Biostar TZ77XE4 Z77 Motherboard Preview

Again with the black colouring, we find a total of six expansion slots, consisting of three PCI-Express x16 lanes, of which the first two operate at x16 speeds (x8 if using SLI/CFX) and the third operating at x4 speeds. There is also a smaller PCI-Express x1 slot and two legacy PCI slots. For those wanting to get in on a little multi-GPU action, the two x16 slots are nicely spaced apart to give extra ventilation to the individual cards.

Front panel connectors and the like are in full-swing on this board, with some key overclocking features included. We find a debug LED, power and reset buttons and also a clear CMOS button too. Front panel connectors include the usual LEDs and switches, as well as COM, USB 2.0 and a native USB 3.0 header to top things off.

Going back to the cooling aspects of the board, there is a small, low-profile heatsink covering the Intel Z77 chip. It flows with the rest of the board with a black heatsink and gold, Biostar branded shield covering.

Moving to the storage capabilities of the board, there are a total of eight SATA ports, all in black. The two ports to the right support Sata 6Gb/s through the Intel Z77 chipset and support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 including IRST. The next two, towards the left support Sata 3Gb/s and also run through the Intel Z77 chipset with the same RAID support. The next two are the same, though one of the ports can be used with eSATA, whereas the last two SATA ports, on the left side once again utilise SATA 6Gb/s but are ran through the Asmedia ASM1061 controller and only support AHCI functionality with no RAID support.

Lastly flipping around to the rear I/O panel we find a PS2 keyboard port, two USB 2.0 ports, DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA and DVI for extra display connectivity. There is also a single eSATA port, two USB 3.0 ports, two further USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit LAN provided through the Realtek RTL 8111E controller and 7.1 channel high-definition audio through the ALC898 chip.