Gigabyte GA-Z77-UP4 TH (Z77) Motherboard Review

Its been a little while since I’ve done a motherboard review, however what a board to come back to. Whilst its not a top end board, aimed more at the mainstream enthusiast and gamers, its still a cracking board that fits in to the middle portion of the market.

Style wise, I was impressed the moment I took it out of its anti-static bag to take photos. The black PCB and grey/metal detailing gives a sleek design to the board that shouts style. The brushed metal plates on top of the MOSFET and chipset heatsinks round of the matt colour with a touch of shine.

Looks are one thing, but its all and well having a board that looks the part, but if it looks the part then it damn well play it as well. Astonishingly, its hasn’t just played the part its put some of its rivals to shame, coming top in a number of our benchmarks sometimes by more than just a fraction. This was the case not only for the stock testing but for the overclock testing with huge increases in results, especially when it comes to memory bandwidth. Whilst on the note of overclocking, I’ve really got to give it to Gigabyte on this one, I’ve never had a board that overclocked so far at stock voltages right through to just under 5GHz. Its a shame that our chip didn’t want to play the same game however and playing with the voltages didn’t see any improvements nor unfortunately the magic 5GHz barrier being broken today.

As we’ve also seen here, the addition of Thunderbolt is one of the newer technologies, that whilst we can’t delve to far into testing wise, is a welcomed appearance on the board at long last. Hopefully given time we will be able to test the Thunderbolt functionality and compare boards one-on-one in this area in the near future.

There are a number of boards out on the market that I would give a thumbs up to for one reason or another, but I feel that this board has earned its right to get the thumbs up in more than one for sure. Cost wise, the Z77X-UP4 TH will be found on the shelves at £159.98, which puts it right in the middle of the Z77 price range and easily in the budgets of the vast majority of buyers.

Rounding off, Gigabyte have always had a strong backing here at eTeknix alongside some of the other top names and this board is by far no exception with its pure performance, clean and stylish looks, Ultra Durable 5 components, Thunderbolt and last of all fantastic pricing for what is on offer. With all of this in mind, its worthy of our Editors Choice award.