Asus P8Z77-V (Z77) Motherboard Review

The P8Z77-V conforms to a full ATX form factor and with a quick glance over the brown PCB, it can be said that its easy to see that there is a whole heap of features on the board to play with. Finished off with a two tone blue and off white set of slots, it goes to show that mainstream does not necessarily mean that it has to be dull and boring.

 Focussing a little closer on the CPU socket, we can see that there are plenty of power phases on offer, indicating that there is a potential for some over clocking here. Above the CPU socket there are an additional four phases for the on-board graphics, all nestles under the rather stylish heat sink. In the background the 8-pin CPU power connector can be seen on the top edge of the board.

Whilst on the topic of heat sinks, further down and over the Z77 chipset is a rather large yet well styled cooler with a brushed aluminium plate that sits on top of the blue anodised heat sink the lies underneath.

Back up towards the top of the board are four DIMM slots supporting up to 32GB of DDR3 memory in a dual-channel configuration. To the left of the ATX 24-pin power connector is one of many fan headers and a native USB3.0 header whilst to the right is a DRAM debug button.

One of the clear features that sets this board apart from the enthusiast calibre boards is the inclusion of the older generation PCI lanes in amongst the current generation of PCI-e lanes. This is ideal for older users who may need the compatibility with some older expansion cards and to save the cost of buying additional new hardware.

 As expected along the lower edge of the board, there is not shortage of USB2.0 headers whilst a set of front panel and audio headers are found to either side.

 SATA is also not in short supply with a total of eight ports on hand. Of these the four left hand ports are 3GB/s run by the Z77 chip set long with the two grey 6GB/s ports to the right. To the far right an additional two 6GB/s ports driven by an ASMEDIA controller round off the SATA line up.

Spinning the board around to the rear I/O, there is ample display output options with all four main outputs catered for (VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort). To wither side of the display outputs are four USB3.0 and two USB2.0 ports, 7.1ch audio, S/PDIF, Intel Gigabit LAN and a PS/2 combo port.

As seen above there is a small gap between the USB2.0 ports and the first bank of display outputs. This is where the WiFi GO! module connects and this simply pushes on to the header provided and secures with a screw that fits through the motherboard. The antenna then push fits from the outside of the case once built up.