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Asus have chosen to use their trademark blue colour scheme for the P8Z77-V LX motherboard which makes it look quite attractive indeed. This comprises a very dark brown (almost black) PCB with a combination of black, blue and white fittings.
One of the areas in which this motherboard clearly differs from more expensive models is the power regulation circuitry around the CPU socket. There are no heatsinks for cooling and there are a lot fewer components here than we would expect to see on a dedicated overclocking board. We will see if this affects the overclocking performance later on in the review.
The 8-pin power connector for the CPU is located along the top edge of the board close to the rear I/O connections.
There are four ram slots located in the top right hand corner of the board which are coloured black and blue. They support up to 32 GB of DDR3 memory Non-ECC unbuffered memory running at speeds of 2400(O.C.) / 2200(O.C.) / 2133(O.C.) / 2000(O.C.) / 1866(O.C.) / 1800(O.C.) / 1600 / 1333 MHz.
In the bottom right hand corner of the motherboard we find the six SATA connectors which are all hooked up to the Z77 chipset. The two white ports support SATA-600 while the four remaining ones only support SATA-300. The motherboard supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 as well as Intel Smart Response Technology, Intel Rapid Start Technology and Intel Smart Connect Technology.
Asus has included a relatively comprehensive selection of expansion slots for a budget focused motherboard. There are two PCI Express x16 slots but only the top one supports PCIe 3.0. While the motherboard does support Quad CrossFireX, the remaining PCI Express x16 slot is limited to x4 speeds when a second graphics card is installed so the performance gains could be very limited indeed. There are also two PCI Express x1 slots and three legacy PCI slots on the motherboard.
There are a number of internal headers along the bottom edge of the motherboard. From left to right we find HD Audio, S/PDIF, COM, three USB2.0 and front panel connections. The motherboard also features an internal USB3.0 header which is located next to the 24-pin power connector on the right hand edge of the board.
The rear I/O panel supports:
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port(s)
- 1 x DVI
- 1 x D-Sub
- 1 x HDMI
- 1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
- 2 x USB 3.0
- 4 x USB 2.0
- 1 x Optical S/PDIF out
- 3 x Audio jack(s)
that gigabyte board is hard to beat on price. they can’t be making more than £10 from each sale.
Great looking board for the price, but I still cant believe the gigabyte price point.
Not bad, but id like two 16x slots for futureproofing.
I have bought two of these boards this week, as part of bundles from my local component shop in Coventry, and I have to say they are very solid. yeah I get what your saying about the lack of 2 x 16 Crossfire, but as I will never use it, the board is solid. Currently running mine with a 3570k and an NH-D14 at 4.5Ghz. Easy to set up as long as the 1st thing you do is update the Bios.