Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Z77 Ivy Bridge Motherboard Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
2,177 words · ~10 min read
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welcome to another motherboard unboxing this is the
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z77x which as you guys might imagine uses the z77 chipset from Intel UD 5H UD
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implies that there is ultra durable technology but wait it's not Ultra
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durable 5 because that's not out yet the highest Ultra durable we have is ultra
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durable 4 and this one has it so moving along we've got the 3D BIOS logo here
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which includes the Dual UEFI BIOS with their unique graphical interface that
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allows you to actually click on the various parts of your board in order to
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access them so you want to access things about the SATA ports you just click on
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the SATA ports a bit more intuitive than you
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know shoot where do they usually keep that see I can't even remember where
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they usually keep the SATA options cuz they're all over the place it can be in like integrated peripherals sometimes
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what does that even mean integrated peripheral SATA port anyway so Gigabyte
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wants to make that simpler it also includes 3D power which is their All
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Digital engine meaning they are using all digital pwm for this particular
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motherboard this supports the latest Intel Core i7 third generation
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processors on the 1155 socket z77
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chipset we covered PCI Express Gen 3 is supported by this board so you want to
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run your latest GTX 680 I guess by the time you watch this video it might not
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be the latest but 680 or rad on hd7970
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and get the absolute most out of it yes the extra 1% or so PCI Express Gen 3 is
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the way to go if it's more important for S Crossfire though and I'll cover that
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more later the MSA connector is on board which I'll cover more once we've opened
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it up and Ultra durable for so this is a bunch of stuff high temperature
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protection humidity protection using their new woven glass fiber or sorry
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woven glass fabric PCB which can be
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relevant if you are in a high humidity environment such as say for example
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Taiwan or I mean you know I've had situations where I've accidentally
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spilled water on a board I hope it would help with that although you know no promises there guys electrostatic
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protection so they've integrated circuitry that actually protects the
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board from being damaged in the event of an electrostatic accident and power
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failure protection once again design choices that they've made to help
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mitigate the risk of that permanently damaging your motherboard so we'll leave
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that there so that we don't miss anything okay and let's open this bad
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boy up so the motherboard comes first but I'm going to make you guys wait for it and we'll go through the ex no no no
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calm down slick we'll do the mother board
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later going to go through the accessories first so we have two right
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angle SATA cables one right angle K SATA cable and a straight SATA cable so three
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right angles and one straight then we have a USB 3.0 front panel 3 and2 in Bay
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user manual as well as driver and utility DVD don't use this download the
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latest from the Gigabyte website there's also huh look at that they they opened
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it up to the page with the Box contents and the motherboard layout see those are
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the little touches that you got to appreciate Gigabyte sticker multilingual
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installation guide book with more languages than I can speak uh we have a
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flexible black SLI Bridge the very best
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kind we also have an IO plate that is
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handily color coded love color coding
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love things that are black and love small finishing touches so far Gigabyte
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A+ as far as the included access are
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going next let's get the board opened up
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here this is a resealed board it's a sample board so yeah yours won't look
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like that unless you buy this one haha no just kidding you won't get this one
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um here we go so you know what let's shift our angle a little bit
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here well I meant turn the camera off for and we're ready all right so at the
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very center of the board the very focal point for me is the new well not new
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lg15 5 socket supporting the new uh IV
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Bridge code named Intel Core i7 and i5 and I3 Generation 3 processors the thing
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we also find right next to it is another cool Intel technology that is Intel
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smart response technology you can throw a little PCI E SSD in here not going to
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take up any of your PCI slots or any of your SATA ports and you can use that to
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run Intel SRT caching off of a drive that you have connected to the system
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very very cool all right we've got our
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power deliver delivery circuitry here along with beefy heat sinks that are
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connected by a heat pipe to the beefy heat sink that is also installed on the
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chipset itself we have our 8 pin connector in its ideal location at the
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top left of the board and we'll go around and count the pwm fan headers at
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the end of the video this right here is dual Channel DDR3 memory supporting up
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to four dims that so that is a chipset thing guys this is not a replacement for
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x79 this is a replacement for z68 so we still C dual Channel DDR3 we have a SOS
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switch as well as a reset switch and a power button built into the most
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sensible possible location up here at the top right of the board now this is
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ex is excellent this is only a ud5 level board so this isn't even a topend board
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but look at this it's got all of your voltage checkpoints that's that's like
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outstanding I cannot stress enough how outstanding that is you can check all your voltages with a multimeter even on
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this like sort of high-end but not quite like a ud7 or or G1 series board very
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cool the 24 pin connectors in its ideal location along the far right of the
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board and check this out if you want additional power for your graphics cards
