB
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connect uh 6 GB per second cables you've
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got a front USB 3.0 uh 3 and 1/2 in Bay
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device so if your case doesn't support front USB 3 then you'll have it I think
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I covered pretty much all this stuff antennas so those are the Dual antennas
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for your Dual Band Wi-Fi and now let's get along to the board itself so this
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thing has everything there are those
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Premium Power phases that are just
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baller as heck because yeah I'm I'm
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totally I'm totally down for those uh there's your CPU socket so again you
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know all the latest processors if you want to overclock make sure you get a K
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series processor because those are the ones that are going to allow you to
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crank up the voltage crank up the multiplier and really get the best
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results anything nonk Series this board is probably going to be wasted on it
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your eight pin power connectors in its ideal location in the top left of the
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board and you've got your full support for the usual up to 32 gigs so 4X 8 gig
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dual Channel memory your onboard switches are all up here perfect this is
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this is perfect so the seos clear reset and power and instead of having them
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down here where as soon as you load a couple graphics cards into it you can't really reach them this is the ideal
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location for an open test bench all your voltage checkpoints are right here so
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you can use a Multimeter in order to check any one of these different things
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including your V core as well as your integrated memory controller all that
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good stuff your memory uh moving down to along the right hand Edge you got your
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24 pin connector and it's ideal location uh post LED again this is a much better
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location than down here because you can actually see it uh wow check this out
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you guys three one two three front panel
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USB 3 headers that is absolutely outstanding I don't think I've seen that
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before auxiliary SATA power connector so this do not plug this out to a drive
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that is not how this works this is auxiliary power for your PCI Express
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slot so you plug SATA power into this 2
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SATA 3 6 GB per second ports 4 SATA 2 3
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gbit per second ports all in a right angle in their ideal locations uh you've
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got an additional SATA port so this is SATA 36 GB per second and that's
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probably the same chipset that's powering the EA on the back of the board
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PCI Express slot layout is pretty good
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actually so you've got your 1X you throw your Wi-Fi module in there your dual
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slot card will then cover that which will leave you with a 1x slot an 8X
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electrical slot a PCI slot just in case you still got something Legacy you want
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to use as well as a PCIe Forex slot so these are physical 16 but they're wired
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for either 16 88 or 884 and this four is
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running off the chipset so it's a little bit slower not ideal for SLI or
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Crossfire configuration for all intents and purposes this is a two-way SLI and
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two-way Crossfire board although three-way Crossfire is supported front
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panel connectors are here as well as there's your high power usb2 front panel
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header your normal usb2 front panel header remember this one is better for
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charging things like iPads or other tablets trusted platform module front
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panel fire wire front audio and then here is all of your onboard audio um all
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your onboard audio stuff this this is cool so this MSA Port actually maybe
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that's what that oh I don't know what that's doing that probably Powers down
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one of these SATA ports so yeah port five port five turns off if you populate
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this so you can use this for things like smart response technology or even just as a regular SSD it's totally up to the
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individual end user so where's our Thunderbolt chipset oh there we go right
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there so there's your Thunderbolt chipset close to the Thunderbolt ports
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as you'd expect remember guys Thunderbolt won't work unless you're
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using the Intel onboard audio so that means you can either use Lucid virtue
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MVP which allows you to use the onboard audio for what it's good at which is
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things like video transcoding and making sure you're using Thunderbolt and then
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you can use your dedicated video to power any kind of 3D games even if
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you're running the display off of the Thunderbolt port in terms of IO you've
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got lots of different onboard display options so BGA DVI HDMI and remember
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these Thunderbolt ports can also terminate to mini DisplayPort so that's
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uh effectively all the major players four USB 3.0 ports which gives you a
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total of 10 10 USB 3.0 ports potentially
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can run off this board two USB 2.0 ports which are great for legacy devices like
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if you need to uh uh use a bootable USB or something like that it tends to have
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a slightly better compatibility same thing with like keyboards and mice so I'm glad they're still including those
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gigabit Ethernet as well as optical audio out and 7.1 audio out the back of
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the board is pretty much what you'd expect so you got a couple of cooling uh
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heat sinks here as well as your back plate and using all screws all hard
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mounts for all of the front components of the board so thank you for checking
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out my unboxing and first look at gigabytes GA z77x up5 th this has a few
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firsts including its dual Thunderbolt ports don't forget to subscribe to l
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