GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H (rev. 1.0) Pro Reviews

Decent performance and expansion options, but you can get the same range of features for less elsewhere

Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H; quirky yes, perfect no, good yes, must buy no, great overclocker yes. At $145 from Amazon with FREE Prime Shipping, the Z77X-UD3H starts to look pretty good if you are an overclocker looking to truly push an Ivy Bridge processor. Just do not expect perfection when it comes to the small details. The Z77X-UD3H is fairly feature rich for the price though and looks to be a solid buy.

The Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H doesn’t give you all the bells and whistles you get with pricier Ivy Bridge motherboards, but you get quite a bit for your money nonetheless.

Being a mainstream board, the GIGABYTE Z77X-UD3H is packed with some neat features that we often find on more expensive boards. Features such as onboard Clear CMOS button, Power On/Off button, onboard LED debug code, voltage contact points, and Dual BIOS are very useful tools for an overclocker. Even if you do not overclock, the buttons are a handy tool to have when comes to troubleshooting or building a new system. The included mSATA port may not going to be as useful this time around as it does not come with the SSD pre-installed like the Z68XP-UD3-iSSD. Not including the SSD cuts the retail price of the board down and allows users to select their own drive capacity and model. Unfortunately, an mSATA drive is slightly more expensive than standard 2.5’’ SATA drives, so it maybe more cost beneficial to go with the SATA drive. In addition for ATX board, there are plenty of space for storage. Luckily, GIGABYTE does allow users to switch the ports so that you are not forced to use the mSATA.

Gigabyte's GA-Z77X-UD3H motherboard is a well featured mainstream board that'll run you about $170 USD/CDN. If you're frustrated by the limits imposed by your current PC system, or if you find yourself needing dual or triple-screen IGP-based graphics, the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H is a great motherboard to consider.

GIGABYTE is going to have a very strong Intel Z77 product stack. If all of their motherboards perform like the Z77X-UD5H WiFi and the Z77X-UD3H did, they will continue to be a force to be reckoned with!

After running the GA-Z77X-UD3H through its paces and seeing just what it had to offer I was impressed with the fact that Gigabyte has finally moved into the now with their Dual UEFI BIOS implementation called 3D BIOS. After playing with the old school blue screen BIOS on boards as recent as the G2 Sniper this is a welcome change. With it comes an all-new 3D Power design that incorporates an all-digital power supply to the CPU, DRAM, Integrated graphics core and CPU Memory controller. Ultra Durable 3 construction has been around for some time now and has been replaced by Ultra Durable 4. What does this do for us? Well to start a new fiber weave in the PCB closes up the gaps reducing the chance of moisture intrusion, dual 2oz copper layers for improved signal response and lower impedance, improved chip selection for more ESD resistant chips to reduce the frequency of failures, all Japanese solid capacitors, and ICs designed to eliminate surge damage. So how does this impact overclocking? Well by manually tweaking the new BIOS I was able to reach within 30MHz of the MSI Z77A-GD65 at 4889MHz all with a less robust cooling solution on the board than many of the Z68 boards I have used. Overclocking followed standard for Sandy Bridge overclocking by increasing the bclock multiplier, CPU voltage and finally the bclock to reach the highest speeds on both the memory and CPU.

The Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H is a top mainstream motherboard, meaning it is targeted to the average user who wants “something extra.” This comes in the form of an additional PCI Express x16 slot (allowing you to install up to three video cards under SLI or CrossFireX modes), eight USB 3.0 ports (motherboards based on the Z77 chipset usually come with four), an mSATA slot (for you to install a small SSD unit based on this form factor), two independent eSATA-600 ports, a high-end audio codec (which allows you to work professionally editing analog audio with this motherboard), overclocking in 0.01 MHz increments, voltage monitoring points, two BIOS chips, and support for four PWM fans.