Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H Motherboard Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,420 words · ~7 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the z77x ud4h from Gigabyte this is sort
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of a uh lowest that I would recommend
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motherboard because when you go any lower than this you start to compromise
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features that matter and this is where you start to get into the features that
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I think matter the most without spending an exorbitant amount of money on things
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that most people won't use so for example you've got the support for all
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the latest core I3 i5 and i7 processors you've got their fully digital power
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design as well as their 3D uh dual UEFI
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BIOS which basically makes it almost impossible to Brick one of their boards
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by flashing the BIOS or whatever else you get Crossfire and SLI compatibility
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it does support virtue MVP which is basically the way that you can use the
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onboard graphics on your CPU in order to transcode video and use your dedicated
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graphics for gaming PCI Gen 3 is a given these days Ultra durable 4 is pretty
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much all the old Ultra durable stuff in addition to the new glass fabric PCB
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that makes it humidity resistant All Digital power so CPU Graphics memory and
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the uncore as it used to be called I have no idea what we call it now
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apparently VT and then they talk a little bit about load line calibration
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versus not load line calibration although it's very debatable you know
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lots of people believe you should use it you shouldn't use it um here's a closer
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look at what their PCB design looks like Intel smart response allows you to use
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an SSD to cach your hard drive to make it go faster surprisingly few people use
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it but they should it's awesome and their easy smart response utility is
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actually the e easiest way to set up smart response and it only works on
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Gigabyte boards I have used it before and it's awesome electrostatic
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protection is cool so what it amounts to is for example um many motherboard
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manufacturers will do one fuse for sort of a bunch of USB ports whereas Gigabyte
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does one fuse per Port so if something gets Zapped at least you're going to
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lose less of the functionality of your board included accessories are pretty
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barebone so you got four SATA cables an SLI Bridge remember Crossfire bridges
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are included with your graphics card a Gigabyte sticker multilingual
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installation guide book a user manual a driver disc which you aren't going to use and you're going to download the
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latest off the manufacturer website and of course a colorcoded IO shield look at
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all that usb3 that be all over dis board
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because it has not only the Intel USB 3
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that comes with the z77 chipset but
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also third party USB 3 Gigabyte has done
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such a good job of cleaning up their color schemes over the last couple of
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generations so I'm going to start in the place that I usually do which is the CPU
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socket got lots of room around there for large coolers as well as lots of cooling
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for your mosfets so it looks like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 so that's probably
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like an 8 plus 3phase power design or something along those lines um either
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way it's using G I mean yeah quite
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frankly with an ivy Bridge CPU as long as you've got a good quality board which
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is again why I sort of recommend starting at that ud4 range you're not
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going to be limited in your overclocking Endeavors by your CPU power delivery
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unless you're going Subzero or doing something exotic this is ample for air
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and water cooling we've got a single 8 Pin CPU connector up here which is all
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you need for an ivybridge CPU you've got a clear seos button as well as a reset
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switch and a power switch up here at the top right you've got four DDR3 slots
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supporting up to 32 gigs of DDR3 memory your 24 pin connector and its ideal slot
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along the right and you've got an auxiliary SATA connector this is kind of
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Handy if you are installing multiple high powerered graphics cards so if
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you're going to throw a couple GTX 69s in here or something I do recommend
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plugging in a SATA connector and it'll give a little bit more power to those
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graphics card slots and reduce the risk of burning out any of the pins on your
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24 pin here front USB 3 is over here on
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the right this is where I do like to see it although a right angle connector would be even better and over here we've
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got SATA 3 off the Intel chipset SATA 2 off the Intel chipset so two of those
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and four of those and Mora 3 off of a thirdparty chipset we've also got a
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front post indicator LED as well as the front panel connectors and the BIOS
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switch which switches between BIOS 1 and BIOS 2 which are two physical chips on
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the board itself three USB 2.0 headers
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are down here on the bottom as well as the trusted platform module and front
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panel audio no fire wire on this board that's starting to disappear even on
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fully featured boards like this one and for our PCI Express slot Loadout I think
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it's pretty solid actually so if you have a single dual slot graphics card
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installed that's going to leave you with one two PCIe 1X 2 PCIe 16x physical and
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a PCI um however bear in mind guys that this is 16x physical if you populate
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both of these it's going to be 8X 8X this is an 8X slot and this one is a 4X
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that runs off the chipset itself as opposed to off of the CPU so I wouldn't
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recommend populating this with a graphics card and this PCI slot will be
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covered by a dual graphics card solution but what that means is you're going to be left with one one and four left for
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further expansion which if you're running a dual graphics card setup you probably have a pretty highend computer
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anyway so I understand gigabytes rationale when they did that in terms of
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fan connectors we got one two four pin three four pin four four pin five four
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pin ah ah ah ah ah which is pretty good and you have full support for
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configuring those within the BIOS matte black PCB which I've started to take for
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granted I remember I used to rant and Rave about how awesome it is uh but
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there are other little details that matter check out the way gigabytes using
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screws as opposed to plastic push pins to keep on all the cooling that means
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that no matter what happens in transit your board will probably arrive in a
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working condition and finally on the back check out all that USB 3 you've got
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six USB 3.0 ports DVI VGA HDMI and
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DisplayPort out PS2 keyboard mouse combo Port is included optical audio out
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is included two EA ports gigabit
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Ethernet and 7.1 audio and check this out gigabytes also built in uh dedicated
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USB keyboard and mouse ports here this is to increase compatibility as well as
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sometimes what manufacturers do is they include ports that are optimized for a
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1,000 htz pulling rate which gives you that extra little tiny Edge in terms of
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responsiveness assuming your keyboard and mouse do support that feature so
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high temperature protection onoff charge so even if the computer's powered down
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you can charge devices using USB and all
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Japanese solid caps which we've again started to take for granted at this
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point and oh right don't forget gigabytes 3x power for their USB ports
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meaning that you can charge devices faster and you can run more devices I'm
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pointing at the SATA ports you can run more devices off their USB ports without
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using a powered Hub just passively don't forget to subscribe to lus techtips for
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more unboxings reviews and other computer videos and thank you for checking out this one on the z77x ud4