As we continue our coverage of both Ivy Bridge and the Z77 Express chipset we now head over to Gigabyte. Gigabyte is a company that has worked very hard for the position they have in the market. They were originally a manufacturer who concentrated on compatibility and stability rather than working on pushing the envelope in terms of speed and performance. However that was a long time ago. Now they are definitely working to get the most out of each product. We have watch them develop their line up since the P55 days and know that they are more than capable of putting out a motherboard (and other products) that can satisfy your performance needs. So with that in mind let’s take a look at what Gigabyte has built into the GA-Z77X-UD3H in terms of design choices and features.
The Box and Goodies - The box that the GA-Z77X-UD3H comes in follows the same lines as what we have seen since the release of the X79 boards. This is a clean look with a 3D wireframe box on the front and minimal logos. There are a few that Gigabyte left there; ones that they feel are important like the 3D BIOS, 3D Power, Virtu MVP, etc. Overall though the box is pretty clean. The back of the box is considerably more cluttered and chaotic. You do get a picture of the board you are buying, but it is the middle of a bunch of other marketing stuff. Some is important to a potential buyer, but to be honest most of the rest is fluff. Now the picture of the board is a there for a reason and is designed to show off their mSATA port on the board for SSD caching. We will cover this and more of the features a little later though. Inside the box, besides the Z77X-UD3H you will find a single SLI bridge, four SATA Cables (two blue and two black) and the usual manuals and utility DVDs. Other than that there is not much going on with the box so let’s check out the board itself.
