GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H (rev. 1.0) Pro Reviews

The GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H is a damn fine motherboard and overclocker for its price point. You can buy the non-WiFi version for about $182 and pick up the WiFi enabled model for $210 both with Free Prime Shipping. It is fairly feature rich but does make some concessions in terms of IO upgrades you will find on more expensive boards. If you are looking to make a screaming overclocked gaming system, and go "old school" in terms of BIOS tweaking, it is worthy of your short list.

The Gigabyte Z77-UD5H WiFi, in my opinion, is damn near perfect. There's not a feature missing that I'd like to see, performance is great, and power consumption is low too. In its price segment, it adds Bluetooth and WiFi by the inclusion of the add-in card, and looking at online pricing, I do not see the same offered by similarily priced products. Nevermind that if you don't need the add-in card, you can purchase the board without, for a lower cost, too. I had a really hard time coming up with cons for this board. There's the issue with the PWR_FAN header, which is more personal than something end users should worry about, and other than that, there's the software package that at this time feels dated, and a few BIOS options that were kind of vague, but other than that, I could not find anything wrong at all, and even those items are barely worth mentioning, however, they are areas that Gigabyte can improve upon. Of course, the Z77X-UD5H WiFi isn't Gigabyte's top offering either, so to expect every little last detail to be covered may be asking for a bit too much (Nevermind the issues I found were really really minor).

According to Gigabyte, the Z77X-UD5H should be priced right around $200, which makes it the second most affordable in our round-up. It too lacks any included wireless connectivity options, but Gigabyte's board does have the most display output options should you plan to use the integrated graphics built into Intel's socket 1155 processors or want to take advantage of Lucid's Virtu for GPU virtualization. The Z77X-UD5H is also the only board with a built-in mSATA connector which is an interesting option for those thinking about leveraging Intel's Smart Response SSD caching technology. Gigabyte's "3D BIOS" UEFI could use some refinement, but all of the options most enthusiasts need are represented, and the motherboard was stable throughout testing. Overall, the Z77X-UD5H is another solid offering from Gigabyte.

On the whole, the GA-Z77X-UD5H delivers a lot of capability for a reasonable price. With four possible video outputs, it should handle just about any monitor (or even any two) that you already have on hand. Its wealth of drive options and USB 3.0 ports, along with CrossFireX and SLI support, make it ready to be the basis for everything from a basic system using Intel's processor-bound graphics and a built-in video output or two to a component-packed, quad-GPU gaming powerhouse. That being said, we do have two minor nitpicks that buyers should be aware of, if only to buy whatever supplemental hardware they might need at the same time they buy the board. First, we wish the PCI slot wasn’t blocked by installing a second graphics card. Second, be aware that you’ll need to buy some expansion-slot brackets that connect to the onboard USB headers if you want to use more than half of the possible USB ports supported by the pins on the board.

GIGABYTE has put together a really nice Intel Z77 Express based motherboard with the Z77X-UD5H and it does a good job of ticking all the boxes. Coming in at $189.99 it falls under that important $200 mark and instantly becomes a hit for a lot of people who aren't interested in blowing out their bank accounts. Cosmetically the board looks fantastic. The black PCB looks great and combined with that UD5H blue that I've always been a big personal fan of, you end up with something that looks really good. While you might not look at it every day, there's no denying that you'd rather have something that looks great verse something that doesn't sitting inside your pride and joy computer case. 3D BIOS is running great these days and the decision to tone back from having a fully colored motherboard to a greyscale design has worked wonders for overall speed. Initially we had that little bit of lag moving through the BIOS when 3D BIOS first launched. Fortunately now that's an issue of the past.

Still, that slight niggle aside, this is an excellent, well-priced, well laid out board that performs over and above what we would have expected from a £160 mobo from Gigabyte. An excellent return to form for Gigtabyte's motherboard division at a wallet-friendly price to boot.

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!