Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 Intel Z77 Motherboard Review

The Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 is a monster of a motherboard, priced to cater for the ultra high end, overclocking audience.

Make no mistake, this isn't designed to meet a specific price point, as Gigabyte have pulled out all the stops to create a one of a kind flagship product. At a retail price of £310 inc vat there is no doubt that only a small portion of the enthusiast audience will be able to afford the Z77X-UP7.

First impressions are worth discussing, because it isn't often that we see such a beautifully designed product. The bright, yet seductive orange colour scheme will always remind me of Austrian motorbike maker KTM, not a bad thing as they make some of the finest motorbikes on the market. I really do love the appearance of this motherboard, and it would look fabulous inside a high end windowed case with orange LED lighting throughout.

Gigabyte have adopted a 32+3+2 phase power design which is probably the finest on the market right now. This is supported by very high grade heatsinks on the VRM's and these are easily removed if Liquid Nitrogen is your cooling material of choice. Gigabyte say this board can handle 2,000W of power delivery and it costs an inordinate lot of money to produce the Z77X-UP7, so the hefty price tag is certainly justified.

Overclocking the 3770k was very easily, and we achieved a 5.3ghz post, although the voltage was very high and we wouldn't be happy running like this for any length of time. Getting this board stable at 5.2ghz would be possible, with high end water cooling.

In the end we opted for a 4.8ghz-4.9ghz figure which would be usable with a high end ‘mainstream' cooler such as the Corsair H100. Obviously every 3770k sample will be slightly different.

Our test results verify that the board delivers the ultimate performance on the Z77 platform, even outperforming the excellent ASRock Z77 OC Formula motherboard which we reviewed a short while ago. Memory bandwidth with Corsair Dominator Platinum at 2,666mhz produced a result of almost 31Gb/s, this is a class leading result for a dual channel platform.

The connectivity of the Z77X-UP7 is also well worth a mention. There are two Gigabit LAN ports onboard, and a plethora of SATA and USB connectors. The board is designed to be used outside a case as there are reset, power, CMOS clear and OC buttons available at the fingertips. Gigabyte are also using the PLX8747 chip which gives another 48 PCI express lanes for additional gaming performance.

The only negative point I could mention, would be Gigabyte's insistence on splitting the overclocking voltage and tweak options into around 5 or 6 different BIOS panels. I find it slows me down when changing settings, as you have to constantly press the ESC key to get back out to the main menu interface to navigate to the next section. Just ditch all these panels and put the controls into a single scrollable panel. Please?

In closing, we have no hesitation in recommending this motherboard, if you have £300 to spare and want the best Z77 motherboard on the market, then this is the one to get.

ARIA are the cheapest in the United Kingdom right now, offering the board for £299.99 inc vat.

Pros:

• No expense spared design including a class leading power deliver design.
• Looks beautiful.
• connectivity.
• OC buttons on the PCB.
• overclocks very easily.

Cons:

• Expensive.
• put all the BIOS overclocking options into a single panel, not 5+

Kitguru says: One of the finest motherboards we have tested to date and probably the leading board for the Z77 platform.

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