ASUS P8Z77-V Pro Z77 Ivy Bridge Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,460 words · ~12 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the p8 z77 V
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Pro this is an all new platform from Intel the z77 chipset supporting not
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only second generation that is sandybridge core I3 Core i5 and core i7
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processors but also third generation
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processor so that is code named ivybridge so these are all these 77
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boards have the following traits in common actually I'm going to stick with
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what all ausi 77 boards have because not all of them have things like the Dual
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intelligent processors that is for Energy Efficiency or for performance as
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well as their smart Digi plus which is their eighth generation of digital vrm
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so they are all PCIe 3.0 ready they all
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have support for Crossfire X and then
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the certified boards have support for NVIDIA SLI okay second 22/32 NM
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processor support so that is uh second and third generation processors virtue
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MVP this is really cool virtue MVP actually has a number of need effects so
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one is it can actually boost your performance two is it can reduce tearing
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in scenarios where your frame rate goes
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above the actual refresh rate of the Monitor and finally it no longer
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requires you to plug the cable into a specific Outlet in order to switch
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between D mode and IM mode so you can make use of that quicksync technology on
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the CPU which allows you to quickly code video without sacrificing gaming
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performance okay moving on down we've got Intel smart response technology
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which allows you to use an SSD as a cache to uh boost up the performance of
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your boot drive as well as moving over here aha this is awesome USB BIOS
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flashback easy BIOS flashback this is a killer feature because basically it
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allows you to no matter what you do to your motherboard recover it quickly and
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easily just by loading a iOS file onto a USB drive throwing it in the back of the
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board and pressing you know what I'm just going to show you guys pressing
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the where'd it
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go yeah I found it guys normally it's here so I was expecting to show you guys
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the button that you press but uh actually on this particular board it's
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down here doesn't make much of a difference it's not something you'll be using very often knock on wood but it's
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there and it's super handy because you don't even have to have a CPU or memory
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installed in order to recover your BIOS thumbs up because it could save you an
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RMA which can be up to a week of downtime without your system moving on
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we have their Network eye control which the coolest feature in the network eye
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control is actually the ability to prioritize various applications it's
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pretty easy to set up in the AI Suite so all you do is take any network using
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applications you bump them up into the
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sort of the the managed applications cue and then you just click on the priority
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in order to set them to high medium or low so that's really neat as well uh
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usb3 boost so true uasp support now this
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is kind of tricky because the z77 chipset natively supports Intel usb3
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Port so this guy oh hold on one of these two front ones is going to be an
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Intel usb3 Port uh set of ports and then
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two of these rear ones are going to be are okay hold on one header for the
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front will be Intel two ports for the
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back will be Intel one header for the front is going to be as media and then
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two ports for the back are going to be as media so the Intel ports are going to
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over time have the advantage probably of you know more General wider
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compatibility due to it being Intel and they validate everything to death but as
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media has the advantage of supporting uasp so with an compatible device you
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can get dramatically better performance out of the as media ports so seus gives
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you the option use this and this or use
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this and this whatever you decide you will get the best possible
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balance uh precise power control so as I mentioned before this is their eighth
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generation uh this is a fully digitally
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powered board now what's cool about what asusa has done with their z77 boards is
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they're actually moving away from using different types of pwm designs
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throughout their lineup so this is a pro level board this is a fairly High tier
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board but even on their low boards they are still going to be using digit
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digital power for the CPU the memory as well as the integrated GPU So Gone are
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the days when you have to buy a Deluxe level board or a sabertooth or an Rog
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board to get digital power control for your integrated GPU which you are in all
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likelihood not using no ASUS has moved those features down with a trickle down
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effect to the boards that really need it finally Wi-Fi go so this particular one
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comes with a Wi-Fi module which can actually be used not only to access your
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wireless network but also to stream media to supported DLNA devices as well
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as use your motherboard as an AP so as an access point for networking so DLNA
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media hub got that covered Wi-Fi connectivity everywhere yep so you can
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stream to your iPad to your phone other DLNA devices very cool um you know what
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if you guys are curious about TPU you should probably check out my my Roundup
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of preann over clocking utilities so you
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can either use the TPU button to get an automatic overclock although I wouldn't
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recommend that because the uh the aggressive mode in their AI Suite the
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most extreme mode allows it to tune itself find the sweet spot for your CPU
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and really Max it out in a way that uh these these one button utilities cannot
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do let me just see if I've missed anything else on the back here fan
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expert 2 is really cool so you can set user
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definable sorry about that you can set user definable curves so that uh you
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basically tell it what temperatures you want it to run at what RPMs also
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provides an RPM fixed mode as well as an
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automatic fan speed detection mode which allows you to basically just more
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intelligently figure out what exactly you want to do as far as balancing your
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fan speed and your cooling goes here we go so we got support for HDMI 1.4 which
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means 3D very cool SATA mode notice are
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configured to ahci mode by default thank you ASUS it is about time more
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motherboard manufacturers started moving to HCI mode by default because so many
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users are like oh my new SSD it doesn't perform very good it's like well you're
