GIGABYTE Z77X-UP4 TH - with the power of lightning
Thunderbolt (formerly codenamed Light Peak) is the name given to high-speed optical cable technology developed by Intel. Its purpose is to connect electronic devices, various peripherals and displays on a computer bus. Its bandwidth is currently 10 Gbps, but it is expected that this rate may increase to 100 Gbps in the future. The design of a universal interface was the basic concept, which can replace the interface and cabling of current SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire and HDMI buses (the bus driver protocol does not necessarily need to be replaced as Thunderbolt is designed to be protocol neutral).
Compared to the interfaces known today and their bus system, Thunderbolt is much faster, has a longer range, takes up less space, and can be considered more flexible due to its protocol neutrality. Thunderbolt has enough bandwidth to meet the needs of data and multimedia (image + voice) systems, in many cases with daisy chain devices using multiple protocols at the same time, with two-way data traffic.
The board is based on a standard ATX size printed circuit board, i.e. 30,5 × 24,4 cm. The PCB is black, which is a feature of the more serious GIGABYTE models. The LGA1155 socket is in the usual location, and the phases of the 3D Power supply are surrounded by an L shape, for a total of 10, and the memory rails have been added to 2. GIGABYTE has introduced the IOR PowerStage IR3550 control circuit with a current of 60 amps , meanwhile, its loss is minimal, so its efficiency is better and it produces less heat.
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Of the DIMM slots, we get the 4 typical of this platform, which receives up to 32 GB of DDR3 in dual-channel mode, officially up to 1600 MHz, but of course it is possible to achieve higher speeds and to use XMP profiles. In addition to the memory rails, the 24-pin power connector is located in the usual place, which is complemented by an 8-pin power connector next to the phases. Under the LGA1155 socket, we can discover an mSATA connector that is unusual for the first time, but can already be considered an element within GIGABYTE, into which we can insert an SSD with an mSATA interface, such as the Intel SSD 310.
If you choose a larger size, you can also use it as a standalone system drive, say around 20GB, and you may want to use Intel Smart Response Technology to speed up your existing hard drive and speed up your system. The Z77 PCH features a flattened, fairly robust black-tinted aluminum cooling in the same style as the rib in the PWM area, taking care not to interfere with the installation of long video cards.
At the edge of the page, we get the SATA connectors by turning them, which practically covers the offer of the Z77: 6 SATA connectors, of which 2 support the speed of 6 Gb / s, and four support the speed of 3 Gb / s. To the right of the two white ports, we also find a pin terminal from which we can route USB 3.0 connectors to the back or front panel. An 8-channel Realtek HD audio (ALC 898) chip with S / PDIF IN and OUT support has been integrated into the PCB, this is a standard model in this category. At the bottom of the PCB are the standard pin terminals, including the USBs, which are also capable of On / Off Charge charging.
There will be no shortage of PCI Express rails, a total of three full-width slots are available, and three short (× 1) surfaces have been added to the PCB. The first two full-width ports are capable of operating in × 16 and × 8 / × 8 modes, with NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFireX also supported. If we still have an old PCI card, we won't get in trouble either, as we also get a piece of traditional PCI bus.
In the box we get the usual things, manual, installation disk, SATA cables, SLI and CFX bridges, although it is important to note that in-store copies may have richer content!
Now we have taken over the most important things, let’s see the tests!