Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H Z77 Motherboard Preview

Looking at the board we can see that it comes in a mATX form factor as indicated by the M after the Z77 in its model name. The board uses Gigabyte’s traditional light blue and white colour scheme to inform the user of its branding within the complete product range. The layout is typical of what we’d expect with a very neat and tidy layout with all aspects of the board in their usual place.

The socket area is very roomy to say the least with a very low profile design. No large heatsinks surround the socket area, allowing for larger CPU coolers including all-in-one watercooling units. The support is still for socket 1155 processors which allows this board to still use Sandybridge processors as well as the new up and coming 3rd generation CPUs.

Memory wise, we find four DIMM slots supporting dual-channel DDR3, up to 32GB in total. Speeds supported include 1333 and 1600MHz but overclocking will allow this to be taken further if you so wish. Being Intel, we find full support for XMP based modules too.

Gigabyte have tried to give a variety of connections when we look at the expansion slots. There is a single PCI-Express x16 lane at the top, a smaller PCIe x1 lane, legacy PCI slot and another PCI-Express x16 slot, but this only runs at x4 speeds. Though the bandwidth isn’t a major issue with an x4 slot, some people may have favoured a slightly more intensive x8 slot, though AMD CrossFireX is fully supported for two cards on this board.

The typical front panel connectors are located at the bottom of the board. This includes power switch, reset buttons, USB 2.0 headers, TPM, LPT, and front panel audio headers too.

Just to the right of the expansion slots if the only cooling that we find on the board. The Gigabyte branded blue, passive heatsink provides sufficient cooling to the Z77 chipset from Intel which lays beneath.