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running an IDE mode what can we do for you and once you once you've installed
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the OS onto an ID mode drive it's a bit of a bear to get it changed around to
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ahci mode here's the Wi-Fi go-kart user
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guide including various things such as access point mode the Wi-Fi engine Wi-Fi
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go the movable omnidirectional antenna
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all right we've got the user guide as well as the drivers and utilities disc
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which you should ignore and download the latest off the exus website we've got an
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SLI cable we've got the Q connectors so
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these are to more easily plug in your front ports including front USB 2 as
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well as your front panel connectors such as your power and whatnot uh we have
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okay a Wi-Fi module here which unfortunately I was traveling recently
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and I forgot to uh put my knife back on my keychain I don't know how I'm going
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to get this open guys never mind we're good slick was going to
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turn off the camera for me mercifully but I didn't end up needing it so there's the
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module and presumably there's an antenna that I missed yep okay more accessories
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sorry about that guys uh so then there's a movable and this is cool because it
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has magnets on the bottom of it so you can actually position it wherever you
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want uh it looks like he's moved the one that was on my test bench before but I
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had it just like bolted to the side of the power supply actually here oh that
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didn't work oh that's too bad because okay just the
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wires here but yeah you can stick it to anything metal IO
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Shield rear uh a rear e SATA as well as
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USB 2 just if you want some extra ports back there two SATA 36 GB per second
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cables two SATA 2 3 GB per second cables these are all straight to right angle
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and finally the board itself so we've covered most of the features so we're
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going to go pretty quickly on the overview ASUS has actually got a really
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cool heat snc design I'm always sort of you know I'm always interested to see
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what they have my favorite is still the uh I think I called it Fortress of
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Solitude design that they had on their p-55 boards I really liked that but this
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one's pretty good too it's very new age and digital like it kind of looks like a
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city sort of thing I think it looks kind of neat and then this one is matching
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down here so that's your uh your chipset heat sink I mean mostly these heat sinks
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are for decoration these CPUs on this platform aren't going to pull a 10 of
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power I shouldn't say they're for decoration we do still need to cool the
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vrm but we're not talking you know an x79 platform where you got a six core
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CPU or anything like that this will be a four core CPU platform here is our
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digital power delivery as well as our LGA 1155 socket so be careful when
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you're installing it and don't try and install an 1156 CPU I remember when all
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of them came with warnings about that and right support out of the box for
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second generation and third generation CPUs dual Channel DDR3 is over here this
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is another cool thing about z77 boards is they support the DDR3 1600 MHz jde
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specification so that means if you have jde modules that is like bone stock
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modules that run at 1600 MHz they'll work completely zero configuration in
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these boards here's the uh the memo K button so that allows you to post pretty
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much no matter what kind of memory you gotten there um you've also got a 24 pin
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power connector and the 8 Pin power connector and their ideal locations along the right hand Edge in the top
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left front USB 3.0 Port we kind of already harped on that included SATA 2 3
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GB per second ports included SATA 36 GB
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per second ports as well as two other SATA 36 GB per second ports so two of
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these are running off of the Intel chipset for these ports ASUS is using an
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as media controller which while it doesn't support their SSD caching that
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we've seen on previous generation products it is slightly faster than the
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controller that does support the caching we got our epu as well as our
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TPU buttons remember this is for Energy Efficiency this is for Extreme
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Performance front panel connectors four front USB 2.0 uh headers front uh front
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panel USB 3 uh front panel audio as well
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as moving along here ah yes ports let's talk ports so we have two PCIe 1X slots
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three PCI e6x slots although this guy is really only good for PCI e4x and this
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guy is really only good for PCI E 8X although bear in mind PCIe 3.0 8X is the
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same bandwidth as PCIe 2.0 16x so even
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if you're running two high-end graphics cards in here you're going to have
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plenty of bandwidth two Legacy PCI ports round out the seven slots that are
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available uh oh yes fan headers so you
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can use ASUS's software in order to control these fan headers we have 1 2 3
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four five should be six where's the last one six uh four pin pwm fan headers and
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we can set all kinds of cool curves I believe it's uh fan headers 1 to four
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that you can actually use to um use the autot tuning software for on the back we
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find a PS2 Port that's for keyboard or Mouse I still like to see these we've
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got uh four USB 3.0 ports two USB 2.0
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ports optical audio out HDMI DisplayPort VGA and DVI are all included Intel
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Ethernet that's how they're able to have that uh that packet sorting included on
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all of their z77 boards as well as 7.1
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audio out on the back of the board we find a little bit of extra cooling for
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the vrm that's definitely Ely not for decoration as well as little quality
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touches like installing the chipset heat sink using screws rather than push pins
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so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the p8 z77 V
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Pro don't forget to subscribe to lius techtips for more unboxings reviews and
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other computer videos and last but not least USB charger plus allows you to
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quickly charge your devices plugged into the USB 3 or the USB ports on this
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motherboard even when the system is powered
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off and one of thing I pretty much
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forgot is the Thunderbolt header so ASUS
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is going to have available for their full line of z77 boards with the
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exception of I believe the Ws board a
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PCIe 4X Riser card that you can install in here and then run a little cable over
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to the TB header so you can add Thunderbolt compatibility to your board
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for a very reasonable charge if you have a Thunderbolt ready device that you want
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to use