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you can use a SATA connector instead of a Molex I think this is a great design
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choice and I yeah appreciate that as a
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user all right here we go SATA 2 Port
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will be disabled when msata slot is in
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use so there you go it is running off of
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the okay so you do use up a Port but I guess you get the benefit of like it
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looking badass and you don't have to use up an
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actual Bay in your case so there there's the benefit all right these guys right
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here are SATA 36 gbit per second these ones right here are SATA 2 3 gbit per
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second and these ones are also oh sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry these four are
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SATA 26 3 gbit per second and then these
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four are SATA 3 6 gbit per second this
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one is also 36 GB per second and check this out two front panel USB 3.0 ports
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so this is interesting because according to the Intel three front panel USB 3.0
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ports this is interesting because according to the Intel spec the front
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panel USB 3 Port like the Intel the Intel usb3 ports have to be integrated
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with two in the front two in the back so on this particular board you're going to
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be allowed to choose whether you want to run off of the Intel usb3 chip or off of
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the third party usb3 chip we have another sta 3 port I think I mentioned
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that and here are all of our front panel
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switches front USB with extra power for
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faster charging front panel USB 2 with
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not extra power for charging we have our TPM slot as well as a front uh fire wire
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and front audio Gigabyte has started putting front audio at the bottom of the board Kudos Gigabyte it used to be here
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and this is better all right having a look at the back of the board so the z77
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chipset supports Onboard video on supported Intel core I whatever you know
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processors that do have Onboard video all the IV Bridge ones do so we've got
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VGA DVI HDMI and DisplayPort so the full gamut of options and what's cool is
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that with Lucid virtue MVP we actually get a lot more options
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in terms of a how to connect your monitor because you can connect it
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either to the discrete graphics card or the onboard graphics card and you can
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choose D mode or IM mode whether you whichever one it's connected to it
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doesn't matter also you can use okay assuming the game
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supports it it comes down to software support again assuming that the game
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supports it you can use virtu MVP to actually dramatically improve the
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performance of a discrete graphics card by having the onboard GPU handle basic
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tasks and leaving the more complicated things such as tessellation to your
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direct X11 graphics card interesting hey
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all right moving on we've got optical audio out two USB 2.0 ports an
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additional USB 2.0 Port okay fire wire
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four USB 3.0 ports so two of these are off the Intel chipset two of them are
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off a third party chipset 2 GB Ethernet ports and 7.1
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audio so right I said I was going to go back and count all the pwm fan headers
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so here we go one two don't come in too close so that they can see where they
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are I think uh 1 2 3 4 five uh uh uh
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five pwm fan headers so don't forget oh
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oh right right right right right sorry I almost forgot so it's also got integrated creative Sound Blaster X5 mb2
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audio which has a built-in headphone amplifier so this is not quite as
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advanced a design as they've used on the past on their G1 motherboards but it's
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going to be a heck of a lot better than your standard onboard audio and then
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what else are we missing here hold on let me just make sure I didn't miss anything guys Intel gigb Ethernet all
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right yes one of these two built-in LS is Intel so as opposed to a thirdparty
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chipset which a lot of users do prefer
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and finally you know what let's go back to the back of the box where they do
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have some of their other stuff sorry guys this is in lie of
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notes so that outlines actually yeah you guys can just look at that if you really
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want to that outlines the benefits of ultra durable 4 which has uh continued
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to bring you know the same standard things like 2 O copper BCB which is for
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better heat dissipation as well as less interference along with a whole bunch of
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other cool stuff so I think that pretty much covers it thank you for checking
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out my unboxing of the z77x ud5h and
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don't forget to subscribe to lineus TCH tips from unboxing reviews and other
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computer videos and don't forget you can always benefit from All Digital power
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that is the CPU the VT the memory and
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the Intel HD graphics which are all digitally powered ah yes the slot layout
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sorry guys I forgot three PCI e1x slots two PCI e6x oh okay three PCIe 16x slots
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but more on that in a minute and one PCI slot so I mentioned that PCI E3 support
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was going to be important for SLI Crossfire users on this platform that is
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because these are not both full 16x it's 16x or 8X 8X if you have two cards in
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them as per the same limitations as the
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z68 platform it's z68 right yeah z68 um
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wow dirt moment there guys uh right so
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remember PCIe 3.08 is the same bandwidth
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as PCIe 16x 2.0 so that means that if
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you're running PCI E3 on your CPU remember you need a PCI E3 CPU as well
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as your graphics parts that 8X bandwidth is going to be the same as last generation 16x so there should be no
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performance bottleneck there at all finally this PCIe 4X slot requires an
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ivybridge third gen CPU for more information please refer to the user manual so there you go 16x 60 or 88 or
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and 4x assuming you're using an IV Bridge TPU