Biostar Hi-Fi Z77X Motherboard Review

Biostar have chosen to use an attractive black and blue colour scheme for the motherboard which consists of a black PCB with black fittings with metallic blue highlights on the heatsinks.  This look is very attractive and looks very sophisticated indeed.  This particular motherboard utilises the ATX form factor.

It's quite clear from a glance that this board has been designed with overclocking in mind as there is a vast expanse of power regulation circuitry surrounding the CPU socket.

In the top left hand corner of the motherboard we find an 8-pin CPU power connector nestled in between the heatsinks.

To the right of the CPU socket there are four DDR3 memory slots which support up to 32 GB running at frequencies of  2600(OC)/2400(OC)/2200(OC)/2133(OC)/1866(OC)/1800(OC)/1600/1333/1066 MHz in a dual channel configuration.

Along the right hand edge of the motherboard, we find the 24-pin power connector in the usual place.

In the bottom right hand corner of the motherboard next to the chipset, there are six SATA ports in total, angled at 90 degrees to make cable management simpler.  The top two of these are SATA-600 ports and the remaining four are restricted to SATA-300 speeds.

Along the bottom edge of the motherboard we find most of the internal headers.  From left to right we find an S-PDIF header, a CIR header, a 3-pin fan header, a COM header and two USB2.0 headers.  The USB3.0 header is rather illogically placed further up the motherboard between the PCI Express slots.  We also find power and reset buttons in the bottom right corner of the motherboard alongside the front panel header and a Dr. Debug LED.

There are a fairly wide range of expansion slots included on the motherboard, although Biostar hasn't used any legacy PCI slots.  There are two PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, one PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot and three PCI Express x1 slots.

In the bottom left corner of the motherboard we can see all the onboard audio circuitry.  Biostar has integrated an EMI shield into the motherboard around the audio circuitry to prevent interference from other components.

Looking at the rear I/O panel we can see that all the basics are catered for.  From left to right we find a PS/2 connector, two USB2.0 ports, an HDMI port, a VGA port, a DVI port, two USB3.0 ports, two further USB2.0 ports, a RJ-45 Ethernet jack and six 3.5 mm audio jacks.

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