Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Motherboard Review

Henry Butt July 27, 2012 Featured Announcement, Motherboard

Rating: 9.0.

Last month we saw some of Gigabyte's upcoming Z77 motherboards at Computex which feature their latest Ultra Durable 5 technology. We have been very impressed by all the existing Gigabyte Z77 motherboards we've tested so we are quite excited to see what the new range has to offer.

Today we are going to look at the Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH which is aimed at the mainstream market. It boasts an impressive feature set which includes dual thunderbolt connectors and Gigabyte's latest Ultra Durable 5 technology. The ‘P' in the model number tells us that it features the Ultra Durable 5 technology which differs from the ‘D' used for Ultra Durable 4.

Other interesting features include a full complement of USB 3.0 ports, PCI Express 3.0 and various overclocking technologies that should let us squeeze a lot more power out of the i7-3770K that we'll be using for testing today.

Features

Supports Intel 3rd Generation CPU's – Socket 1155
Ultra Durable 5 – Super high rated Ferrite Core Chokes (60A). 2x Copper PCB and IR3550 IC's in the CPU power zone for the coolest temperatures ever.
Lucid Virtu MVP – Producing faster frame rates, with sharper visuals and reduced tearing.
nVidia SLI and AMD CrossfireX – For multi display or ultimate performance gaming.
UEFI DualBIOS – A superior graphical BIOS interface, based on the trusted and secure GIGABYTE Dual BIOS technology.
Onboard mSATA Connector – Mount a low capacity mSATA SSD onto your motherboard to take advantage of INTEL SRT and RAPID START.
USB 3x Power Boost – Delivering greater device compatibility and faster charge times
Super Speed USB3.0 – Super fast transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps, 10x faster than USB2.0
Super SATA3 Native Support – Supporting super fast 6 Gbps link speeds
PCIe GEN 3 – Designed to take full advantage of the next generation high bandwidth graphic card solutions
ON/OFF Charge Technology – Allows you to charge your iPad, iPHone, or iPod even if your PC is off
Dual Thunderbolt – Dasiy chain up to 12 devices + 2 display monitors and transfer 1 TB of data in just 5 minutes!

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7 comments

Davis
July 27, 2012 at 2:38 pm

great motherboard, looks a lot better than many of the other GB boards ive seen in recent years.
Slashwat
July 27, 2012 at 2:40 pm

awesome board, next on my list to buy
Streetfighter
July 27, 2012 at 2:41 pm

I think its £15 overpriced.
Harry
July 27, 2012 at 2:42 pm

Its not overpriced, for what you get its pretty good value. id like to see a few more sata 3 ports however at the price.
Optical Illusion
July 27, 2012 at 2:43 pm

Are there compatibility issues with D14>/?
Henry Butt
July 28, 2012 at 5:42 pm

Hi Optical Illusion,

I tested the motherboard with a Phanteks PHTC-14PE which is actually slightly larger than a D14. The only compatibility issue would be with memory featuring large heatspreaders but this is going to be an issue with the D14 on pretty much every motherboard on the market.